the english patient movie review

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Backward into memory, forward into loss and desire, “The English Patient” searches for answers that will answer nothing. This poetic, evocative film version of the famous novel by Michael Ondaatje circles down through layers of mystery until all of the puzzles in the story have been solved, and only the great wound of a doomed love remains. It is the kind of movie you can see twice--first for the questions, the second time for the answers.

The film opens with a pre-war biplane flying above the desert, carrying two passengers in its open cockpits. The film will tell us who these passengers are, why they are in the plane, and what happens next. All of the rest of the story is prologue and epilogue to the reasons for this flight. It is told with the sweep and visual richness of a film by David Lean , with an attention to fragments of memory that evoke feelings even before we understand what they mean.

The “present” action takes place in Italy, during the last days of World War II. A horribly burned man, the “English patient” of the title, is part of a hospital convoy. When he grows too ill to be moved, a nurse named Hana ( Juliette Binoche ) offers to stay behind to care for him in the ruins of an old monastery. Here she sets up a makeshift hospital, and soon she is joined by two bomb-disposal experts and a mysterious visitor named Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe).

The patient's skin is so badly burned it looks like tortured leather. His face is a mask. He can remember nothing. Hana cares for him tenderly, perhaps because he reminds her of other men she has loved and lost during the war. (“I must be a curse. Anybody who loves me--who gets close to me--is killed.”) Caravaggio, who has an interest in the morphine Hana dispenses to her patient, is more cynical: “Ask your saint who he's killed. I don't think he's forgotten anything.” The nurse is attracted to one of the bomb disposal men, a handsome, cheerful Sikh officer named Kip ( Naveen Andrews ). But as she watches him risk his life to disarm land mines, she fears her curse will doom him; if they fall in love, he will die. Meanwhile, the patient's memories start to return in flashes of detail, spurred by the book that was found with his charred body--an old leather-bound volume of the histories of Herodotus, with drawings, notes and poems pasted or folded inside.

I will not disclose the crucial details of what he remembers. I will simply supply the outlines that become clear early on. He is not English, for one thing. He is a Hungarian count, named Laszlo de Almasy ( Ralph Fiennes ), who in Egypt before the war was attached to the Royal Geographic Society as a pilot who flew over the desert, making maps that could be used for their research--which was the cover story--but also used by English troops in case of war.

In the frantic social life of Cairo, where everyone is aware that war is coming, Almasy meets a newly married woman at a dance. She is Katharine Clifton ( Kristin Scott Thomas ). Her husband Geoffrey ( Colin Firth ) is a disappointment to her. Almasy follows her home one night, and she confronts him and says, “Why follow me? Escort me, by all means, but to follow me . . .” It is clear to both of them that they are in love. Eventually they find themselves in the desert, part of an expedition, and when Geoffrey is called away (for reasons which later are revealed as good ones), they draw closer together. In a stunning sequence, their camp is all but buried in a sandstorm, and their relief at surviving leads to a great romantic sequence.

These are the two people--the count and the British woman--who were in the plane in the first shot. But under what conditions that flight was taken remains a mystery until the closing scenes of the movie, as do a lot of other things, including actions by the count that Caravaggio, the strange visitor, may suspect. Actions that may have led to Caravaggio having his thumbs cut off by the Nazis.

All of this back-story (there is much more) is pieced together gradually by the dying man in the bed, while the nurse tends to him, sometimes kisses him, bathes his rotting skin, and tries to heal her own wounds from the long war. There are moments of great effect: One in which she plays hopscotch by herself. A scene involving the nurse, the Sikh, and a piano. Talks at dusk with the patient, and with Caravaggio. All at last becomes clear.

The performances are of great clarity, which is a help to us in finding our way through the story. Binoche is a woman whose heart has been so pounded by war that she seems drawn to its wounded, as a distraction from her own hurts. Fiennes, in what is essentially a dual role, plays a man who conceals as much as he can--at first because that is his nature, later because his injuries force him to. Thomas is one of those bright, energetic British women who seem perfectly groomed even in a sandstorm, and whose core is steel and courage.

Dafoe's character must remain murkier, along with his motives, but it is clear he shelters a great anger. And Andrews, as the bomb-disposal man, lives the closest to daily death and seems the most grateful for life.

Ondaatje's novel has become one of the most widely read and loved of recent years. Some of its readers may be disappointed that more is not made of the Andrews character; the love between the Sikh and the nurse could provide a balance to the doomed loves elsewhere. But the novel is so labyrinthine that it's a miracle it was filmed at all, and the writer-director, Anthony Minghella , has done a creative job of finding visual ways to show how the rich language slowly unveils layers of the past.

Producers are not always creative contributors to films, but the producer of “The English Patient,” Saul Zaentz , is in a class by himself. Working independently, he buys important literary properties (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” “ Amadeus ,” “ The Unbearable Lightness of Being ,” “At Play in the Fields of the Lord”) and savors their difficulties. Here he has created with Minghella a film that does what a great novel can do: Hold your attention the first time through with its story, and then force you to think back through everything you thought you'd learned, after it is revealed what the story is *really* about.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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The English Patient (1996)

Rated R For Sexuality, Some Violence and Language

160 minutes

Colin Firth as Geoffrey Clifton

Ralph Fiennes as Almasy

Kristin Scott Thomas as Katharine Clifton

Juliette Binoche as Hana

Willem Dafoe as Caravaggio

Naveen Andrews as Kip

Written and Directed by

Anthony Minghella

Based On The Novel by

Michael Ondaatje

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The english patient, common sense media reviewers.

Stunning, complex mature emotional drama.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

There are excellent examples of heroism but there

Guns shoot down a plane, wounded soldiers, burn vi

Full frontal nudity (female), sex.

Characters get drunk to ease pain, many characters

Positive Messages

There are excellent examples of heroism but there is also an adulterous relationship..

Violence & Scariness

Guns shoot down a plane, wounded soldiers, burn victims, bombs, a sandstorm, explosions, car crash, man is choked to death, suicides, a finger is cut off.

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Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters get drunk to ease pain, many characters drink, morphine is abused.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this film features its fair share of both gore and sex, although the slow pace of the film keeps either from being overwhelming. There is full-frontal female nudity, a case of adultery, a finger is sliced off, and a sandstorm temporarily strands people in the desert. In addition, there are bloody injuries, bombs, explosions, two plane crashes, and several deaths. There is also substance abuse of both alcohol and morphine. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 1 parent review

English Patient

What's the story.

In the tradition of grand movie romances, THE ENGLISH PATIENT follows the story of an amnesic World War II burn victim (Ralph Fiennes) as his memories slowly return. In an Allied hospital, the heavily-bandaged patient (whose only identifier is his English accent) is cared for by nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche), who is drawn to the mystery man. Amidst the war-time violence, Hana tries to bring the man out of his catatonic state, and soon present events trigger the patient to recall his dangerous past, and the love he found and lost, in the North African desert.

Is It Any Good?

Despite Oscar wins and high praise, THE ENGLISH PATIENT requires a certain type of viewer to appreciate its plot. There are copious flashbacks, and the often dark story unfolds slowly. Based on a novel, the film suffers from a simultaneous lack and abundance of detail. Some scenes fail to further the plot, while others need more explanation. The film could go in a million directions, but it floats through the material to arrive at an unfulfilling ending. All of this, however, is easy to overlook because the film is so visually stunning.

The supporting cast is brilliant – Juliette Binoche and Kristin Scott Thomas in particular give excellent performances, and Colin Firth leaves an indelible mark. Ralph Fiennes imparts to his character a distinct emotional distance, which works well to establish the character, but makes it hard for him to gain the viewer's sympathy, or even explain how another character falls in love with him.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about issues surrounding the physical and emotional consequences of war. What are the different responses that the characters have to death, and how do they change? What happens when convictions are treated as the truth? How is adultery portrayed in the film? What are the ramifications of adultery in the film and what might they be in real life?

Movie Details

In theaters : November 6, 1996
On DVD or streaming : May 31, 1999
Cast : Juliette Binoche , Kristin Scott Thomas , Ralph Fiennes
Director : Anthony Minghella
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Miramax
Genre : Drama
Topics : Book Characters
Run time : 160 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : sexuality, some violence and language
Last updated : November 15, 2023

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The English Patient Reviews

... a 'Casablanca' for the 90s, directed with sweep, elegance, and grand passions by Anthony Minghella from his screenplay adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s novel.

Full Review | Nov 18, 2023

...from sweeping vistas, incredible performances, and one incredible score, Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient is one of the most beautiful films...

Full Review | Jun 14, 2023

Phantom of the Desert

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 5, 2022

The rich complexity of Minghella's approach finds an incomparable balance between classical storytelling and a modern formal treatment, and therein realizes one of the most enduring, beloved, and unique romances ever to come out of Hollywood.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 21, 2022

Much like the patient's memories, The English Patient swirls around in your head, refusing to recede, its images lingering like snatches of a fragrance too sweet to be forgotten.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 17, 2021

Epically romantic stuff, with a welcome dose of modernism mixed up in an intriguing mystery.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Sep 11, 2020

If Minghella's debut feature Truly, Madly, Deeply was overrated -- a Ghost for the NW3 set -- this movie is a quantum leap towards cinema's potential for magic.

Full Review | Feb 4, 2020

You can take your brain to The English Patient and you will not be insulted. Your eyes will not be offended either. This scarcely makes Minghella's film the best in the world; it just makes it loom large.

Whenever the movie's design seems too elaborate, too remote, it's the rare detail of these performances that redeems it.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2019

Minghella doesn't so much adapt the novel as he translates it wondrously to a different medium, with its mysteries and passions intact.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 21, 2019

...a deliberate, lengthy but always fascinating film...

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 21, 2019

Its performances are finely crafted with loving care.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 21, 2019

This is a radical adaptation which transposes, re-assembles and deletes key elements of the novel to achieve a pure cinematic reinvent ion that is admirably adroit - and as distinctive a work of art as the book remains in its own right.

Full Review | Feb 19, 2019

Its wit, sophistication and artistry never are at odds with the fundamental pull of a powerful love story that out-Zhivagos Doctor Zhivago because it respects love's mysteries, admits it doesn't know the heart's boundaries.

Full Review | Apr 27, 2018

...a beautiful film. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Mar 2, 2018

Relentlessly beautiful, but not quite stupifyingly so

Full Review | Mar 1, 2018

Probably untranslatable to the screen. The English Patient is a noble try. But still a bore.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 1, 2018

It is, after all, quite a lot of movie, two hours and 42 minutes' worth, and the more movie you have, the greater the chances that not all of it will work equally well.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 4, 2015

It took a filmmaker with Anthony Minghella's vision to even attempt an adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. And it took a filmmaker with Minghella's talent to pull it off.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 22, 2015

Anthony Minghella believes in ghosts -- and, at his best, makes believers out of viewers, too.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2015

November 15, 1996 The English Patient By JANET MASLIN hristmas in Cairo, 1938: an exquisite sequence in "The English Patient," one of so many in this fiercely romantic, mesmerizing tour de force. In the courtyard of the British Embassy, soldiers sit at tables baking in the sun while a bagpipe plays "Silent Night." The heat is overwhelming. And the effect is one of dizzying incongruity, as if all the conventions of ordinary life had been suspended. The world has palpably been turned upside down. Even more torrid than the weather is the erotic pull that draws Katharine Clifton, an elegant Englishwoman who is helping to preside over this party, to the ornate window behind which her handsome, obsessed lover hides. He longs to lure her away for one of the trysts that fill this haunting film with its intricate array of memories. "Swoon," he whispers ardently. "I'll catch you." She does swoon. No wonder. "The English Patient," a stunning feat of literary adaptation as well as a purely cinematic triumph, begins long after this love affair has come to a terrible end. The man of the title, who once pursued Katharine with such intensity, has been literally consumed by fire. Scarred beyond recognition, he lies in a bombed-out Tuscan monastery in the waning days of World War II and is tended by Hana, a luminous nurse. Hana performs near-miracles. So does Anthony Minghella's film as it weaves extravagant beauty around a central character whose condition is so grotesque. The same was true for Michael Ondaatje's poetic and oblique 1992 novel, a winner of the Booker Prize. From the standpoint of film adaptation the book is hugely daunting, and not merely because its hero is disfigured and confined to his bed. "There are stories the man recites quietly into the room which slip from level to level like a hawk," Ondaatje wrote of the injured man sifting through his memories. This dreamlike, nonlinear tale moves in much the same way, swooping gracefully from past to present, from one set of lovers to another, from the contours of the body to the topography of the desert sands. In love with the mystery of far-flung places, the book invokes geography, wartime espionage and consuming physical passion as it evocatively spans the globe. Minghella (whose "Truly, Madly, Deeply" and "Mr. Wonderful" are no preparation for this) manages to be astonishingly faithful to the spirit of this exotic material while giving it more shape and explicitness, virtually reinventing it from the ground up. He has described what he aspires to here as "epic cinema of a personal nature." With its immense seductiveness, heady romance and glorious desert vistas at the "Lawrence of Arabia" level, "The English Patient" imaginatively lives up to that description. Like T.E. Lawrence, the English patient -- actually the Hungarian Count Laszlo Almasy -- comes to the desert as a cartographer and stays to find himself caught up in war. And Ralph Fiennes, as Almasy, makes himself the most dashing British actor to brood in such settings since the young Peter O'Toole. Though Fiennes plays the film's Tuscan scenes from beneath pale, bristly stubble and a mask of weblike scars (courtesy of Jim Henson's Creature Shop), he is often seen as a dazzling, elusive figure working with the Royal Geographical Society in remote corners of North Africa. The film's debonair side is so highly developed that the actors playing these adventurers wear dinner clothes from a tailor who dressed the Duke of Windsor. As the burn victim confides in Hana (played with radiant simplicity by Juliette Binoche, as a woman recovering her own equilibrium), the details of this earlier life unfold. And the film, like Almasy himself, is most alive in the tempestuous past. "The English Patient" sets off sparks with the grand entrance of Katharine, played by Kristin Scott Thomas in a great career-altering change of pace. Ms. Scott Thomas' more restrained roles anticipate nothing of her sensual allure and glittering sophistication here. Katharine descends grandly from the skies with an airplane and a husband (Colin Firth) at her disposal. "She was always crying on my shoulder for somebody," Geoffrey Clinton confides, without realizing that his wife and Almasy have become feverishly involved. "Finally persuaded her to settle for my shoulder. Stroke of genius." Meanwhile, Almasy's obsession does not escape the notice of Madox (Julian Wadham), his worldly friend and colleague. "Madox knows, I think," he tells Katharine. "He keeps talking about Anna Karenina. It's his idea of a man-to-man chat." There is no time, while being swept away by the sheer magnetism of "The English Patient," to complain that this kind of treachery is not earthshaking or new. The film has so many facets, and combines them in such fascinating and fluid style (with great polish from John Seale's cinematography, Stuart Craig's production design, Gabriel Yared's insinuating score and Walter Murch's adroit editing), that its cumulative effect is much stronger than the sum of its parts. So in exchange for a sharp central story -- or even one that is easily described -- the film offers such indelible images as cave paintings of swimmers in the desert, a sandstorm of mysterious (and prophetic) fury as Almasy and Katharine are thrown together, and the English patient's great treasure, a well-worn, memento-filled volume of Herodotus. Even without that book, the film's reverence for history and literature would be very clear. The film's parallels and layers also incorporate Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a wily Canadian thief whose fate is linked to Almasy's and whose name, like every other detail here, has been chosen with intriguing care. A more captivating character who receives shorter shrift is Kip (Naveen Andrews), the voluptuously handsome Sikh who defuses land mines and becomes gently involved with Hana. The spareness with which Ondaatje describes this liaison has a piercing loveliness that Minghella's film mirrors: "She walks towards his night tent without a false step or any hesitation. The trees make a sieve of moonlight, as if she is caught within the light of a dance hall's globe. She enters his tent and puts an ear to his sleeping chest and listens to his beating heart, the way he will listen to a clock on a mine. Two a.m. Everyone is asleep but her." "The English Patient" sees the eloquent delicacy in that passage and brings it to every frame. "The English Patient" is rated R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult gurdian). It includes violence, nudity, sexual situations, and one terrifying scene involving torture. NOTES The English Patient. Directed by Anthony Minghella; written by Minghella, based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje; director of photography, John Seale; edited by Walter Murch; music by Gabriel Yared; production designer, Stuart Craig; produced by Saul Zaentz; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 160 minutes. This film is rated R. With: Ralph Fiennes (Almasy), Juliette Binoche (Hana), Willem Dafoe (Caravaggio), Kristin Scott Thomas (Katharine Clifton), Naveen Andrews (Kip), Colin Firth (Geoffrey Clifton) and Julian Wadham (Madox). Showtimes and tickets from 777-FILM Online

Summary An epic film of adventure, intrigue, betrayal and love about four strangers whose diverse lives become inextricably connected. (Miramax Films)

Written By : Anthony Minghella, Michael Ondaatje

The English Patient

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From the opening scene of a plane flying low over the Sahara to the depiction of violence and war, "The English Patient" sweeps you up and captures your heart.

It's the end of the Second World War in Italy and Hana (Binoche), an exhausted, emotionally scarred young nurse, decides to care for her dying patient through the end of his days at an abandoned monastery. Suffering from amnesia, the patient's memory is jogged by a battered copy of Herodotos found with him, and by the arrival of an allied spy (Dafoe), who appears to know who he is . Slowly the pieces of his pre-war past come together, and the tragic love story of Count Almasy and Katherine Clifton unfolds.

Each member of the exemplary cast turns in a skilled performance, not least Binoche, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and Fiennes as the patient himself. Minghella (who won Best Director) manages to seamlessly weave together the splintered stories of desert adventure, doomed love, and a war torn country, while maintaining an interest in each character .

Every scene is photographed with a beautiful sensitivity, especially the aerial views, which are breathtaking and some images will truly stand the test of cinematic time. Winner of nine Oscars in all, the film should be seen several times. On each viewing, more detail is obvious, more emotion palpable, and a genuine feeling towards the characters comes through.

A must see film for all lovers of cinema on a grand and sweeping scale .

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The English Patient

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

Remember Me 14 years ago
Shutter Island 14 years ago
Green Zone 14 years ago

Long, involving and rather parched emotionally, “The English Patient” is a respectable, intelligent but less than stirring adaptation of an imposingly dense and layered novel. Set against the stunning backdrops of pre-war North Africa and the end of hostilities in Italy, this detailed, time-jumping study of the intertwined fates of several of battle’s victims carries the prestige to be a strong attraction for upscale audiences, and Miramax can be counted upon to try to push it as far into the mainstream as possible.

A story about loyalty, personal betrayal, healing and unexpected passion and attachments, among many other things, Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning 1992 novel has to be one of the most difficult books undertaken for screen translation in recent years. All the artistic elements have been assembled with great care by producer Saul Zaentz in an attempt to give the film its best shot, with a result that commands serious consideration.

All the same, film has been nudged in the direction of fairly conventional adulterous melodrama, even as the characters’ British reserve keeps the central romance somewhat emotionally restrained. Predominant impression is one of a highly cerebral yarn fraught with ironies, a drama of exceptional people whose fates are played out as a sideshow to sweeping historical events.

Popular on Variety

Action begins with a spectacular, fiery plane crash in the desert, after which the scorched survivor and title character ( Ralph Fiennes ) is tended to by Canadian nurse Hana ( Juliette Binoche ) in the ruins of a Tuscan monastery. Having lost her closest friend and seen so many others die during World War II, Hana insists upon remaining behind with her one hopelessly impaired patient even as the Allies head north, needing to channel her attentions into one person and possibly find some solace in the process.

But they don’t remain alone for long, as another Canadian, Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), turns up and shortly displays an interest both in the morphine with which Hana regularly injects her patient and in the latter’s mysterious activities in North Africa, where something horrible has happened to Caravaggio. Subsequent tenants at the monastery come to include two bomb-disposal experts: Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh serving in the British Army, and his partner, Sgt. Hardy (Kevin Whately), who must contend with the many mines left in the area by Germans.

In intriguing flashbacks that unfurl slowly like the opening of a scroll, the English patient’s strange and ultimately traumatic tale is revealed. In fact, he is not English at all, but a Hungarian named Count Laszlo de Almasy, a dashingly attractive but detached young man based in Cairo in 1938 helping make maps of uncharted desert areas for the British. His aloofness is broken, however, by the arrival of two young Brits, newlyweds Geoffrey and Katharine Clifton (Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas).

Resist their mutual attraction as they may, Almasy and Katharine are ultimately stranded together in the desert in a way that makes their affair inevitable, and it becomes reckless, all-consuming and destructive to themselves and others in their circle. As their liaison carries over into wartime and Geoffrey’s jealousy moves him to strike back in a shocking way, Almasy and Katharine once again are left alone in the Sahara, triggering the final desperate phase of their doomed liaison.

Through it all are interlaced Caravaggio’s inquiry into what he suspects was Almasy’s responsibility for his capture and torture by the Nazis at Tobruk, as well as Hana’s life-brightening fling with Kip, the lightness and innocence of which contrasts markedly with the paralleled passion of Almasy and Katharine.

In adapting the novel, writer-director Anthony Minghella has understandably moved the major romance much more to the center in an attempt to give the tale a more emotional core. In movie terms, this is correct in theory, but the film is nonetheless stymied by the extreme recessiveness of Almasy, who is meant to be a mystery man but remains all but impossible to connect with as a romantic lead.

This puts enormous pressure on Fiennes, whose looks and demeanor give the strangely motivated man a definite allure but who can’t reveal Almasy’s heart. While Fiennes’ performance is clearly operating on the notion of less is more, his character remains at a remove, making the film come across more as a clinical study of a complicated life and romance rather than a deeply felt expression of it.

As his partner, Scott Thomas gets the chance to be more outgoing, and the actress’s customary sharp intelligence and provocatively direct manner are in full working order in her portrayal of a bold woman whose foolish fearlessness trips her up.

It is in the Italian end of the story that some of the characters are rather shortchanged. The novel’s Hana is a considerably more haunted figure than the one here, but Binoche’s warm, inviting presence represents fair exchange and provides the picture with its most accessible characterization. Dafoe’s embittered ex-thief is a strong, if fairly one-dimensional, force. But by far the most reduced character is Kip, a fascinating and highly complex personage in the novel but here shoved to the side in a way that seems almost insulting.

With its exotic, tapestry-like backgrounds, this is a picture of resplendently textured, sensuous surfaces, beginning with the sunbaked Tunisian desert and filled out by many striking locations, sets by production designer Stuart Craig and costumes by Ann Roth. John Seale’s lensing handsomely captures these physical attributes, as well as those of the terribly good-looking actors, although he often places the thesps’ faces in annoying shadows and darkness when rich light lies just behind, creating an unduly soft look.

Pic feels, and is, long, but Walter Murch’s editing keeps the story’s diverse elements in admirably judged balance. Minghella has decided to reveal certain key story elements early on, thereby reducing some suspense and intrigue, and has made most of the characters’ motivations more straightforward than they were on the page, and these moves are certainly open to debate by critics and audiences. Motive for doing so was obviously increased clarity and accessibility; while this has been achieved, up to a point, the story still remains somewhat obscured by the desert’s shifting sands and the character’s hard-to-reach hearts.

Production: A Miramax release of a Saul Zaentz production. Produced by Zaentz. Executive producers, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Scott Greenstein. Directed, written by Anthony Minghella, based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje.
Crew: Camera (Deluxe color), John Seale; editor, Walter Murch; music, Gabriel Yared; production design, Stuart Craig; art direction, Aurelio Crugnola; set decoration, Crugnola, Stephenie McMillan; costume design, Ann Roth; sound (Dolby digital), Chris Newman, Ivan Sharrock; makeup, Fabrizio Sforza; prosthetics, Jim Henson's Creature Shop; associate producers, Paul Zaentz, Steve Andrews; line producer, Alessandro von Normann; assistant director, Andrews; second unit director, Peter Markham; second unit camera, Remi Adefarasin; casting, Michelle Guish. Reviewed at Sony Studios, Culver City, Oct. 21, 1996. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 162 MIN. Original review text from 1996.
With: Count Laszlo Almasy - Ralph Fiennes Hana - Juliette Binoche Caravaggio - Willem Dafoe Katharine Clifton - Kristin Scott Thomas Kip - Naveen Andrews Geoffrey Clifton - Colin Firth Madox - Julian Wadham German Officer - Jurgen Prochnow Sgt. Hardy - Kevin Whately Fenelon-Barnes - Clive Merrison D'Agostino - Nino Castelnuovo Fouad - Hichem Rostom Bermann - Peter Ruhring

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Rapture In The Dunes

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From their green, damp, congested homelands, Europeans come to the North African desert and fall in love–as if into quicksand–with the dry vastness. Like T.E. Lawrence, they are awed by the womanly contours of the great desert dunes. Soon their faces are bronzed, their limbs burnished, their hair bleached, until they are the color of sand. These nomads-by-choice have become the Sahara.

The English Patient , the keenly rapturous film that Anthony Minghella has made of Michael Ondaatje’s novel, burrows into these feelings even as it flies above them like a plane full of surveyors. This is a big film, serious and voluptuous. It hopscotches through time, from 1937 to 1944, and over two continents. It probes issues of betrayal and forgiveness. It borrows Lawrence of Arabia’s epic intellect for a tale of potent romance. But its sophistication never obscures the story, which is as charged as the North African adulteries in Casablanca and The Sheltering Sky . Here is an Englishwoman who tells her man, “I’ve always loved you.” And here is a Hungarian count who vows, “I promise I’ll never leave you.”

He is not English, this Count Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), nor is he at all patient. But those are the words on his medical papers when, scorched and disfigured, he comes under the care of a Canadian nurse named Hana (Juliette Binoche) in Italy at the end of World War II. To the wounded, Hana is a guardian angel, listening like a doting mother to their plaints, caressing them like the chaste lovers they left back home. Setting Almasy up in a ruined monastery, she swathes his parchment skin and reads to him from his precious volume of Herodotus, while Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), another veteran of the African campaign, urgently quizzes the patient on his mysterious wartime past.

Through flashbacks we see what Almasy is trying to remember–or trying to keep others from discovering. Brilliant and aloof, commanding many languages, he was part of a British cartography expedition in the Sahara. There he meets Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas), the cool, sure wife of a member of the team. Almasy is aroused and troubled by Katharine; even dancing, he stalks her furtively, as if she’s not supposed to know she’s in his arms. Almasy, a hoarder of his own secrets, may want to possess but not be known; Katharine may be tired of her cheery husband (Colin Firth), and she’s itchy to return to her seaside home. None of this matters when they fall in love.

Most films, as they ravel their stories, narrow their focus to two or three central characters. The English Patient, though, expands its field of vision to embrace the impromptu communities around Almasy–notably Hana and her Sikh lover Kip (Naveen Andrews). They re-enact, with less melodrama, the arc of Almasy and Katharine’s desperate affair. Almasy wants his love to flee in a plane; Kip sends Hana soaring on pulleys into the clerestory of the monastery chapel. Up there with the heavenly murals: Kip knows that’s where this pensive angel belongs.

The English Patient is up there with Hana. Minghella, a British playwright whose first film ( Truly Madly Deeply ) was also about love beyond death, gives care to the segue of image and sound from one scene to the next, to the performers’ intonations and gazes, to snatches of dialogue–say, a phrase as glancing as “Yes. Absolutely”–that may echo an hour later to haunt the characters.

The film is, in an old phrase, beyond gorgeous: a feast whose splendor serves Almasy complex passions. The cast is superb: Binoche, with her thin, seraphic smile; Scott Thomas, aware of the spell she casts but not flaunting it; Fiennes, especially, radiating sexy mystery, threat shrouded in hauteur. Doom and drive rarely have so much stately star quality.

All year we’ve seen mirages of good films. Here is the real thing. To transport picturegoers to a unique place in the glare of the earth, in the darkness of the heart–this, you realize with a gasp of joy, is what movies can do.

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The English Patient

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Get ready for the great romance of the movie year. It’s clear from the shimmering, startling opening shot: Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), a Hungarian count, desert explorer and pilot, is flying Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), the married Englishwoman he loves, over the Sahara in a small plane during World War II. German fire sends them parachuting to the desert in flames, his body clinging to hers in a paradigm of love and death. Admirers of the 1992 novel by Michael Ondaatje won’t remember things beginning that way because they didn’t. Writer and director Anthony Minghella ( Truly, Madly, Deeply ) has altered the novel. I said altered, not mutilated. Ondaatje, a Canadian citizen born in Sri Lanka, told his story in lyrical bursts. Minghella, born in England to Italian parents, imposes a more linear structure, maximizes Almasy and Katharine at the expense of other characters, and sacrifices some of the book’s mystery for cinematic coherence. Yet Ondaatje’s poetic spirit flares brightly onscreen.

Granted, The English Patient runs nearly three hours and sounds like the self-important froufrou ( Out of Africa ) that wins Oscars and bores most of us brainless. But the gifted Minghella has distilled the novel with rare grace and incendiary feeling. Almasy, burned beyond recognition and ripped from the dead Katharine by Bedouins, is cared for at an army hospital where he is known only as “the English patient.” When the Allies move on, Hana (Juliette Binoche), a Canadian nurse, cares for her patient alone at an abandoned Italian monastery, where she comforts him with reading and morphine. The two aren’t alone for long. Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh officer in the British Army, arrives to defuse bombs and stays to quicken a passion in Hana that she had long thought dead. Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe in full, flinty vigor), a crafty thief who had his thumbs cut off by the Nazis, comes to find out whether the English patient is really the German spy who betrayed him.

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This hypnotic epic, impeccably produced by Saul Zaentz ( Amadous ) and stunningly shot by John Seale ( Witness ), moves across time and the borders of Italy, Egypt and North Africa to link its two love stories. Binoche and Andrews are vibrant and moving, though the back story of Hana and Kip’s interracial affair has been truncated for the screen. It’s the memories of the English patient, filtered through pain and drug-induced delirium, that provide the focus for Minghella, whose artful script and direction mark him as a master of intimate emotion.

Fiennes, in or out of disfiguring makeup, gives a performance of probing intelligence and passionate heart. And Scott Thomas, mistaken as chilly by those who know her only from Four Weddings and a Funeral , is an incandescent revelation in her first full-out romantic role. Katharine betrays her husband (a superb, touching Colin Firth) in scenes of sizzling eroticism with Almasy that lead to scalding guilt. On first seeing Katharine, Almasy is told by a friend: “She’s charming, and she’s read everything,” Intellect and carnality fuse combustibly in the rhapsodically sexy Scott Thomas. Flashbacks reveal how the cool, cynical Almasy becomes drunk on Katharine, forging his honor through a commitment that prevails over the conflicting loyalties of war. With The English Patient, Minghella proves that a movie love story can be smart, principled and provoking, and still sweep you away.

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The English Patient Review

01 Jan 1996

160 minutes

English Patient, The

The ingredients most likely to give a critic indigestion are fatty emotions and over-ripened sentimentality. And so it was that The English Patient succeeded so magnificently, both critically and to the tune of £12 million at the UK box office. And yet, in its ambition to underplay every emotional nuance (except for Ralph Fiennes' visceral outburst late in the film), it ultimately under-performs.

While the film offers understatement, the critics have preferred to overstate its merits. The story recounts the journey of the mysterious Count Almasy (Fiennes), a cartographer of uncertain nationality who is dragged, badly burned and half-dead, from the wreckage of his bi-plane at the tail end of World War II. As he is placed under the care of Canadian army nurse Hana (Oscar-winner Binoche) to live out the final days of the war in a dilapidated Italian villa, a magnificent story unravels (in flashback) of his illicit love for a married woman, Katharine Clifton (Scott-Thomas).

Simultaneously, Hana is completing her own emotional journey with the help of a bomb disposal officer (Naveen Andrews with whom she shares one of the truly classic scenes in the film), and occupational thief Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe) appears out of nowhere to question the elusive Almasy, suspecting him of being the spy who helped the Germans to get their men into the Sahara.

There is a compelling lack of emotional involvement here: the brief flashes of unbridled feeling certainly hit home, and when they come, they excise quickly any doubt about the effectiveness of Fiennes, but still we care little for this underwhelming Count Almasy and his flighty, faintly irritating, inamorata Katharine Clifton. Some might argue that this is deliberate and is true to an "unfilmable" novel (Booker Prize-winner by Michael Ondaatje) but on the small screen, the majestic vistas of vanilla deserts and blistering sunsets are mere Discovery Channel fodder and do not make up for the low-fat epic romance.

Here is passion that merely blisters the heart rather than blasts it asunder. After a heart-stopping, nine Academy Award-winning, six Bafta scooping and two Golden Globe-grabbing journey to classic status, there is an unthinking consensus about The English Patient which belies its true quality.

Movies | 19 04 2021

Movies | 04 01 2014

The English Patient: A Classical Tragedy of Love and Paradox

In Plato’s timeless Symposium, the wise Diotima tells Socrates: “He who has followed the path of love’s initiation in the proper order will on arriving at the end suddenly perceive a marvelous beauty, the source of all our efforts.” For Socrates, Beauty is on a par with Goodness and Truth in the trinity of perfect Ideas. Love embodies the desire for beauty, for completion, the yearning for immortality. The Greeks considered love to be a form of divine grace; thus their inimitable sculptures personifying various gods and goddesses glorify the sensual. But the Beauty they instantiated was eminently earthly: to be exact, the distinction between humans and immortals was aesthetically negligible. Men and women rivaled the deities in physical splendor; mortals actually tempted the gods, who often succumbed, and often, too, disastrously. Yet the residents of Olympus seemed unable, or at least unwilling, to resist such temptation.

It is no accident that “The English Patient”—surely the best movie to come on the American screen in a very long time—chooses the Greek Herodotus as a leitmotif. His History happens to be the main character’s constant companion, even improbably surviving a fiery crash that all but consumed its merely human owner. The movie’s principal theme has been routinely described as “romantic”; and it is that as it involves the relationship between a man (the Hungarian Laszlo) and a woman (the English Katherine). On closer analysis, however, both the style and the message are in reality quintessentially classical. Thus Nobel-prize winning Mexican essayist Octavio Paz wrote in his recent masterpiece The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism: “Greco-Roman Antiquity knew love, almost always, as a passion that was painful but nonetheless worthy of being experienced, desirable in and of itself.” The passionate love described in this movie is, in such classical terms, definitely painful. But at the same time it is impossible to deny that it is portrayed as eminently beautiful.

Beauty notwithstanding, what makes this story interesting is its moral core. Morality was central to the Greek mind. However overwhelmed by their passion, the lovers have to accept the consequences of their actions to themselves and to others. Intoxication is no excuse: those who love must still act, and all action is either right or wrong. But free will aside, there is—naturally—a role for destiny.

The Greeks fully appreciated the role of the Moirae, the ubiquitous Fates, in human behavior. Once condemned to desire, the lovers are subject to a kind of curse masquerading as grace. The victims’ only choice is to worship one another in endless torture, for true love has no consummation. Each seeming conquest only fuels the desire for more—to say nothing of jealousy, pathos, remorse…. If the flames of the inferno have any meaning, this surely must be it.

Except for being—magnificent. Thus just as fire changes elements into new substances, so the lovers are transformed: they are no longer merely objects of physical attraction (which is the origin of the original erotic impetus); they learn to venerate one another as souls worthy of respect. To cite Paz again: “Love is…ceremony and representation, but it is something else besides: a purification, as the Provençal poets said, that transforms the subject and object of the erotic encounter into unique persons. Love is the final metaphor of sexuality. Its cornerstone is freedom: the mystery of the person.” But the price of freedom is, again, the imperative of morality.

At the very essence of morality is the principle of treating others as ends in themselves. Yet love is sometimes, perhaps more often than not, curiously incompatible with morality—which the lovers, in classical terms, transgress at their peril. The paradox is that love itself makes all danger, including death, entirely subservient to the inescapable, all-consuming passion that defines such love. Which is itself a kind of redemption. But is that enough to render it moral?

Admittedly, death itself is the ultimate redemption. And in a way so is passion itself, since it is equivalent to death-by-fire, death by all-consuming fire, destroying as it exalts. But much more important is the fact that passion not only betrays but also begets life.

In a strikingly ambivalent, most dramatic scene, Katherine slaps Laszlo hard in anger, desperate at her own need for him, even as she comes to him for the first time, dressed in white, presenting herself as his true (though certainly not legal) bride who needs him more than she can bear. She hates and loves him at the same time; is ecstatically happy and miserably unhappy at the same time—as she confesses to him, fully aware of what is happening to her, yet unable and ultimately unwilling to resist it.

It is not irrelevant that Katherine is married. Her status as “forbidden fruit” must surely add to the dramatic tension between the two lovers—not unlike the tension between Romeo and Juliet, and countless others in literary history. But while Juliet’s love for Romeo was forbidden only by political circumstance, that of Katherine for Laszlo implied betrayal, defying both Truth and Goodness. Can Beauty do that and still be ravishing? So it seems.

The betrayal is not only adulterous (although it is that primarily, and the eventual cause of the horrible deaths of all three people caught in this tragic triangle). Loving Laszlo, Katherine also violates her own choice to stay, in effect, spiritually a virgin: by having married her best friend from childhood rather than anyone who would cause her pain, she had made a conscious decision to shun passion. She betrays her emotional celibacy when she tells Laszlo that what she likes most is to swim alone, and to take baths alone (decidedly “not with someone else” she tells him even as she is in the bath with him). And what does she hate most? To lie, she answers promptly, without blinking. Yet this is precisely what she must do to keep her lover a secret.

Laszlo too realizes, almost from the moment he lays eyes on Katherine, that he is doomed. Writes Paz: “Love begins with a look: we gaze at the person to whom we are attracted, and he or she gazes back. What do we see? Everything and nothing. After a moment we avert our eyes. Otherwise we would be turned to stone.”

One of the most sensual moments in the movie is, improbably enough, the scene by the campfire where Katherine tells the gathered (all male) explorers a story from Herodotus. The camera focuses on her with almost impudent, intrusive closeness as she describes the night when the ancient queen undresses (unknowingly) in the presence of a man who will be her future lover. The close-up of Katherine shows her subliminally aware of the fact that the erotic moment she describes embraces her as well, that she is actually addressing Laszlo at whom she looks as she speaks—with the camera following that gaze. And as her figure is blurred while the focus sharpens on him, we know that Laszlo is himself the stunned voyeur, finding himself unable to resist undressing her—the willing lover/raconteuse—with his eyes. He is destined to be the inevitable victim of the splendid Medusa/Katherine whose magnificence will turn him not to stone but to burning fire. He does not avert his gaze, but looks on, mesmerized, unable to believe. The fact that he will later die as a result of literal burns is only meant to underscore the fact that he has already started to be consumed by the flame inside his body, the flame of passion and, eventually, devotion.

This man who shouts that “There is no God,” who states that he does not want to be owned by anyone—that is to say, he wishes to be his own god—seems unwilling to believe that he can succumb to the greater force of love. That only insures that he will fall so much the harder for resisting, denying, desperately fearing it; he is hopelessly drawn into it for the simple reason that he happens to be human. He too had vowed to stay celibate, no less than Katherine. He detests above all “ownership”—the kind that love commands, that he cannot escape. But later, having just made love to her, he demands that he possess a part of her body, the delicate hollow in her collar bone—when in fact what he truly needs is not only every inch of her but her entire soul, which he cannot be sure he can ever possess. The fact that she loves him as much does not change that truth. These are both tragic Greek characters who fully realize the danger of passion.

Descendants of Adam and Eve, they try to avoid tasting the forbidden fruit—but, like the pre-Christian Greeks, they know that the road to love’s precarious paradise leads through hell. They know that the price of their surrender must be everything. This is why they fear it and why they (and only such as they) have the privilege and misfortune to succumb to it.

The beauty of the love between Laszlo and Katherine is greatly enhanced by the fact that it takes place against the background of enormous calamities both man-made and natural. As they live through a sandstorm of truly biblical proportions, the two, who still have not acknowledged their mutual attraction, fall asleep together in the same car only to awaken the next morning nearly buried, obviously brought closer together by the catastrophe. And when they discover a prehistoric cave—the object of Laszlo’s expedition—where ancestors of all humanity left their trace in art, they are reminded of the reality of transitoriness, of death, and the everlasting human yearning for beauty. In this dramatic setting, Laszlo and Katherine are keenly aware that they represent a mere incarnation of the ancient pattern. Herodotus, the father of history, reminds them of the fact that their own lives—like all others—are merely tiny chapters in a magnificent, tempestuous tome. That background cannot but add to the sense that their union is both irrevocable and hauntingly beautiful.

Genuine passion implies both splendor and torture. Writes Paz: “Through love we steal from the time that kills us a few hours which we turn now into paradise and not into hell. In both ways time expands and ceases to be a measure. Beyond happiness and unhappiness, though it is both things, love is intensity: it does not give us eternity but life, that second in which the doors of time and space open just a crack: here is there and now is always. In love, everything is two and everything strives to be one.” Love is especially powerful as against the horror of war, the exploding mines that kill randomly regardless of ideology or moral worth, as if God had suddenly forgotten all sense and reason. The beauty that emerges from the love of two human beings who find each other absolutely splendid and irresistible, becomes almost sacred. Actually, it is sacred—it is the essence of life.

But, again, what of morality? Does the story condone the illicit affair, in the end, or does it not? Perhaps even more important: is it possible to forgive Laszlo for having given his archeological maps to the Germans in exchange for a plane to rescue Katherine? One reason this is so haunting a story, and so truly unusual, is that the answer is extremely complex, which is why this is not mere drama but a tragedy. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the lovers’ horrible deaths—with Katherine left alone in a cave while Laszlo takes too long to rescue her, and Laszlo (his unrecognizable body already scorched in the plane gunned down by the Germans) finished off with morphine by a compassionate nurse—constitute, on the face of it, their well-deserved punishment. But to end there would be to miss the point of this story entirely.

In order to understand more deeply the main theme one must look to the subplots. There is, for example, the brief affair of the nurse and her Sikh soldier lover, which is surely genuine and beautiful, innocent, devoid of distrust or betrayals, yet lacking in both intensity and drama. The reason is not simply that the relationship is not illicit; it is rather that the protagonists are constitutionally incapable of the intense eroticism that consumes the principal couple.

When the nurse plays the piano, the young soldier comes running to warn her of unexploded mines. She later calmly declares to Laszlo as she is caring for him that the young man will become her husband, since her mother had predicted that she would call her mate by playing the piano. No tragedy, no fear of passion, no agony, no stunning first gaze. Accordingly, she will not be burned on the incandescent cross of desire. But at least she and the soldier are true enough to themselves not to promise to marry; they merely expect to meet again some day, in their lovely church. No date is set. By implication, if they do not meet, they must not meet—for it means that they are not fated to do so. They will be true to themselves, but they cannot predict that they will be drawn to one another again. The audience cannot be sure either. While their love is pure, it fails to be scorching, fails to be splendid.

In what way, by contrast, does Katherine and Laszlo’s love deserve to be called splendid? That moment comes, it seems to me, when Laszlo takes on the task of rescuing not Katherine herself, the beautiful object of his desire, but Katherine’s corpse. When Laszlo takes on the deadly journey to the cave where he knows, even if only subliminally, that she lies still and cold—given that this is long after her supplies have run out—he takes on the task of Antigone: ending the anguish of an unburied beloved’s soul at the risk of one’s own life. At that moment it is absolutely clear that his love is truly transcendent, more important to him than anything else on earth or heaven.

So if he could obtain the rescue plane only by offering the Germans his maps, it seems virtually impossible to blame him. What could he have done? The British, whom he approached first, not only refused to help him but proceeded to imprison and deport him, assuming, inaccurately, because of his name, that he worked for the Germans. It is probably also not irrelevant that the war was practically over, the Germans already losing. Could we have forgiven him if he had left Katherine in the cave and betrayed his promise to her to make sure he comes after her? Had she not begged him to let her be buried in her garden, at home?

In the process of rescuing her he will expose himself to being shot down. Love may have made him mad, but it has also made him a hero. And in that moment, we realize that if there is a moral to this story, it is that the sublime beauty of his love is indeed, in all probability, worth everything. That sacrifice saves his soul even as (and yes, because) it scorches his body—for which, and this is critical, he is fully prepared.

The Canadian spy whose hands had been horribly mutilated by the Germans, who had vowed to locate all those implicated in that torture and kill them, lets the unrecognizable Laszlo be after hearing the reason why he surrendered the archeological maps. (The Germans had found him as a result of studying Laszlo’s maps.) This does not justify Laszlo’s act, which was essentially treacherous; but it does explain that the tragic hero was faced with a horrible dilemma, to which there was no clear solution. And his heart dictated that he must act on his holy promise. There is at least some reason to forgive the dying star-crossed lover.

For that matter there must be compassion for Katherine as well, once it is revealed, in the last scene, that as she lay dying she had been haunted by the betrayal that—as she says—”is everywhere,” including within herself. And despite her wounds, her thoughts turn to her dead husband, whose body she had asked Laszlo to bury, just before he left her.

The fact that these people are intensely aware of moral truth even as they seem unable to resist violating its law while—and this is important—making no excuses for themselves, renders the movie particularly powerful. There is no trace of relativism here, or nihilism: there are truths, loyalties, and many examples of deep affection. Ultimately, it is the fact that the two protagonists are devoted to one another beyond life that makes their story so hauntingly beautiful.

This is not pure romanticism, if that term refers to the glorification of morally oblivious feeling. The movie portrays passion in all its terrifying, dangerous reality. It states too that moral laws are violated at a price—and that price is very high indeed. Innocent people end up getting hurt. But it does not go on to conclude that feeling is therefore to be denied, shackled, obliterated. There are no traces here of stoicism; only courage—which is entirely different, in many ways its exact opposite. In the final analysis, does the story of these lovers prove that their love was wrong, and reprehensible? The answer would have to be, it seems to me, essentially yes. And yet…. Did they prove that their love was sublime? That answer, paradoxically enough, must also be yes, truly yes.

Is this confusing? unacceptable? contradictory? Perhaps. But ultimately, this is no didactic morality play but a work of art. This is not to imply either relativism or immorality. It is simply not an artist’s place to pronounce ethical judgments. As Benedetto Croce wrote in 1912 in the Guide to Aesthetics, “the artist neither believes nor disbelieves in his image; he produces it.” Significantly, however, it was Croce who also believed that the more something is art “the more it shows the morality inherent in the nature of things.” That morality is not necessarily clear-cut should not diminish its significance. “The English Patient” is a work of art not despite the fact that it does not present us with a definite moral conclusion but, surely, because of it.

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Handicapping History

I appreciate learning that the film, The English Patient, is a Classical Tragedy of Love and Paradox and a true work of art. I will try to watch it again with this revelation in mind. When I viewed it in 1996, I remember only that I was appalled. It seemed obvious to me that this was simply a thoroughly modern Anti-Casablanca. Casablanca’s Rick and Ilsa , showed heroic virtue by surrendering their private passion for the greater good, out of respect for the great Nazi fighter Victor Laszlo (yes, Laszlo~coincidence?); The English Patient’s Katherine and Laszlo selfishly indulged their physical “needs” (love?) to cuckold Katherine’s husband as he played Santa to children in the courtyard below. How delicious! Casablanca spoke to virtue, self-sacrifice, the moral right, and doing the right thing because it is the right thing, because, after all, how could you do anything else? The English Patient glamorized unfaithfulness, selfishness, indulgence, disrespect of the human dignity of another, treason and, finally, euthanasia! Some morality tale! But it was pretty. What I saw was a beautifully done film that appealed to the modern “But I must be happy no matter who gets hurt” mentality. This is the way so much of the degradation of our culture comes about ~ wrapped in a pretty bow.

I think Nora has the correct interpretation of The English Patient as the ‘anti-Casablance’. The English Patient turns both the relationship between Rick and Ilsa and how one faces evil, i.e., Nazis, as both are portrayed in Casablanca upside-down. With regards to the latter, in The English Patient there is no such thing as a gentleman and cheating with another man’s wife is fine as long as it’s all for “love”. Futhermore, The English Patient informs us that cooperating with evil is also just fine as long as the individual can get what he wants. There is no way one twist cooperating with Nazis (and it is rather telling that the word ‘Nazis’ never appears in this essay) into a moral good.

And while one might want to throw up something like “Schindler’s List” to as a response to “cooperating with Nazis” comment, think again. Schindler did everything he could to foil Nazi plans, from falsifying information to save to Jews to providing subtly faulty supplies that would fail Nazi war efforts. In The English Patient, in contrast, innocent men are given up to die at Nazi hands when Laszlo hands over plans that will support their military efforts. It matters not one whit that this is in the waning days of the war.

The English Patient Movie Review: When Were You Most Happy?

Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient is an epic war drama with two romances thrown in for spice. All three parts: the war drama, the romance in the past, and the romance in the present, will keep you on the edge of your seat. Ralph Fiennes plays the English Patient (a highly fictionalized László Almásy – a famous Hungarian cartographer).

László has been shot down in his plane and received life-threatening burns all over his body. Hana (Juliette Binoche) is his French-Canadian nurse who has decided to leave her convoy and tend to her dying patient in a peaceful, though ransacked, building along the way.

Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas) was László’s lover during World War II. She was married to Geoffrey Clifton (Colin Firth) at the time, who assists various governments with aerial photographs of the landscape. So begins more than 40 amazing transitions between the present and the past. In the present, while Hana takes care of the English Patient, she is falling in love with Lieutenant Kip, a Sihk in the British Indian Army who is in the area defusing bombs.

Last, László must contend with a visitor, Caravaggio (Willem DaFoe), who was tortured during the war, including having his thumbs cut off. He has already killed two of the people involved in his torture, but now he is looking for the last person responsible – whomever gave the Germans maps of Cairo, and Caravaggio believes László may be the man he is after.

The direction and editing are absolutely seamless when they come to wending their way through several plots that all lead to the same spot in the present. There is no surprise this film won Best Picture. You deserve to have a copy of The English Patient on your shelf, and you deserve to watch it while hopelessly in love.

Greg Hammond

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The English Patient

By Anthony Lane

Written and directed by Anthony Minghella, based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje, this long and searching movie, from 1996, brings together many stories. First, there is an adulterous love affair between Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) and Katherine (Kristin Scott Thomas), which unfolds in North Africa before the outbreak of the Second World War. Then, as the war winds down, the badly burned Almásy is cared for in an abandoned Italian monastery by a French-Canadian nurse (Juliette Binoche), who has an affair with a Sikh soldier (Naveen Andrews). Then the mysterious Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a scavenging thief who appears to know the secrets of Almásy’s past, shows up. All these plotlines interweave and tauten right up to the unbearable romantic tension of the climax. The triumph of the film lies not just in the force and the range of the performances—the crisp sweetness of Scott Thomas, say, versus the raw volatility of Binoche—but in Minghella’s creation of an intimate epic: vast landscapes mingle with the minute details of desire, and the combination is transfixing. (Streaming on Amazon, Hulu, and other services.)

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English Patient, The (United States, 1996)

For those who have forgotten the depth of romance and passion that the movies are capable of conveying, Anthony Minghella's The English Patient can remedy the situation. This is one of the year's most unabashed and powerful love stories, using flawless performances, intelligent dialogue, crisp camera work, and loaded glances to attain a level of eroticism and emotional connection that many similar films miss.

Is The English Patient melodramatic? Of course, but it's the sort of finely-honed melodrama that embraces viewers rather than smothering them. And the movie never resorts to cheap, manipulative tactics. This well-crafted story, brought to the screen with great care by British playwright and director Anthony Minghella ( Truly, Madly, Deeply ) and based on the prize-winning novel by Michael Ondaatje, serves up the love of Almasy (Ralph Fiennes) and Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas) in a way that is simultaneously epic and intimate.

The English Patient has an elliptical structure, beginning with the same scene that it ends with. In between, it moves several years into the future, and even further into the past. The opening sequence, which takes place during World War II, shows a British plane being shot down over the North African desert. The pilot, a Hungarian count named Laszlo Almasy, is badly burned in the ensuing crash. Years later, in 1944 Italy, we meet him again. Although his outward injuries have healed, leaving his features scarred beyond recognition, he is dying. He has also supposedly lost his memory. Hana (Juliette Binoche), the Canadian nurse who cares for him, takes him to an isolated, abandoned church to allow him to die in peace. There, injecting him with morphine and reading to him from his beloved volume of Herodotus, Hana seeks to seeks to stimulate his memories. Meanwhile, others arrive at the church -- a mysterious, crippled war veteran named Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), who has a hidden agenda, and a pair of bomb experts, the British Sgt. Hardy (Kevin Whately) and his Sikh superior, Kip (Naveen Andrews), who becomes Hana's lover.

Eventually, through dreams and waking flashbacks, Almasy's memories come flooding back, although Caravaggio asserts that he hasn't really forgotten anything -- he just wants to forget. The story then flip-flops between the present and a period during the late-'30s and early- '40s, when Almasy is part of a British map-making effort surveying the Sahara. It's then that he meets Katharine Clifton, the wife of a good-natured pilot (Colin Firth) who is helping with the project. Almasy and Katharine fall for each other, and the stage is set for a classic exploration of love and betrayal set against the dangerous background of Nazi aggression.

The one flaw in The English Patient is related to an aspect of the structure. The "modern-day" scenes with Almasy awaiting death aren't as nearly as involving as the flashback sequences. The relationship between Hana and Kip lacks the intensity of the central romance, primarily because neither of them is a fully-realized character. As a result, the scenes that take place in this time frame, some of which are quite lengthy, can be seen as unwanted interruptions.

As is necessary for a movie of this tone and style, the acting is strong. Ralph Fiennes gives us an Almasy who seems loosely based on Casablanca 's Rick -- strong and silent until the right woman releases all of his pent-up passion. Fiennes is the kind of actor who likes challenging himself with each new role (he has essayed vastly different personalities in Schindler's List , Quiz Show , and Strange Days ), and his work in The English Patient represents a continuation of that trend. Kristen Scott Thomas ( Four Weddings and a Funeral ), sporting faux blonde hair, is luminous as Katharine, effortlessly conveying to the audience the energy and zest for life that Almasy finds irresistible. Together, these two are hotter than the desert heat that simmers around them.

Juliette Binoche ( Blue ) is delightful as Hana, although her character is frustratingly ill-developed. Willem Dafoe ( Tom and Viv ), the only American in the cast, plays the kind of mysterious role he has become accustomed to (primarily because he does it so well). Solid supporting performances are turned in by Naveen Andrews as Kip, Colin Firth ( Pride and Prejudice ), as Katharine's husband, and Julian Wadham ( The Madness of King George ) as Almasy's best friend, Madox.

The English Patient is the sort of intelligent, epic love story that seems so rare these days. There's something about this film that lingers long after the end credits have rolled -- a desire to re- experience all the feelings generated by the movie, perhaps. One of the reasons for The English Patient 's power is that it strikes universal chords. This motion picture is yet another example of how the patience of movie-goers, after being sorely tried during the first eight mediocre months of 1996, is being rewarded by a surge of excellent end-of-the-year releases.

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The Definitives

Critical essays, histories, and appreciations of great films

The English Patient

Essay by brian eggert february 13, 2009.

Built layer by breathless layer, The English Patient has no need to construct its story according to chronology. From the labyrinthine novel by Michael Ondaatje, writer-director Anthony Minghella adapted a text from which he could develop his own desire for emotion-guided storytelling, versus concern for staid sequential order. Minghella’s objective allows for a narrative progression that feels natural according to basic intuitions; the timeline therein does not move forward but rather in abstract directions, yet always with an emotionally guided destination. Pieces of the past come together to inform the present, memory fragments arranged out of order seem rightly placed, and pathos channels scenes and characters within the film’s composition. While preserving the structure of Ondaatje’s celebrated book, Minghella’s arrangement of time proceeds cinematically. His method contains temporal and geographical transitions that shift in poetic, emotional, though perhaps not logical ways. But they work on film, and augment the magic of the cinema. The story tells the audience what they need to know when they need to know it. Much like jazz music or expressionist art, the film moves forward through perceptive changes in time and space that make sense only when appreciated as a whole.

And yet, Minghella’s film exhibits traits of neither the avant-garde nor spontaneous filmmaking. Indeed, his filmic atmosphere exudes traditionalism and epic romanticism, in that The English Patient might be described as a postmodern Lawrence of Arabia . Certainly, Minghella’s picturesque approach in this and his subsequent films compare to the great David Lean’s output. Minghella’s tone is delicate, absorbing, and trails along a passageway that never breaks or separates by unorthodox editing, flowing through flawless transitions. Bodies become shadows. Locations fade into somewhere else. Focus zeroes-in on a single object and pulls back to reveal the object has been transported entirely. Even as the story migrates between various countries in assorted times, the changeovers feel effortless and perhaps more organic than would a standard moment-by-moment succession.

What brings Almásy to the point of his scarred and devastated self is rendered with the best of cinematic tragedy, severe romance, and the finest performances by a cast of capable actors. Fiennes must, in essence, play two roles to accomplish the film’s potency. His unbending Almásy is kneaded by Katharine into a softened inamorato, and in his fragile burned condition he is little more than a shell clinging to his disjointed recollections. Binoche embodies Hana’s frailty as if beaten by time and loss, yet resilient enough to perform the euthanasia that grants her closure. Scott Thomas lends Katharine both ruggedness and refinement. Andrews never allows his genial intensity to fade. And Dafoe makes desperation look effortless.

Inherently every person and political entity—and everything in-between—simultaneously seeks freedom within organization, impossible though it may be; the characters in the film reach outside superficial limitations to find love and hope for freedom, however they see the tightening grasp of nationalism during wartime squeezing in. While governments and their soldiers see only accents and uniforms, the story offers a cavalcade of individuals transcending such restrictions. Whether a Sikh bomb disposal expert, Canadian reporter, French-Canadian nurse, Hungarian intellectual, or British cartographer, the lovers depicted within the narrative have no regard for nonexistent border cutting off people from people. Minghella’s film makes one of cinema’s great motions toward idealistic universality, much like Jean Renoir’s masterpiece Grand Illusion from 1937.

Few believed in the project. Minghella doubted himself, being an unproven filmmaker in charge of such a noted production. And yet, The English Patient would go on to almost universal acclaim, winning nine Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Juliette Binoche. While Zaentz amassed the particulars necessary to mobilize the film, Minghella composed its distinctive pitch and orchestrated the filmic harmonies that would best translate the source material. His directing and writing styles align with Michael Ondaatje’s approach as a poetic novelist. Ondaatje puts poetry into fiction and Minghella communicates that miraculously to film, always with profound attention to the emotional reality of his characters. With The English Patient , he endeavored to prove himself with a challenging foundation, and he did, and would continue to do so throughout his short career. Minghella died in 2008, leaving behind a handful of pictures each uniquely his: The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Cold Mountain (2003), and Breaking and Entering (2006) each display the filmmaker’s motivation to tell stories in affecting, instinctual, intellectual, yet emotional terms, while never sacrificing the broad reach of his audience.

Bibliography:

Bricknell, Timothy (edited by). Minghella on Minghella . London: Faber & Faber, 2005.

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