A great love story?

Rating: 2/10 (13 February 2003)

Sorry. Katharine and Almásy are two very self-absorbed people, their encounters are anything but romantic, and there is no compelling reason for them to seek each other out: Almásy is a surly jerk, and Clifton worships the ground Katharine walks on. She initially breaks with Almásy not because she loves her husband (notice how quickly she recovers after realizing she is a widow), but fears what will happen to her social standing.
As if being asked to root for these twits wasn't bad enough:
1) How did Almásy know that Katharine told Clifton she wanted to return to England?
2) Trying to get Madox to turn around, Almásy shoots the flare behind him. Despite Almásy's assurances to Katharine, it's a mystery how Madox manages to find them.
3) Caravaggio asks Almásy if he killed the Cliftons. But since he was told of the circumstances of Madox's death, he must have been briefed on them, too.
4) Assuming they found Clifton's plane, how did British Intelligence locate his body after Almásy buried it?
5) How could the Nomads find the thimble, but not Katharine?
6) Katharine and Almásy had hooked up by December 1938. Germany invaded Egypt in February 1941, but was driven out by November 1943. Almásy gives the Nazis the maps so he can get back to Katharine, gets shot down, then pops up in Italy in 1945?! Forget that we're supposed to buy that nobody suspected they were doing the nasty for over two years! Either Katharine was in the cave for two years (not likely), Almásy was cared for by the Nomads for two more years (even less likely), or Minghella screwed up the time line big time (a lot more likely.)
But what really drove me nuts was:
7) The British couldn't possibly have mistaken "Almásy" as German because Hungarian and German do not have a common ancestor. Ironically, English is a Germanic language.
I read that when Saul Zaentz bought the rights, he "assured" Michael Ondaatje: "Don't worry, we'll f***-up your book." One doesn't have to read it to tell that he succeeded.