Editing David Lean (section)

===Themes===
Steven Ross has written that Lean's films "reveal a consistently tragic vision of the romantic sensibility attempting to reach beyond the constraints and restrictions of everyday life", and that they tend to feature "intimate stories of a closely-knit group of characters [whose] fates are indirectly but powerfully shaped by history-shaking events going on around them." He further observes that, in his work, "setting [is used] as a presence with as much dramatic and thematic form as any character in the film."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ross |first1=Steven |title=In Defense of David Lean |journal=Take One |date=July–August 1972 |volume=3 |issue=12 |pages=10–18 |url=http://davidlean.com/page1/Articles/articles.html |access-date=12 April 2019 |archive-date=12 April 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190412231059/http://davidlean.com/page1/Articles/articles.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Similarly, Lean biographer [[Gene D. Phillips]] writes that the director "saw in his style an attraction to characters who refuse to accept defeat, even when their most cherished hopes go unfulfilled. His protagonists seek to transform their lives, but often fail to do so. Pip in ''Great Expectations'', Colonel Nicholson in ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'', and T. E. Lawrence in ''Lawrence of Arabia'', among others, struggle against the limitations of their own personalities to achieve a level of existence that they deem higher or nobler."{{sfn|Phillips|2006|p=5}}

According to Silver, "Lean's signature characters are ordinary dreamers and epic visionaries, people who want to transform the world according to their expectations... The tragic flaw in Lean's characters is a self-centeredness which can lead to misimpression, which can prevent them from seeing what is so clear to everyone else."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Silver |first1=Alain |title=Lean, David |url=https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2004/great-directors/lean/ |website=Senses of Cinema |date=19 July 2002 |access-date=17 May 2023 |archive-date=22 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230422055620/https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2004/great-directors/lean/ |url-status=live }}</ref> In Sragow's view, Lean has "depicted the need for constricted modern men and women either to act out their dreams ''or'' preserve the life they have by making a scene or putting on a show―indulging in the histrionic to renew their sense of self and purpose."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sragow |first1=Michael |title=David Lean's Right of 'Passage' |journal=Film Comment |date=1985 |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=20–27 |jstor=43453017 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/43453017 |access-date=19 July 2023}}</ref>

Michael Newton of ''[[The Guardian]]'', analysing ''Brief Encounter'' and ''Doctor Zhivago'', says:

{{cquote|Today, 50 years on, we can see how the scale of Zhivago forms the measure of its appeal, and its gorgeousness seems intrinsic to one of cinema's virtues. With [[Charlie Chaplin]], Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell, Lean is one of the greatest film directors this country has produced. Like all of them, he is a romantic, and romanticism was his subject matter: the flourishing and the breaking of inordinate desires, the dangerous lure of beauty, of adventure and the untrammelled life. Both films demonstrate the impossibility of an illicit love finding a place in the world. In ''Brief Encounter'', social convention and decency prevent it; romance flourishes only to be worn out by the talk of casual acquaintances. In ''Doctor Zhivago'', it is history and the political realm that prove to be love's enemy.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Newton |first1=Michael |title=Loved but not lost: David Lean's Brief Encounter and Doctor Zhivago |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/13/in-praise-of-brief-encounter-doctor-zhivago |access-date=12 April 2019 |work=The Guardian |archive-date=12 April 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190412231127/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/13/in-praise-of-brief-encounter-doctor-zhivago |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

Hudson considers the director an important chronicler of the British character in the 20th century:

{{cquote|Born in the Edwardian era, Lean experienced first-hand the decline of the British Empire. He lived through two world wars and matured as an artist during the 50s, when Britain was being forced to re-examine her new role. His natural taste was for a mixture of the nineteenth-century novel and landscape painting of the same period – something he never tried, nor wanted, to change. But having grown up during the demise of British influence in the world, he also had an acutely critical view of British society.

So Lean's work contains an interesting paradox: the strong visual and literary legacy of British culture, which he loved and understood so well, combined with biting insights into the ludicrous aspects of a nation being forced to accept a less important role in the world. A perfect example of this ability to illustrate Britain's dilemma is the portrayal of the colonel in ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' (1957). Here is a man using the military discipline that was the result of hundreds of years of British tradition to survive the hardships, torture and degradation of being a Japanese prisoner of war, yet whose addiction to that same discipline and tradition has turned him mad. The man is both a hero and a fool – a remarkable device to illustrate the state of Britain as she clung to meaningless tradition in a futile attempt to save her identity in the face of declining power.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Hudson |first1=Hugh |title=Dreaming in the light: Hugh Hudson on David Lean |url=https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/dreaming-light-hugh-hudson-david-lean |access-date=5 June 2022 |work=Sight & Sound |date=25 March 2022 |archive-date=5 June 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220605182714/https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/dreaming-light-hugh-hudson-david-lean |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

Several critics have found a close relationship between style and theme in Lean's work. John Orr, author of ''Romantics and Modernists in British Cinema'', examines Lean in terms of "the stylised oscillation of romance and restraint that shapes so much of his work", as well as of "the intersection of culture and nature, where a story's momentous events are not only framed against landscape settings but also integrated into the very texture of the image that his camera produces." He argues that "Lean could have given us kitsch, syrupy imitations of landscape photography, but his staging and cutting blend so fluently that his evocation of the romantic sublime is linked, inextricably, to his ''découpage'' and sense of place."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Orr |first1=John |title=Romantics and Modernists in British Cinema |date=2010 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |location=United Kingdom |pages=64, 69}}</ref> In ''The Rough Guide to Film'', Tom Charity argues: "It's in the cutting that you feel both the romantic ardour and the repression that create the central tension in [Lean's] work."<ref>{{cite web |title=TSPDT – David Lean |url=http://www.theyshootpictures.com/leandavid.htm |website=They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? |access-date=21 October 2018 |archive-date=21 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181021232247/http://www.theyshootpictures.com/leandavid.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>