Rating: 
Summary: A Hauntingly Beautiful Work of Art
Review: I can only think of two instances in which I preferred a film over the book from which it was adapted. One of those instances involved the film, COLD MOUNTAIN, and the other, THE ENGLISH PATIENT. It is no coincidence that both books were adapted for the screen by the wonderfully talented Anthony Minghella. THE ENGLISH PATIENT is an extraordinarily romantic and passionate film. It is a flawless love story, with flawless dialogue and beautifully nuanced performances by all involved. It is a movie that reminds us of the raw power and emotion capable of being conveyed on the screen when actors capable of performances of the highest calibre give it their all. Anthony Minghella is a genius; he knew that movie goers, at least the bulk of them, would be more caught up in the love and passion between Almasy and Katharine than the romance between Kip and Hana (the book highlighted Kip and Hana, while the movie highlights Almasy and Katharine). While Kip's and Hana's love is sweet and romantic, it is Almasy's and Katharine's that is passionate and daring and the one that defies any and all boundaries. It is the one most of us want to identify with and make our own. I also loved the elliptical structure Minghella gave the film version of THE ENGLISH PATIENT. It begins and ends with a scene of a vivid yellow biplane juxtaposed against the bright blue of a North African sky. This image is one I'll never forget...I thought it was both haunting and beautiful. THE ENGLISH PATIENT takes place in North Africa as World War II is just beginning and also in Italy as the war is drawing to a close. There is never any confusion or clumsiness in the plotting, though. All is very fluid and very beautiful. The "English" patient, as almost everyone knows by now, isn't English at all, but a Hungarian count named Laszlo Almasy. When his plane is shot down over the North African desert, he is burned beyond recognition. Although he is rescued by desert dwellers and his burns heal, he ends up in an crumbling Italian villa in 1944, at the close of World War II, and he is dying. He and Hana (beautifully played by Juliette Binoche), a Canadian nurse, are the villa's sole inhabitants. Hana gives Almasy his injections of morphine and reads to him from his treasured volume of Herodotus as she patiently and gently waits for him to die. Hana and Almasy are soon joined by two other victims of the war...Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a man filled with secrets, and a Sikh named Kip, (Naveen Andrews) who happens to be a bomb expert. As Almasy's memories of his love affair with Katharine begin to return, Hana falls in love with Kip, a love that seems doomed from the very beginning. The film then cuts back and forth between the present at the Italian villa, as we learn of Caravaggio and as Kip and Hana fall in love, and the past, in Egypt, as we learn more about the mysterious Almasy and his affair with the equally mysterious (and newly married) Katharine Clifton. I think the best performances were turned in by Ralph Fiennes as Almasy and by Kristin Scott-Thomas as Katharine. Even though Scott-Thomas is an actress I dislike intensely, she did bring fire and passion to the role of Katharine and she was the perfect foil for the silent, brooding Almasy...the one woman in the world who could get him to open up, to live life, to love, for Almasy is a man who keeps much of himself, to himself. But when he does give himself, he gives all and he gives forever. Juliette Binoche was wonderful as the sensitive, emotionally damaged, Hana, but her character, in both the book and the movie was underdeveloped. Binoche, a beautiful and sensitive actress, did all she could with it, though, and Hana came across as a sweet, vulnerable woman. Naveen Andrews was also struggling with an underdeveloped role as Kip and, in my opinion, he wasn't nearly as successful as was Binoche. He just seemed "thin" and poorly drawn. His best, and most memorable scene, was the one in which he washed his hair...an act that, for him, as a Sikh, was very meaningful. THE ENGLISH PATIENT is a very quiet, very gently nuanced film, yet it is one that is simply bursting at the seems with passion. Fiennes and Scott-Thomas show us more passion with their eyes and their glances at each other than they do in any other way. Add to this the fact that Fiennes rarely speaks and is not the "type" to play a "bad guy" and Scott-Thomas is far from a femme fatale and you can get some idea of the calibre of the performances. I think only Juliette Binoche and Willem Dafoe were "in character." Fiennes is especially good. He brings a vitality and intensity to his role that is rarely seen. The cinematography in THE ENGLISH PATIENT is breathtaking. John Seale really caught the desert in all of its glory. The morning shots of the desert are particularly beautiful as are the aerial views. The desert, especially, the Sahara and its huge, rolling dunes, can be gloriously colorful and beautiful and Seales managed to capture all of that on film, enhancing the film's beauty and its atmosphere. Another thing I found so entrancing about the cinematography in THE ENGLISH PATIENT is the way one image dissolves into another. Sand dunes dissolve into crumpled sheets, Scott-Thomas's hand dissolves into the hand of Almasy as he is dying. Seales found a way to bridge the time gap visually in the most perfect manner. THE ENGLISH PATIENT is, without a doubt, the most lyrical, moving and heartbreaking love story I have ever seen portrayed on film. It is also the most beautifully filmed and best acted. It is, without a doubt, a haunting work of art of the highest order. I had to own the DVD and it is one that I watch over and over and over. I strongly recommend this DVD to anyone who loves a timeless and beautiful romance without any of the "sugary" aspects some of them can contain.
Rating:
Summary: Art imitates Life
Review: Perhaps I am biased because I was the male half of a relationship that very much resembles the one between Count Almasy and Katherine. Because of that I can assure you that Ralph Fiennes plays the part as it happens in life, as it happened with me. Also, K.S. Thomas, despite being reviewed as lacking in her performance in some circles, acted very much like my cohort in adultery. She fought the same demons and had the same unmistakeable attraction that could not be denied, let alone resisted. The plot is slow moving for some but I dare say that is because too many people watch movies such as this in a shallow way. The interaction between the characters has a depth that is rarely found in modern film. In my humble opinion the triangle love affair has a similar depth as the one in Casablanca. Turn off the lights and pay attention, you will find a film that has a thousand permutations, all of which work together to create a story that is interwoven and grander in scope than it appears upon first inspection. If you want to see a pure happy love story wacth any number of chick flics. If you want to see a war story, watch Saving Private Ryan, If you want to see the tragedy that true love sometimes is and the way life turns out all too often, watch this movie.
Rating:
Summary: The English Patient should be a relationship deal breaker...
Review: There are English Patient loving people and English Patient hating people - and therein is an explanation for many failed relationships and marriages. Ideally, online dating services should only pair EP lovers with same and EP haters with same. It should be a deal breaker. The film is, ultimately, an Anthony Minghella film of a Miramax Production, and that pedigree should tell anyone what they need to know. If you thought Minghella's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" was excessive, over long, high toned, homoerotic dreck, than stay away from the English Patient. The love in English Patient is all hetro hot, but the literary notions and expansive storytelling, where the insight is obvious but the telling sublime, is the point of the film. If you're a Cliff's Notes or action comics or video game person, it's not for you. If you love reading a classical novel, no matter how many tangents, digressions and verbal loops the author goes into to communicate their cumulative apprehension of the piece, then buy this film. The beautiful parts are stunning, and the parts that are "over the top" or "over wrought" in some viewers opinion are no more so than the excesses in an opera, which one may sit through bemused as much as impressed, charmed by the lovely lyric and moved by the fine score it's all wrapped in. The film is also worth watching as the piece in with Ralph Fiennes patented the character he has played over and over again through out his entire film career, including the proto version in Schindler's List: the stoic, emotionally remote, cool, sophisticated man who, once smitten by love, becomes an obsessive, emotionally unhinged and self destructive mess. He is very good at this maneuver, and this is a world class performance of his own, personal, character genre.
Rating: 
Summary: Elaine Benes says it all
Review: [Movie Theatre] Peterman and Elaine are still in front of The English Patient. Peterman stares, enraptured, at the screen.
Elaine is totally frantic with boredom. PETERMAN: Elaine, I hope you're watching the clothes, because I can't take my eyes off the passion. ELAINE: (quiet vehemence) Oh. No. I can't do this any more. I can't. It's too long.
to the screen) Quit telling your stupid story, about the stupid
desert, and just die already! (louder) Die!! The other movie patrons turn and shush Elaine, who sits back in her seat. PETERMAN: (surprised) Elaine. You don't like the movie? ELAINE: (shouts) I hate it!! CROWD: Shh! ELAINE: (shouts) Oh, go to hell!! PETERMAN: (quietly) Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? You're fired. ELAINE: (grabbing her bag and coat) Great. I'll wait for you outside. Elaine hurriedly gets out of her seat and leaves.
Rating:
Summary: Lush, dreamlike, poignant and passionate (very)
Review: Wow. Rarely does a movie reach so daringly for the heights and attain the top as The English Patient does. Set during World War II, it's a novel about love and loss, juxtaposing the doomed past love for a married woman that the horribly burned English Patient in the past with the blossoming love, during the waning days of the war, that his nurse is developing for a bomb defuser (talk about a dangerous occupation!) Told in ethereal flashbacks as remembered through a morphine haze, the story comes together in misty bits and pieces that weave themselves into a gossamer curtain that's laid over the whole tale. Comic relief is provided by Caravaggio (!), a thumbless thief.
Top rating, for sure.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Package, Bad Story
Review: First off, I must say, this movie does look tremendously pretty - very well done, excellent cinematography, and the like. However, when I watch a movie, I think the story being told is much more important than the way it is told. The English Patient, in my humble opinion, is a boring story. The drama is overdone, the film drags on and on, and by the time I watched the first hour, I had put the pieces together and knew exactly how the film would end. The only redeeming aspect of the film, I felt, was the curious and cute relationship that developed between the nurse and "Kip." Honestly, I can't believe that this film garnered so much critical praise - I've read reviews that said the Pianist seemed to drag a bit. If the Pianist dragged, then the English Patient skids and thuds at a slower pace, tearing bits of the ground off as it nearly refuses to progress. Eye candy it might be, but a waste of time the English Patient certainly is.
Rating:
Summary: Lancelot-Guinevere?
Review: This movie was spectacular-- amazing cinematography, great acting, beautiful storytelling. There were some lines in this movie that I can't get out of my head. For example, when the hero has Katherine in the cave he tells her (as a commentary on their adulterous relationship) that "every night I tore my heart out, but in the morning it was full again." That line reveals the passion and the anguish of their relationship. Both tried to fight against it, but it was if a force outside of themselves drew them together. You can't help feeling bad for poor Colin Firth, though. It's not like he was a bad husband by any means.
I read over some of the other reviews for this movie, and in response to those who gave this movie one star because of its central adulterous relationship, I would like to say that I don't think that alone makes this movie deserve one star. The most important thing to consider is not that there was an adulterous relationship, but did the movie portray that relationship as good or bad? I think it is obvious, considering Katherine's constant guilty feelings and the ultimate destruction of the characters' lives as a result of the adultery, that the movie portrays this as a bad thing. It would not have been such a beautiful and moving story if no one had felt bad about it and there were no negative repercussions. That is, I think the movie would've been much worse if the two lovers had ditched Katherine's husband and ran away together to live happily ever after and never had any second thoughts about the damage they were doing.
You can't help feeling torn as a viewer, though. It's almost like the Lancelot-Guinevere or Tristan-Isolde relationship. Though they share such exquisite passion, you can never get the betrayal of Arthur or King Mark out of the back of your head.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a waste of time
Review: This movie is lengthy, let me say that; although, the movie is pretty good. All the actors perform well, and the multiple plots will keep your attention.
Rating:
Summary: Sad and beautiful
Review: One of the movies that I'll keep remembering and watching again. The cinematography, the exotic desert landscape, the portrait of the European/ African Muslim cultural harmony, the beautifully haunting music, the intricately layered story (takes more than one viewing to fully understand), the way the two lovers have to part and the way he chooses to end his life and have his nurse read to him his lover's last writing as he passes away... All these just gel so well into a sad and beautiful art work, to be savoured again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Missing Essential Features
Review: The DVD is a great disappointment because of the lack of any special features at all. The movie is great but this is a bare bones DVD with nothing extra. The director has actually done a audio commentary for this film that was available on laser disk. When are we going to see this on DVD? Come on Miramax this was a pretty lame effort; we would like a DVD with more features? Why waste a directors commentary on an obsolete format?
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