A masterpiece of intimate moment and spectacular largesse...

Rating: 9/10 (28 May 2001)

'The English Patient' is a love story set in Europe as World War II ends... It is a wartime romance mystery epic, like 'Hiroshima, Mon Amour,' 'The Sweet Hereafter,' and 'After Life.' Anthony Minghella weaves extravagant beauty around a central character whose condition is grotesque, and puts emotional barriers between the characters and the audience...
This adult love story is an intimate portrait in the tradition of 'Casablanca' and 'Dr. Zhivago.' The film sweeps gracefully attaining a level of eroticism and emotional connection that many similar films had missed... Told in flashback, it is a masterpiece of intimate moment and spectacular largesse...
Ralph Fiennes plays the English patient, Count Laszlo de Almasy, a Hungarian cartographer of few words, who works for the British government, and is stationed in the North African desert...
Count Laszlo is the unidentified survivor of a plane crash turned over to the Allies, taken into custody by a medical convoy in Italy, and essentially left to die in peace, in an isolated monastery in Tuscany, under the care of an inspiring pretty nurse who injects him with morphine, and reads to him a book, considered his great treasure, and his one surviving possession...
Hana seeks to stimulate his touching memories, wrapped up in his head, released in lost pieces from his disturbed mind...
Fiennes gives a haunted, pained performance, playing the young man whose veneer of charm cannot plainly cover his heart's capacity for passion... He makes us sympathize with the character in showing self-doubt and weakness... As a badly burned man, he has only cherished memories... His joy and heartbreak are completely clear and visible in his eyes... He remembers falling under the spell of an attractive English married woman... He remembers the way this turns him from a harsh abrupt wanderer into a man willing to betray everything for love... His tragic love affair forms the heart of the motion picture...
Kristin Scott Thomas matches Fiennes' work with a radiant sensuality... She is captivating as the married European woman, conveying the audience with the energy and enthusiasm for life that the Count finds irresistible... Their different world, despairing and hopeful, menacing and resilient, is simply beautiful... With intense passion and intelligence, this attractive blonde burns the screen as the different wife...
Juliette Binoche seems to shine as the French-Canadian nurse full of life and energy... This vibrant young woman has a heart of gold, kissing wounded soldiers, but she thinks that she is a curse as anybody she ever loved tends to die on her...
Colin Firth is good as Katherine's husband... He is a British spy flying into the tough desert in a yellow biplane to take aerial maps of the whole North African continent... He quickly becomes friend of the Count, yet when he realizes that his wife has committed adultery, his face reflected a peaceful fury...
William Dafoe plays a double-agent spy who covers his anger with a strange charm... He is a crippled war veteran who has a hidden agenda... This cunning Canadian man seems to know of some dark secret in Almasy's past... He believes the 'English patient' is partially responsible for the mutilation of his hands, and is busy seeking revenge on everyone even remotely involved...
Naveen Andrews is Hana's ardent lover He is a handsome Sikh, and an explosives expert with a dangerous job There's a scene that is stuck in my head because it literally had me on the edge of my seat for what seemed an eternity In this particular scene, the military sapper has to cut the wires on a bomb that has been hidden on a bridge It's on a timer and he only has a few minutes left The scene cuts back and forth between his tense face, the wires and his dirty fingers as they try madly to figure out how to untangle and cut the wires without detonating the bomb
All the conventional elements of the genre are at peaks of excellence in "The English Patient." John Seale's cinematography is breathtaking, and Gabriel Yared's majestic music is dreamy, and romantic This is a rich motion picture with ambition and style, a fever dream, lyrical and complex We are almost able to feel the heat of the desert, the pain of the burnings, the intimate flush of humanity that becomes the most haunting element of this epic love story...