The English Patient

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, Absolutely Beautiful
Review: I'm not really sure why this movie's being panned as severely as it is. Maybe the dense plot put off those looking for an action epic. Maybe the passionate but ultimately destructive relationship put off those looking for a formulaic happy-ending fluff romance. Maybe these people just don't like thinking during movies, because this movie doesn't lay everything out for you and you have to work to figure out character motivations, plot, symbolism, etc. But to me, all those things that this movie isn't only adds to its richness and beauty.

The story is told half in flashbacks, half in present tense, with the beginning a sort of bridge between the two: Story A, Juliette Binoche's nurse caring for the mysterious English Patient, begins at the end of Story B, where Ralph Fiennes (on an expedition in the desert) falls madly in love with a married woman (Thomas). Later, Story C also interweaves with A and B, telling of Willem Dafoe's bitter thief and his connection with the English Patient. This storytelling device is probably what makes the movie brilliant (although the acting, romance and cinematography are hardly to be treated lightly).

Despite technical brilliance, it is The English Patient's examination of emotions that gives it its heart; the sheer passion of the movie makes me cry every time I see it. And the characters are fascinating, much like Anthony Minghella's later work, The Talented Mr Ripley. No one here can be called a caricature, with the possible exception of Katherine; while you may not understand everything they do, part of the fun is piecing together their actions into complex individuals.

You should be warned that you do see a bit more of both Thomas and Binoche than you perhaps would like to, and Almasy and Katherine DO engage in adultery, but if you can overcome any objections to either of those issues and keep your mind open, you may be as moved as I was. The English Patient is a heart-breaking, passionate, powerful, dense, confusing, mesmerizing, extraordinary, and simply beautiful movie.

Rating:
Summary: Romance and hard choices
Review: The story is that of an Hungarian map maker employed by the British government to chart the expanses of the Sahara Desert in the late 1930s. This is all told in a series of flashbacks after he is dying in 1944, horribly disfigured by being burned in a plane accident. He and his nurse, Juliette Binoche, are living in an bombed out monastery in Italy and William Dafoe enters the scene with his own haunting memories and revenge in his heart for Fiennes. Naveen Andray, cast in the role of a Sikh land-mine specialist adds tension to the mix as he risks his life to disable mines left behind as a legacy of war.

The movie is filled with great cinematography, extraordinary acting, and a love story told against the background of War. Romance is everywhere, not just the romances between the characters but also the romance of the adventurer. It is also the story of a hard choice made for love and the terrible price paid for it.

However, I found much to be desired in this film. At 162 minutes, it was much too long and moved too slow. The story was confusing and certain plot elements were never resolved. Also, even though Kristin Scott Thomas is indeed beautiful, I never really felt chemistry between her and Ralph Fiennes. I also found it difficult to identify with any of the characters. And there's an unremitting sadness that is present throughout.

As this movie will probably be a classic I'm glad I saw it. But it failed to capture me in its sweep and I felt no emotional connection to it. If you haven't seen it already, do see it. Just don't have high expectations.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Review: I like this movie a lot, but if you are someone who does not have much patience, maybe it's not for you.

Rating:
Summary: In some ways superior to the book
Review: This is a beautiful film, reminiscent of something by David Lean, and in some ways superior to the book, which more closely concentrated on Kip, the sapper and Hana, the nurse, whereas the film likes the story of Katherine, the spoiled, and Count Almásy, the bitter, better. I think the film is right for a popular audience. But essentially they are similar works done in different genres.

Although The English Patient won a number of Academy Awards, including best picture and best direction by Anthony Minghella, the public was not entirely pleased. There are two problems: One, the central love story is not appealing to many people because Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas) is committing adultery and Count Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) is not a sympathetic character. Two, the structure of the movie with its flashbacks and temporal ambiguities is very demanding on the audience. Because of this some people found the movie boring. However, the structure is very well thought out and works well to convey the sense of time during war in which events sometimes happen so quickly that time flies, and at other times the slow pace of days is unbearable. Additionally the Academy Award winning cinematography by John Seale makes vibrant the expanse and feel of the vast desert setting and the sense of timelessness that the desert can evoke. And of course the cast was excellent, right down to the supporting players including Naveen Andrews as Kip and Jürgen Prochnow, whom you may recall as the captain of the Unterseeboot in Das Boot (1981), as Major Muller, and especially Juliette Binoche who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Hana, the nurse.

There is some irony here, because had Minghella followed the story and structure of the novel by Michael Ondaatje more closely, the movie would have focused on Hana, and Binoche would have had to win the award for best actress; and Kristin Scott Thomas's part, for which she was nominated, but did not win, for Best Actress, would have been a supporting role. Also note that in the novel there is a similar disjointedness in the time structure. Ondaatje worked as though painting in layers, going back to a point and elaborating on it, coming back to a "present" and then going back again and again, and then finally moving forward to the end. Minghella tried to convey a sense of that structure because it was an important part of the novel, a statement about the subjective nature of our experience of time.

By the way, the book disappoints with its phony PC notions about how Kip and some others might have reacted to the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities, the author imagining that Kip would be offended that the bomb was dropped on "brown people" and not on Europeans; but in truth, few at the time really comprehended or cared about anything other than ending the horror of the worst war in human history. Director Minghella, wisely, I believe, does not bring Kip's notions to the screen. I was more horrified by the booby trap bombs left behind by the Axis soldiers that Kip had to disarm because they were left specifically to murder people whereas the atomic bombs had at least one clear and laudable purpose: to end the war and to end it as quickly as possible with a minimum of lost life. It should be added that the firebombing by both sides, in particular the firebombing of Dresden by the Allies, was worse in terms of damage and lives lost than the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities. It is cliche, but a profoundly true one, to consider once again that war really is hell.

Rating:
Summary: A true cinematic masterpiece
Review: Anthony Minghella's adaption of the novel by Michael Ondaggte, is proof that directors nowadays can still produce beautiful epic romances. This has everything a great movie can ask for and it deserved every single Oscar it was nominated for (sadly no Best Actor win for Ralph Fiennes). It's a quite complicated, yet simple, story about an English archaeologist (Fiennes) and his recollections as his memory and life are leaving him over War World II under the care of an emotionally-challenged nurse (Juliette Binoche, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this subtle, yet superb thought provoking performance).He remembers the desert, his love for a married woman (Kristen Scott Thomas) and of course, his wrong doings while he was alive. The movie is made up of flashbacks or shots of beautiful cinematography set up against even more gorgeous music. The performances are all top-notch. Juliette Binoche and Willem Dafoe (as a thumbless thief) are the stand-outs. The only bicker I have about the film is Kristen Scott Thomas's character. She was supposed to be overwhelmingly sensual and deep and if you ignore the acting of Thomas and instead listen to her lines it will prove more effective, but she just seemed shallow and unsexy. She nearly destroyed many of the scenes with Fiennes, but thankfully he covered up her flawed character (that for the most part, was well-written- just the wrong actress.) I would have also liked to see more of the relationship between the nurse and her lover who undoes dangerous bombs. Anyway, the movie in itself is like a sunrise beautiful and slow and meaningful. A true cinematic achievement and hopefully a classic to be remembered... Anthony Minghella is definitely a promising director although I think this magnificent accompolishment will be hard to out do.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Movie
Review: This movie is brilliant- one that fits with the novel almost perfectly. The actors shine, the pictures are wonderful. It is a believeable movie with no fake acting. This makes the experience incredible. Worth seeing, and buying. A+ and recommended to all! A must see!

Rating:
Summary: You Need Patience for this Film!
Review: I understand everyone's "sighs" and "ho-hums" for this film. After all, I didn't even hear of THE ENGLISH PATIENT in the theaters when it came out in 1996. (I didn't hear of SHINE, either.) But, when the awards were handed out, this unknown film had swept 9 of its 12 nominations.

Director Anthony Minghella has created an epic David Lean-style film worthy of its awards. Lean was known for creating such epic films as LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, A PASSAGE TO INDIA, and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO; Minghella, not known for many epic films, has brought back that Lean-esque feeling to films again. From the dark cinematography by John Seale to the haunting score by Gabriel Yared, THE ENGLISH PATIENT is a moody, beautiful, if overlong (162 mins.), piece of art that should be treasured.

Based on the 1992 bestselling novel by Michael Ondaatje, the film is about love, loss, and betrayal during World War II North Africa and Europe. When a mysterious stranger, played by the sometimes-unrecogizable Ralph Fiennes (Best Actor nominee, is found alive after a horrible plane crash, he is taken into care by a kindly Canadian nurse named Hana, played by Juliette Binoche. Hana is emotionally scarred by the war and agrees to take care of the stranger in Italy. The stranger in question is Count Almasy, a Hungarian -- though mistakened for English. (Hence the title!) He confides in her of a time when he was in an adulterous affair with a beautiful woman named Katharine Clifton, played by Kristin Scott Thomas (Best Actress nominee). They meet on an expedition in the Sahara in 1939, years before his plane crash. She is married to Geoffrey Clifton, played by Colin Firth, who doesn't know of her infidelity until much later, causing him to attempt a triple suicide by flying his biplane into Almasy, killing himself instead and leaving Katharine critically wounded (and eventually dying in a cave). Meanwhile, Hana meets some friends. Kip, played by Naveen Andrews, is an Indian bomb disposer; and David Caravaggio, played by Willem Dafoe, as a Canadian thief who has a terrible past with Almasy (it involves him losing his thumbs!). Eventaully, all secrets are revealed and lives are destroyed. Soon, the war ends and Almasy dies; Hana and Caravaggio leave Italy, and the rest is epic history. And, the first Best Picture winner for Miramax Films, my future co-partners in my epic film, PRISONER OF WAR.

Winner of 9 Academy Awards including: Best Picture - Saul Zaentz, producer; Best Director - Anthony Minghella, who was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Supporting Actress - Juliette Binoche; Best Cinematography; Best Art Direction/Set Decoration; Best Costume Design; Best Sound; Best Film Editing; and Best Score.

The epic genre has returned!

Rating:
Summary: Tragically Passionate
Review: I can't even count how many times I have seen this movie. Each time I watch it I cry for days. A visually beautiful film with a tragic story line that involves war, political conspiracy, a haunting love story and wonderful characters of great depth.

This is one of my all time favorite films and top five love stories. It is breathtakingly beautiful and powerfully tragic at the same time. Worth every moment!!

Rating:
Summary: Ownership, belonging and an earth without maps.
Review: After the publication of Michael Ondaatje's Booker-Prize-winning "English Patient," conventional wisdom soon held that the novel, while a masterpiece of fiction, was entirely untransferable to any other medium: too intricately layered seemed its narrative structure; too significant its protagonists' inner life; too rich its symbolism. Then along came Anthony Minghella, who reportedly read it in a single sitting and was so disoriented afterwards that he didn't even remember where he was - but who called producer Paul Zaentz the very next morning and talked him into bringing the novel to the screen. Two major studios and several fights over the casting of key roles later, the result were an astonishing nine Oscars (Best Picture, Director - Anthony Minghella -, Supporting Actress - Juliette Binoche -, Cinematography, Editing, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Score and Sound), as well as scores of other awards.

"The English Patient" is an epic tale of love and loss; of ownership, belonging and the bars erected thereto. It unites the stories of five people: Hungarian count Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), mistaken as English by a British Army medical unit in Italy after professing to have forgotten his identity; Hana (Juliette Binoche), Almasy's Canadian nurse; Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), his erstwhile lover; Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh sapper and Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), an ex-spy and thief. All outsiders, they are struggling to come to terms with their lives: Almasy, on his deathbed, reflects back to his life as a North African explorer and his affair with Katherine; Hana believes herself cursed because everybody she cares for dies (in the movie her fiance and her best friend; in the novel her fiance, her father and her unborn baby), Katherine is taken to an all-male company of explorers in Cairo by her husband Geoffrey (Colin Firth), Kip, like Hana, is far away from home (the only Indian in an otherwise British and Italian environment) and Caravaggio lost his livelihood after his thumbs were cut off in captivity by the Germans, on a sadistic officer (Juergen Prochnow)'s orders.

Like the novel, the movie's story largely unfolds in flashbacks: After Hana convinces her superiors to let her stay and nurse Almasy in an abandoned Tuscan villa, she and new arrival Caravaggio, who holds Almasy responsible for his fate, extract the details of his life in Africa and the truth about Katherine, Geoffrey and the events uniting him with the Cliftons and Caravaggio from Almasy in a series of conversations. But at the same time, the story is anchored in the present by Hana's growing attachment to Kip, which shines a different light on the themes also driving Almasy and his relationship with Katherine. The film's outstanding cast, which in key roles also includes Julian Wadham as Almasy's friend Madox and Kevin Whately as Kip's sergeant Hardy carries the story marvelously: Probably their biggest award loss(besides Fiennes's and Scott Thomas's Oscar and other "best lead" nominations and Minghella's screenplay Oscar nomination) was the 1997 SAG ensemble award, which instead went to "The Birdcage."

In his screenplay Minghella made several changes vis-a-vis the novel; the biggest of these doubtlessly a shift in focus from Hana, Caravaggio and Kip to Almasy and Katherine, and the fact that the film is much more explicit about Almasy's identity than the novel. Both were wise choices: Hana's inner demons in the novel are largely exactly that - *inner* demons, moreover, substantially grounded in the past and thus even more difficult to portray than Almasy's and Katherine's. Similarly, once the focus had moved to the latter couple, Kip's back story would have extended the movie without significantly advancing it; and the same is true for the intersections between Caravaggio's path and that of Hana's father. Secondly, mistaken *national* identity is overall more central to Almasy's character than identity as such; so the novel's intricate mystery about his persona might well have proven unnecessarily distracting in the movie's context. Indeed, once Almasy had become the story's greatest focus, much of its symbolism virtually even required that there be no real doubt about his identity.

But in all core respects, Minghella remained faithful to Ondaatje's novel; particularly regarding its profoundly impressionistic imagery, as shown, for example, in the curves formed by the Northern African desert's endless sand dunes, which in John Seale's magnificent and justly awardwinning cinematography resemble those of a woman's body as much as they do in Ondaatje's language, thus uniting Almasy's two greatest loves in a single symbol.

Doubtlessly the most important image is that of maps: Guides to unknown places like those drawn by Almasy and his friends during their explorations, but also tools of ownership like the cartography of Northern Africa made possible by Geoffrey Clifton's photos, and ultimately symbols of betrayal, as Almasy surrenders his maps to the Germans in exchange for a plane after he feels deserted by the British. And while Kip, who spends all day searching for bombs but wants to be found at night, guides Hana to himself by a series of tiny signposts in the form of oil lamps - but still never tries to expect her, in order not to get too much attached to her - Almasy, the perpetual loner who declares that he hates ownership more than anything else, gets so attached to Katherine that he claims her suprasternal notch as his exclusive property and later refers to her as his wife, which due to her marriage to Geoffrey she couldn't truly be in life and could only symbolically become in death. - The final word on maps, belonging and ownership, however, is part of Katherine's legacy to Almasy (and I still prefer the novel's language here):

"I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. ... All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps."

Rating:
Summary: A pretentious soap opera that tries to be an epic...
Review: Elaine Benes was right! She couldn't stand it and neither could I!

What an awful, boring, ridiculous film! In looking back, I can't understand why I bothered to continue watching "The English Patient" after the first half hour, when it was becoming obvious that the film was more style than substance. This movie is a total waste of acting talent.

Ralph Fiennes portrays an English pilot who becomes disfigured while flying a burning biplane over the Sahara. World War II is in its infancy, but that's just a moot point, since this isn't a film about bravery, honor or sacrafice anyway. In a series of flashbacks, we see the events leading up to that point in time. Once the flashback sequence ends, we return to present time, and after a few years, oh by the way, the war ends.

By that time, it's hard to care what happens, because it's all so implausible. None of the characters portrayed in the film remotely resemble human beings, at least in the way they react to given situations. Each seems about as two dimensional as the life-size cardboard silouhettes of movie stars you'll see in the lobbies of theatres from time to time.

Much of the story line seems to be rather arbitrary; The only apparent reason that some sequences in the movie take place is so that the running time of the film will be longer. You have subplots that go nowhere and add nothing to the story, minor characters who appear and disappear for no apparent purpose. Any meaning underlying this film is obscurred by a runaway script. With the screenplay out of control, the film seems to revel in its own awfulness.

For another review of this movie, see "Elaine Benes says it all", January 10, 2004 Reviewer: schtinkyfrom Bakersfield, CA USA