The English Patient

Rating

Director

Anthony Minghella

Screenplay

Anthony Minghella (Novel by Michael Ondaatje)

Length

160 min.

Starring

Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth, Julian Wadham, Jrgen Prochnow

MPAA Rating

R (For sexuality, some violence and language)

Review

Romantic epics are staples of film history. With Doctor Zhivago and Out of Africa as prime examples, The English Patient achieves what Out of Africa could not.

In a humble Italian villa, a young nurse, Hana (Juliette Binoche) cares for a dying burn victim. He recounts to her the story of his ill-fated love affair which helps bring closure to a number of stories in the villa.

We suspect and are rightly proved that the victim is the Hungarian cartographer Count Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes). Severely burned in a plane crash over the Sahara Desert, Almasy recounts his first meeting and epic love affair with an English woman Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas). As expected, the story is told in flashback; however, as that story unfolds, parallel love affair unfolds between Hana and Kip (Naveen Andrews), an Arab sapper. Also featuring in the film is the crippled thief Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe) who has more connections to the progressing story than is at first believed.

The English Patient is filled with good to outstanding performances. Fiennes has an undeniable charisma as a romantic lead. Though he may not have the rugged good looks of a Robert Redford, he nevertheless carries himself nobly and generously. We are easily pulled into his tormented love affair as he explores the Sahara and tries to rescue his beloved Katharine. Scott Thomas, though nominated for a lead actress Oscar, is as much a supporting actress as Binoche. Both convey a different aspect of feminine romantic interest. Scott Thomas is strong and confident while Binoche is soft and compassionate.

Director Anthony Minghella, who also adapted Michael Ondaatje’s novel, carefully balances the intense and beautiful visuals of the film with the gentle and moving love story. Whereas the inferior Out of Africa was undeniably linear, English Patient is abjectly nonlinear. The story bounces around in time, even when talking in flashbacks, scenes are presented out of order. This technique has the potential to be confusing, but herein it works well. While Redford wasn’t terribly good in Africa, all of the principle romantic interests in Patient are terrific.

Stirring the emotional core of love through filmmaking is a dangerous task. Thousands of features, dramatic and comedic, have attempted to convey a compelling and believable romance between its leads. Matter of fact, there are seldom films, even action, adventure and horror, that don’t mix in a romantic interest for the lead. These kinds of films often relegate that story to the background while films like The English Patient propel it to the foreground. It has been a long time since a love story was this intriguing and devastating.

Though the rival to the quality of Casablanca has yet to be made, The English Patient makes a noteworthy effort.

Review Written

January 9, 2007