Endless Map of the Human Heart

Rating: 2/10 (22 October 2000)

If you are not into necrophilia that strange erotic passion for corpses, that has inspired better films, such as "Psycho"- you may need the patience of a phlegmatic Englishman to enjoy "The English Patient", the never-ending motion picture by Anthony Minghella, writer-director who made an excellent debut with the wonderful and supernatural romantic comedy "Truly Madly Deeply", which not too many people saw, because somebody had the not so bright idea of calling it "the intelligent version of 'Ghost'." According to Aristotle's definition of drama, drama is action, and action is change: if someone changes in this movie, it is the jinxed Canadian nurse Hana (French actress Juliette Binoche), and this is the story of her exorcism. If this coming and going from scenes in the present to the recent past, has any sense between scenes taking place during the last days of Second World War, when Hana takes care of a burnt count (British actor Ralph Fiennes), and scenes of his past, in which we learn that he is a Hungarian archaeologist who discovered a cave with little drawings, that he wrote a book without adjectives, that he collaborated with Rommel and that he had an affair with a married English woman--, if this jumble has an end, it is to free Hana from her evil spell, haunted by death and bad luck. Hana's lover dies in the first reel, and her best friend, another nurse, is disposed of after a few minutes of projection, when she dies on a mined road in Italy. Hana decides to stay in an abandoned church with the count and a good amount of morphine, to wait until the count dies. In the meantime, he remembers, remembers, remembers and remembers, in one of the most repetitive and boring scheme of cinematic flashbacks in recent years, in a story overloaded with subplots, maps, recognition flights, spying, colonialism, drug addiction, panoramic views of Africa, and clothes, cars and planes from the 1940's, probably placed there for us to say "Wow, great production design!" or "Great production values!" This paraphernalia makes little else but divert the attention from Hana, the only character who goes through a true process of change. But the development is diffuse and distributed among too many flashbacks, and the film loses cohesion and focus. If the flashbacks are highlighted by the presence of British actress Kristin Scott Thomas as the attractive and interesting Katherine, the count's lover, unfortunately she dies too soon, when she spends too many days in the desert, in the cave with little drawings that her lover found. When the count finds her body, he lays by its side, cries and then, taking it in his arms, goes to the exterior and makes such a strange face, that one does not know if it should be taken as a great romantic scene, if it is because of the sun on his eyes or due to the decaying body's odor. All of this is supposed to be based on true facts, according to Sri Lanka writer Michael Ondaatje. I tell you, you really need English patience! While Hana, faithful to her death passion, falls in love with Kip (Anglo-Indian actor Naveen Andrews), a sikh expert in detecting mines, risking his life from day to day, all kinds of characters appear and disappear from the frame, as the ones played by American Willem Dafoe, German Jürgen Prochnow and Italian Nino Castelnuovo, in case you did not know this is an international super-production (that was advertised with an "independent" tag Independent from what?) Poor Ralph Fiennes, as the toasted count, spends much of his screen time under a latex mask, with convenient white veins that shine in night scenes. Although the movie has good intentions and fine scenes especially those related to the romance of the count and Katherine-, and in spite of the many Oscars it won (it was not a very good year in Hollywood), for your own good, you better make a trip to the nearest cemetery.