The gold standard

Rating: 10/10 (3 March 2001)

It's a rather late date to be commenting on The English Patient, but here goes . . . This film inspires in me the kind of blind admiration I usually loathe. I find I can respectfully disagree with someone about any film but this. Some unreasonable part of me rejects as an idiot anyone who doesn't like this movie (painful when it involves family members, but there you are); obviously I'm not alone in this, as the Seinfeld episode makes clear: it is the kind of thing you break up with someone over (luckily my husband loved it, too). OK, this is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. It is the sheer artistic cohesiveness and depth of it. Every element is amazing: the screenplay (of a nearly impossible-to-follow novel), the directing, the acting, the cinematography, the score . . . nothing is as it seems, which is just the point. I never watch it without seeing some new detail which both echoes and elaborates on one of the many themes and images which are so intricately wound throughout. It is that rarest of film achievement: a work of art. I judge every subsequent film by how it compares to the overall achievement of The English Patient; no winners so far. The critic for The New Yorker at the time of the film's release(not sure if it was David Denby or Anthony Lane) summed up my feeling exactly: a masterpiece.