A French-Canadian nurse in WW2 named Hana (Juliette Binoche) is tasked with caring for a dying patient suffering from severe burns after a plane crash (Ralph Fiennes). As they live together in an abandoned Italian monastery, the mysterious patient begins to reveal the story of his injuries, and details his tumultuous romance with a married woman named Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas) while fending off a vengeful spy (Willem Dafoe).
Doug says...
I came to this without very high expectations, having tried unsuccessfully to plough through the novel a few years ago. The experience of watching it was then made more difficult by the lack of subtitles (why on earth a film made in 1996 doesn’t have subtitles on the DVD is beyond me). So I’d be forgiven for not getting much from this film.
Except that it is actually a beautiful, powerful, aching work that doesn’t need every line to be heard. That’s right, reader - I loved it.
The performances are fine, Ralph Fiennes does well as the slightly odd, dashing leading man while Kristin Scott Thomas takes on her usual role as Upper Crust British Lady with aplomb. There’s also strong support from Juliette Binoche (who nabbed best supporting actress for this) and Willem Dafoe as a suspicious hanger-on. I particularly liked Naveen Andrews as Kip who managed to bring real tension to his bomb-defusing scenes.
But the real success of this film belongs to the direction and cinematography (hence why Anthony Minghella took both Best Director and Best Film). It is ravishing. It recalls previous winner Gandhi and 2019 nominee Roma in how utterly beautiful it is. Minghella takes the ordinary moments and makes them arresting, whether it’s planes flying against the endless dunes of the desert, cars buried in sandstorms, or the flashing lights on a rickety train throwing a nurse’s silhouette into sharp relief. There isn’t a trick missed in seizing the moment.
It’s noticeable in the way Minghella uses these moments to echo the love-story at the heart of it. As the two lovers grow closer while they’re trapped in the desert, the light from pink emergency flares shimmers across their hopeful faces. In the crucial plane crash, Katherine sits erect in the wreckage, despite the angle of the plane, and then - carried by the Count over the deserts - her scarf flies out behind, caught by the wind. In the present day, Kip uses aerial wires to lift Hana into the height of the church so she can see the frescoes. As she swirls around the paintings, the flare she holds to see flickers and smokes, so we see the joyous Hana in the midsts of paintings, light and smoke. It’s utter theatricality made bespoke for cinema.
It’s a film of beauty, and it’s just wonderful to watch how Minghella uses the art of cinema to accentuate his points. The flickering painted caves contrast with the steady blue tones of the hotel where they finally sleep together. There are so many images and moments to talk about - but ultimately, it’s easiest just to say this is a work of art.
Highlight
I think my ultimate favourite imagery was of the planes flying high. There was such a sense of freedom, always tempered by the clear danger of the desert.
Lowlight
The final half hour does start to drag, but then again that’s when there’s most dialogue so I felt behind. A second watch on a version with subtitles might change my mind…
Mark
9/10
Paul says...
For me, The English Patient is an example of melodrama at its most turgid and self-righteous. Yes, reader, unlike Doug, I didn’t like it!
I agree that the film is stunning to look at. The opening shots of the desert in Northern Africa immediately evoked fond memories of Lawrence of Arabia and, indeed, the desert has the same element of menace and danger that David Lean created in the 1962 epic. The cinematography during the scenes in Italy also create feelings of serenity and lethargy that contrast well with the comparative chaos of the flashback scenes. There’s a real sense that the drama and conflict was long ago and far away, and that Almasy, the patient of the title, has finally reached the peaceful end of his twisty-turny road.
But I struggled with the story. For starters, Almasy and Katherine’s fling is signposted so obviously that they might as well have neon signs above their heads screaming “We’re gonna shag soon!” The first time we meet Katherine, she tells a story from Herodotus about a Queen who is seen naked by a common man. The man then has to kill the King and marry the Queen to save her honour. She narrates this whilst staring wistfully at her husband and her future lover. Ooh, I wonder what could possibly happen?! Tales from ancient history, myth and folklore crop up at other times in the film, and they’re designed to augment the action but their parallels with the film’s events are so blindingly stark that it’s almost laughable.
The storyline is not just predictable, it’s downright simple. Far too simple for a film that steers dangerously close to surpassing 2.5 hours. The film sets up a degree of mystery around the patient suffering from memory loss, gradually remembering the events that led him to this point, but the crux of it all turns out to be his affair with Katherine. There are side-plots but, for me, they didn’t benefit the main action. For example, Hana’s relationship with Kip (played by the dishy Naveen Andrews who readers may recognise as Syed from Lost) is sweet but inconsequential. And I did not get the significance of Willem Dafoe’s character. Caravaggio enters the action convinced that Almasy is responsible for his capture and torture by Nazis, but it seemed obvious to me that this is not the case. And when Almasy does describe the truth of what happened, Caravaggio’s accusations aren’t revisited. Nor is his character really completed. I still don’t quite get what his role was meant to be in the action.
Despite these, I concede to the fact that The English Patient has some lovely acting. Fiennes is as intense and attractive in a “I really fancy him but I shouldn’t” way as he was in Schindler’s List; Juliette Binoche is very engaging (she nabbed Best Supporting Actress for this); and the ever-charismatic Kristin Scott Thomas really knows how to dominate a scene.
But this wasn’t enough to counteract what was, for me, an overlong and un-engaging tale with the sort of huge landscapes and tragic deaths that '90s audiences evidently lived for. Usually I’m a sucker for films such as these but, and I never thought I’d say this, Braveheart did it better.
Highlight
The scene in which Kip (Naveen Andrews) is desperately trying to defuse a bomb whilst a tank full of drunk, revelling soldiers runs the risk of setting the bomb off is pretty terrifying. My heart skipped a few beats at that point.
Lowlight
Willem Dafoe’s entire storyline needed more relevance to the central plot. Or written out entirely.
Mark
3/10
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