Not as perfect as I hoped it would be, but certainly enjoyable

Rating: 7/10 (18 July 2005)

I don't really know why, but it has taken almost 10 years before I finally watched this movie. I guess this happened because I just didn't have the time for it, although I must admit that I didn't really want to make the time for it either. I'm a fan of war movies and I knew very well that this was one too, but the fact that it isn't one in the most strict sense of the word somewhat scared me off. But only a couple of days ago I saw a similar movie, "The End of the Affair", which was also situated in that time period, which didn't exactly show the war either and which also featured Ralph Fiennes. I really liked that movie a lot and for me that was enough reason to finally give this film a try.
"The English Patient" starts at the end of WWII when an unknown and dying man, who doesn't remember anything of what has happened to him or who he is, is treated in a military hospital for severe burning wounds. When his situation is somewhat stable, he and a lot of other patients are being moved by truck to another hospital. But when a car in the column of trucks drives on a mine, somewhere in the middle of the Italian countryside, the whole expeditions stops until the road is cleared from mines. The Canadian nurse who takes care of the unknown man, finds an empty and old monastery and decides that she will stay there with him until the man dies. She soon wins his confidence and that's how it almost immediately gets clear that the man knows a lot more about his past than what he wanted to admit to his interrogators. Through flash backs we get to know that he is an Hungarian who was employed by the Royal Geographical Society as a map maker in the 1930's. He had to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert with several other prominent explorers. Gradually the riddles of the past are unraveled and his role in the war is getting more obvious...
Somehow I was a bit disappointed by this movie. It was far from bad, but it wasn't exactly what I hoped it would be. Somewhere I missed something in it, although I find it very hard to say what that exactly was. I guess the best way to describe this feeling is by saying that, because of the continuous switching between present and flash back, I wasn't completely sucked into the story this time. It broke all continuity in the story and that did bother me a bit too often. But don't get me wrong, this is still a movie that is far above average and worth watching for several reasons. One of those reasons is the acting. Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas,... They are all very fine actors who I liked in almost every movie that I watched them play in and this movie wasn't an exception to that rule. Perhaps they aren't very well known to the average viewer who only watches commercial Hollywood toppers, but people who also like more 'alternative' movies, will certainly know their names. But next to the fine acting, this movie also offers some great scenes and images. I like the way they shot the Sahara with its sand storms and sand dunes, but I also enjoyed the images of the Italian countryside. I truly believe that those images added a lot to the value of this movie and its story, which was also more than OK of course.
All in all this is a movie that may not be as perfect as I hoped it would be, but that still offered me a good time while watching it. I wouldn't recommend it to the people who only like war movies when there are some big fight scenes to be seen in it, because they will be very disappointed, but when you like a more alternative war movie so now and then, than this might be a good movie to watch. I give it a rating in between a 7/10 and a 7/5.10.