A thought-provoking story... rich in performances.

Rating: 9/10 (6 September 2005)

The director Anthony Minghella must have had some immense passion for the original story, otherwise I believe he could not let this film grow such slowly emphasizing on every relevant detail. To wrap up the premise, it is definitely a love story, but it is much much more. The film features two stories of love... one is Count Almasy's passionate affair with his colleague's wife Katharine, shown in flashback; and the other, set in the story's present, is between Kip the Sikh bomb disposal expert and Hana the French-Canadian nurse who took care of Almasy after a deadly injury in WWII. While the central story revolves around Almasy's painful memories, it also contrasts his and Hana's experiences with love with a haunting style.
The character of Almasy gives a golden chance to any actor. His plane got shot down in the Sahara and he was taken to Italy severely burnt, injured, and crippled, with an acute memory loss. He was put to an abandoned house with Hana to take care of him. As Hana read some part from the book he possessed, his memories kept coming back to him... memories of a passionate yet futile relationship. And yet he was surely going to die, his only motivation to live was to get the memory of the that love's fate back. Ralph Fiennes gives perhaps his career-best performance as Almasy. He portrays Almasy as a glum yet romantic man who himself never thought his capability to love someone could be so deep. His take on the burnt-faced, crippled Almasy is equally fascinating. He certainly deserved his Academy nomination.
Hana is an extremely good natured woman, yet her own experiences with love had been also painful until she meets the Army bomb expert Kip Singh (played excellently by Naveen Andrews). She gets fascinated by his original romanticism and subsequently worries if he will also face the same fate as her previous lovers. Her relationship to Almasy is nothing extraordinary as such, but there remained a bond between them, formed by their choices and nature of love. Juliette Binoché won Oscar for this role and that sums up how she acted. She portrays Hana as one who's optimistic in the outside but bears a strange frustration and pain about love deep inside. Two contrasting scenes: one, when she plays at the yard in the evening and two, when she rides the bicycle up to the bridge to see if Kip's alright.
All the other actors were also great. Willem Dafoe gives a very realistic performance as the Canadian war victim with a hidden agenda. Kristin Scott Thomas perhaps, in my opinion, was not the best choice for the role of Katharine but what she did was magical. Colin Firth was also nice to watch as her husband.
As a director Minghella is definitely breathtaking. Instead of discussing his style, I would only mention some scenes from the movie which remained unforgettable. One, the sandstorm; two, the scene where Almasy first courts Katharine; three, the first verbal exchange between Almasy and Caravaggio; four, where Kip shows Hana the paintings at the church... I see I can go on and on. Minghella also brings out a magnificent screenplay with some memorable quotes.
The English Patient is a movie rich with every ingredient a serious film should have -- cinematography, original music, make-up, good script and of course, acting. Although it may seem a bit slow it is not boring, rather this slowness is one of its gifts.