PERFECT.Period

Rating: 10/10 (23 June 2008)

I felt I must add a comment because it is simply beyond my comprehension why some people did not understand or like this film. This is one of the greatest stories about love and passion I have ever seen.One of my friends said that the beahvior of those two people was despicable. But,who are we to judge or despise them? Are any explanations given in Wuthering Heights for the case of mad passion Heatcliff and Catherine had for each other?(who were,BTW,played in one of the many on-screen adaptations of this exceptional novel,by the same outstanding actors Binoche & Fiennes).My friend also saw the count as a snobbish, cold, unlikable bastard. Those characters are not unlikable-the Count has never asked for anyone's sympathy or understanding.He had died long ago,along with his love, and is nothing but a human wreck,a shell containing broken bits & pieces of memories of a shattered life.And, the story is narrated by him, in many flash-backs & digressions, to match the structure of his memories.Everybody is concentrating only on the two parallel love stories inside the plot. But, they are just the means to deliver many themes,such as the question of nationality Vs. identity, love and its ability to overcome borders-the film is NOT about map-making! Count Almasy and Catherine are very complicated characters, and we are allowed to take but a glimpse inside of their intricate souls. I cannot help but feel attracted to them. His rather clear-minded,rational points of view of history, the world, life in general, are deeply shaken by the sudden passion for this intelligent, sensuous, married woman.You can see the change in him happening in front of your eyes-remember if you were surprised when he wanted to know the name of the base of a woman's neck in the middle of the fuss before having been forced to flight Cairo. Yes,they both may have done some despicable things,like lying, cheating etc. from an objective point of view. He has even helped the Germans by giving them the maps and thus broken his friend's heart.But, in his mind, where such abstractions like nationality & citizenship were not enough to define a person, a promise given to Catherine, that he would return to fetch her, has become his only purpose. Their love was so strong that has transcended time, place, every single of the many imposed boundaries of human civilization-like the sanctity of marriage, friendship, and transcended even death itself. And, then comes the greatest irony in this film:Almasy, a Hungarin count, a devoted servant of his majesty the Queen,an international bastard,captured in the desert by a British soldier, accused to be a German,helps the Germans by giving them the British maps, becomes, at the end, The English Patient-defined entirely by a nationality not his own. I could not help but feel sympathetic with this extraordinary character portrayed beautifully by Ralph Fiennes, even though I knew that the story was told completely from his point of view, and that he has let me see only a small portion of his rich inner world. I could go on for hours praising this film.All I wanted to say is that from its opening scene, with the lovely image of a brush painting something ,we cannot make out what at first, with that haunting melody of a beautiful androgynous voice lamenting a Hungarian lullaby in the background, to the breathtaking scenery, exceptional acting, outstanding directing-to the very end, is, to put it simply- PERFECT. Period.