The English Patient movie review (1996) | Roger Ebert (2024)

Backward into memory, forward into loss and desire, “The EnglishPatient” searches for answers that will answer nothing. This poetic, evocativefilm version of the famous novel by Michael Ondaatje circles down throughlayers of mystery until all of the puzzles in the story have been solved, andonly the great wound of a doomed love remains. It is the kind of movie you cansee twice--first for the questions, the second time for the answers.

The film opens with a pre-war biplane flying above the desert,carrying two passengers in its open co*ckpits. The film will tell us who thesepassengers are, why they are in the plane, and what happens next. All of therest of the story is prologue and epilogue to the reasons for this flight. Itis told with the sweep and visual richness of a film by David Lean, with anattention to fragments of memory that evoke feelings even before we understandwhat they mean.

The “present” action takes place in Italy, during the last daysof World War II. A horribly burned man, the “English patient” of the title, ispart of a hospital convoy. When he grows too ill to be moved, a nurse namedHana (Juliette Binoche) offers to stay behind to care for him in the ruins ofan old monastery. Here she sets up a makeshift hospital, and soon she is joinedby two bomb-disposal experts and a mysterious visitor named Caravaggio (WillemDafoe).

The patient's skin is so badly burned it looks like torturedleather. His face is a mask. He can remember nothing. Hana cares for himtenderly, perhaps because he reminds her of other men she has loved and lostduring the war. (“I must be a curse. Anybody who loves me--who gets close tome--is killed.”) Caravaggio, who has an interest in the morphine Hana dispensesto her patient, is more cynical: “Ask your saint who he's killed. I don't thinkhe's forgotten anything.” The nurse is attracted to one of the bomb disposalmen, a handsome, cheerful Sikh officer named Kip (Naveen Andrews). But as shewatches him risk his life to disarm land mines, she fears her curse will doomhim; if they fall in love, he will die. Meanwhile, the patient's memories startto return in flashes of detail, spurred by the book that was found with hischarred body--an old leather-bound volume of the histories of Herodotus, withdrawings, notes and poems pasted or folded inside.

I will not disclose the crucial details of what he remembers. Iwill simply supply the outlines that become clear early on. He is not English,for one thing. He is a Hungarian count, named Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes),who in Egypt before the war was attached to the Royal Geographic Society as apilot who flew over the desert, making maps that could be used for theirresearch--which was the cover story--but also used by English troops in case ofwar.

In the frantic social life of Cairo, where everyone is awarethat war is coming, Almasy meets a newly married woman at a dance. She isKatharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas). Her husband Geoffrey (Colin Firth) isa disappointment to her. Almasy follows her home one night, and she confrontshim and says, “Why follow me? Escort me, by all means, but to follow me . . .”It is clear to both of them that they are in love. Eventually they findthemselves in the desert, part of an expedition, and when Geoffrey is calledaway (for reasons which later are revealed as good ones), they draw closertogether. In a stunning sequence, their camp is all but buried in a sandstorm,and their relief at surviving leads to a great romantic sequence.

These are the two people--the count and the British woman--whowere in the plane in the first shot. But under what conditions that flight wastaken remains a mystery until the closing scenes of the movie, as do a lot ofother things, including actions by the count that Caravaggio, the strangevisitor, may suspect. Actions that may have led to Caravaggio having his thumbscut off by the Nazis.

All of this back-story (there is much more) is pieced togethergradually by the dying man in the bed, while the nurse tends to him, sometimeskisses him, bathes his rotting skin, and tries to heal her own wounds from thelong war. There are moments of great effect: One in which she plays hopscotchby herself. A scene involving the nurse, the Sikh, and a piano. Talks at duskwith the patient, and with Caravaggio. All at last becomes clear.

The performances are of great clarity, which is a help to us infinding our way through the story. Binoche is a woman whose heart has been sopounded by war that she seems drawn to its wounded, as a distraction from herown hurts. Fiennes, in what is essentially a dual role, plays a man whoconceals as much as he can--at first because that is his nature, later becausehis injuries force him to. Thomas is one of those bright, energetic Britishwomen who seem perfectly groomed even in a sandstorm, and whose core is steeland courage.

Dafoe's character must remain murkier, along with his motives,but it is clear he shelters a great anger. And Andrews, as the bomb-disposalman, lives the closest to daily death and seems the most grateful for life.

Ondaatje's novel has become one of the most widely read andloved of recent years. Some of its readers may be disappointed that more is notmade of the Andrews character; the love between the Sikh and the nurse couldprovide a balance to the doomed loves elsewhere. But the novel is solabyrinthine that it's a miracle it was filmed at all, and the writer-director,Anthony Minghella, has done a creative job of finding visual ways to show howthe rich language slowly unveils layers of the past.

Producers are not always creative contributors to films, but theproducer of “The English Patient,” Saul Zaentz, is in a class by himself.Working independently, he buys important literary properties (“One Flew Overthe Cuckoo's Nest,” “Amadeus,” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “At Play inthe Fields of the Lord”) and savors their difficulties. Here he has createdwith Minghella a film that does what a great novel can do: Hold your attentionthe first time through with its story, and then force you to think back througheverything you thought you'd learned, after it is revealed what the story is*really* about.