THE ENGLISH PATIENT
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(Miramax) Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, William Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth. Screenplay: Anthony Minghella. Producer: Saul Zaentz. Director: Anthony Minghella. MPAA Rating: R (nudity, sexual situations, profanity, violence) Running Time: 160 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel _The English Patient_ looked to be a remarkably difficult work to translate to the screen. A tale of intertwined lives which weaves its way through several time periods with a lyrical, dream-like prose style, it is the kind of narrative which could turn into a catastrophic failure as much in the hands of a too-reverential film-maker as a completely oblivious one. So Anthony Minghella decided to build his own narrative around what he saw as the crux of _The English Patient_, and in so doing he has created a magnificent love story which gives "old-fashioned" a good name. Though miles removed from Ondaatje's psychological drama, Minghella's THE ENGLISH PATIENT stands on its own as a powerful sweeping romance..
THE ENGLISH PATIENT opens near the end of World War II, with a Canadian nurse named Hana (Juliette Binoche) who has grown weary of losing friends and lovers. When her medical unit is moving through Italy, Hana decides to stay behind in an abandoned monastery with one patient, a badly burned man who can't remember his name and is known only as "the English patient (Ralph Fiennes). His identity is of interest, however, to David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a maimed former Allied agent who believes the English patient was the Axis spy who gave him up. Meanwhile, in flashback we see the patient's memories of himself as the Hungarian count Laszlo de Almasy, a cartographer exploring the North African desert who meets Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), the wife of one of his colleagues. The two begin an affair which brings Almasy to life, but is destined to leave him in that makeshift Italian hospital bed.
Anthony Minghella's resume has thus far consisted of supernatural romance (TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY) and blue collar romance (MR. WONDERFUL), but THE ENGLISH PATIENT is a romance with the kind of sweep you associate with films made, and not merely set, in the 1940s. Ralph Fiennes turns in a wonderfully economical performance as Almasy, a reserved man who begins with the minimalist philosophy that "a thing is a thing" but becomes utterly intoxicated by the first real passion in his life. Fiennes is exceptional behind layers of prosthetics (created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop), and makes Almasy's later witty resignation entirely consistent with the man he becomes in the scenes set years earlier. Kristin Scott Thomas matches his work with a radiant sensuality, turning the smart, perceptive Katherine a deserving object of any man's fixation. Thomas and Fiennes share the kind of beautiful but intense chemistry movies seem reluctant to show us in 1996, perhaps afraid that a cynical modern audience will not be able to take such deeply felt emotions seriously. It is not every writer who would risk dialogue like "Every night I cut out my heart, but in the morning it was full again;" it is not every director who would stage the defining moment in a relationship -- a scene in which Almasy and Katherine share a dance to, appropriately enough, "Where or When" -- with virtually no dialogue, the attraction conveyed through a soul-piercing gaze by Fiennes.
Those familiar with the novel may have noticed the conspicuous absence of Kip Singh, a Sikh bomb defuser who shares an odd affair with Hana. Both the character (portrayed by Naveen Andrews) and the relationship appear in THE ENGLISH PATIENT, but their role is greatly reduced in Minghella's account, as is that of Caravaggio. Minghella tries to link the two love stories in his film, but that may be the one place he is less than successful -- he has focused his story so decidedly on Almasy and Katherine that the peripheral characters are sometimes more distracting than complementary. It is to Minghella's credit, however, that he has clarified a number of points in his streamlined narrative, creating a uniquely powerful story, less intricate and internalized than Ondaatje's novel but just as involving.
The quality which may make THE ENGLISH PATIENT so singularly effective is its refusal to fit into neatly-defined categories of romantic film-making. It is emotional, yet it is suspenseful and full of action; it is intensely personal, yet played against a historical and geographical backdrop filmed with bronzed grandeur by John Seale; it has moments of utter seriousness, then subverts a tender moment with an throwaway bit of comedy where Katherine bangs her head on a girder. As risky as it might be to throw around comparisons with classics, THE ENGLISH PATIENT is the kind of combination of humor, detailed characterization, passion and politics which recalls CASABLANCA. Almasy and Katherine may share an on-screen consummation which cinema could not attempt 50 years ago, but in most other ways the central love story of THE ENGLISH PATIENT warrants consideration among the great tragic pairings. Minghella's risky adaptation has paid off gloriously, proving they _can_ make 'em like they used to.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 patient virtues: 9.
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