The definitive romantic masterpiece of our time.

Rating: 10/10 (25 December 2001)

The structure is almost symphonically immaculate...the music transcendentally lovely...the cinematography almost beyond words. "The English Patient" makes gloriously full use of late twentieth century cinematic technology to produce a commentary upon amorous passion of a percipience that verges on the unearthly. The performances are uniformally magnificent, with Juliette Binoche especially affecting.
Like Kate Winslet, Binoche is a romantic tragedienne of genius. But Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas are hardly less magnificent. The film gives proof of the potential aesthetic and emotional power at the disposal of contemporary film-makers, and it makes full use of it. The final quarter of an hour puts this film in the category of the greatest of all time...such is the sublimity of direction, editing, acting, music, structure...But is it the greatest film ever? Reservations have to be expressed; moral ones for instance; the lead characters are hardly admirable, even if they are eminently pitiable. And then there is the sexual content, which is strong in parts. But "The English Patient" can be seen as a profoundly moral commentary on the doomed nature of love deceptive and adulterous. It is almost certainly the greatest film of the last twenty years......