For those unfamiliar with the films of David Lean, or those who have consigned them to ancient cinematic history, “Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean” is itself a brilliant reminder of a groundbreaking career and a spur to revisit his films, on the big screen, if possible.
But don’t take my word for it. A minute into the film, Steven Spielberg says, “David Lean’s films are the finest crafted films ever made. His movies were like novels.” A minute later, the director Paul Greengrass adds, “He’s one of the handful of directors in world cinema who invented the language of the craft.”
Similar encomiums are delivered by Wes Anderson, Brady Corbet, Francis Ford Coppola, Alfonso Cuaron, Nia DaCosta, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Celine Song, Steven Soderbergh, and Joe Wright.
The film had its New York premiere in the Hamptons International Film Festival and will undoubtedly earn a wide release in the coming months.
It stakes Lean’s claim to greatness, ranging from “Brief Encounter” (1945) and “Great Expectations” (1946) to such multiple Oscar winners as “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957), “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), and “Dr. Zhivago” (1965). At the same time, it acknowledges films considered failures by critics and, more revelatory, digs deeply into Lean’s complicated personal life, which ranged from a disapproving father who never saw any of his son’s films, to six marriages and multiple love affairs.
While there is abundant archival footage of Lean being interviewed and at work, narration by Cate Blanchett, and Lean’s voice, when not actually his own, voiced by Kenneth Branagh, it is the clips from his movies, more than anything else, that will send viewers of “Maverick” back to those films.
One of the things that triggered the interest of Barnaby Thompson, the British director and producer who wrote and directed “Maverick,” was seeing “Lawrence of Arabia” when it was rereleased in theaters in the late 1980s. “That scale, and that level of filmmaking was so awe-inspiring and it made an indelible mark on me,” Thompson said during a phone conversation.
“And as I started reading up about the guy, I thought it was very interesting that this man who was such a huge influence on so many people was, first of all, dyslexic, and as a young man everyone thought he was a dullard. Moreover, he grew up a Quaker, so he wasn’t even allowed to go to the cinema.”
Thompson’s previous film was “Mad About the Boy: The Noel Coward Story” (2024). Coward had chosen Lean to direct his own first film, “In Which We Serve,” which was followed up by Coward’s “Brief Encounter,” which Lean also co-wrote. Having made the Coward documentary gave Thompson a head start on the Lean project.
He cited a biography by Kevin Brownlow on Lean and the support of the David Lean Foundation. “With all these films dealing with people’s lives, archives in general take an enormous amount of time and energy to organize. All of Lean’s correspondence was in boxes at a farm in Nottinghamshire, and we spent days going through them and uncovering those extraordinary letters to his lovers. All that stuff just sat there untouched for 60 years.”
After finishing a documentary, Jack Heller, who produced “Maverick” with Thompson and Nick Taussig, said during a phone conversation that he prefers working on narrative films and didn’t think he would produce another documentary. But he was on a Zoom conversation with a friend who noticed the “Lawrence of Arabia” poster on the wall behind Heller. “My friend mentioned that there was this director who wanted to do a Lean project and that he may have some access. I was, like, ‘yes, yes, yes.’ I got involved from there and met Barnaby and we all shook hands and said let’s go make a movie about David Lean together.”
Heller’s involvement with “Maverick” was all-encompassing, “from reviewing footage to chasing down interviews, a lot of things that were really important to me.” He cited younger directors, “people on the zeitgeist” like Brady Corbet, Nia DaCosta, and Celine Song. “I really want this film to be a gateway for current audiences, the folks those directors speak to, to discover Lean through their own contemporaries.”
Apparently that is happening. “For me the documentary is a love letter to the cinema experience because I think David Lean represents that so quintessentially,” Thompson said. “It feels as if there’s this new excitement, particularly among young people, all going to the cinema and rediscovering these films. I was talking to a friend last night who had been to the Paris Theater in New York to see ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ The audience was mainly young people.”
Thompson produced a film with Blanchett in 1999 called “An Ideal Husband,” one of her first movies. “I texted her and asked if she’d do ‘Maverick,’ and she texted back five minutes later and said yes. When we showed the film at the Cannes Film Festival, she came along. When ‘An Ideal Husband’ played the closing night at Cannes, we walked down the red carpet together, so it was very nice to be doing that again.”
“One of the reasons I wanted to make this movie is I think the big screen experience is important,” said Heller, who is also chairman of the Southampton Playhouse. “To have so many people who are my peers reaching out, saying they heard about the movie and how do they watch it, and the amount of love for Lean that’s come out of it is pretty exceptional.”
