The English Patient

Anthony Minghella, USA 1996, 166 minutes

Anthony Minghella's adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize winning novel is a magnificent epic, embracing the emotions of the novel in style. The film is set in two different time zones that bookend the second world war. Hana, a Canadian nurse (Juliette Binoche) decides to look after her severely burned "English" patient (Ralph Fiennes) in a bombed-out villa in Italy at the end of the second world war. She is joined by a small group of diverse characters all trying to piece their lives back together amidst post war desolation. It emerges that Hana's patient is Laszlo de Almasy, a Hungarian count and pre-war cartographer in the Sahara. He gradually relates to Hana his experiences in the North African desert, and the passionate but catastrophic love affair he had with Katharine Clifton (Kristen Scott Thomas), the wife of a British geographer.

This multi-Oscar winning and aesthetically sumptuous film owes rather more to Lawrence of Arabia than it does to Ondaajte's novel. Gone is the book's misogenous marriage between Hana and Kip, the focus of the film landing instead upon the aristocratic-looking Fiennes and Scott Thomas. That said, the leads give amazing performances well worthy of their Oscar nominations. The film is held together superbly by Binoche despite its leaps between the two time zones.

The liberating emptiness of the desert is captured seductively with brilliant cinematography, the comparisons between nations and no-man's land are poignantly brought to the foreground as the innocent are divided by a war which is not their own. Fans of Minghella will recognise the theme of love beyond death from his earlier work Truly, Madly, Deeply. Equally, his attention to detail is present in both films, although it is clear that in The English Patient, the detail of the characters' environment is just as central as the characters themselves.

This is a film with memorable star quality, so it's no wonder it comes laden with Oscars.

Review by Zoe Grainge
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98