This is my favorite movie.
I was 17 years old in 1996 when I first saw The English Patient in a theater with a date and a friend she brought. I didn’t understand a lot of it (much like how I didn’t get why my date had brought a chaperone). But what struck me and stayed with me was the movie’s wondrous mixture of adventure and romance that seemed deceptively achievable.
At the time, I favored movies loosely in the adventure genre, and they were all exciting but completely implausible (Indiana Jones movies, The Goonies, Seven, Forest Gump, Jurassic Park, etc…). The English Patient, which features explorers and cartographers traversing the deserts of North Africa in bi-planes and utility vehicles, was the first movie of this genre where I could see myself realistically engaged in similar adventures. There are no holy grails or pirate treasure to find. The explorers in The English Patient do the gritty work of drawing maps and driving through endless deserts.
The movie also depicts love as an adventure, as equally dangerous as desert exploration. The main lovers are Kristin Scott Thomas as Katharine, a well-read, elegant, British woman, a product of generational wealth and privilege, and Ralph Fiennes as a Hungarian count named László Almásy. Yes, I’m aware this is the setup for a bullshit romance novel with Fabio on the cover. But KST and Fiennes play their roles with subtlety and earn our sympathies and admiration, even though they are despicable characters engaged in an illicit affair (Katharine is newly married). Lesser actors would have created obnoxious, flimsy, unlovable, unbelievable, and unwatchable characters. And again, part of the magic of this movie is that these characters love each other in such a realistic and human way that it makes you believe you could be in love with someone the way Almásy was in love with Katharine.
It doesn’t hurt that KST is profoundly beautiful. She’s young but not youthful. I will not compare her to a fine wine like a MILF-smitten perv, but her beauty has substance and complexity. (Fuck, those are wine descriptors.)
I can’t think of a movie that captures so many beautiful people at the peak of their beauty. I’ve already mentioned Ralph Fiennes, who was a sex symbol a long time ago, before appearing as a doughy cardinal in Conclave. The movie also stars Colin Firth as Katharine’s cuckolded husband, just a year after the release of the version of Pride and Prejudice featuring his one-man wet t-shirt contest; Juliet Binoche as a combat nurse from whom wounded soldiers understandably beg kisses; Naveen Andrews as a dashing Sikh sapper (bomb disposal specialist) before he was an Iraqi torturer on Lost; and Willem Defoe as a spy, but I’m not including him in this list of beautiful people. He just doesn’t make the cut. (That’s an awful pun, if you know the movie. And no, the pun is unrelated to his…)
I know beauty alone is insufficient for a compelling love story, but when you combine five (or six, if you count Willem Defoe, which I don’t) stunning actors in the golden hour of their beauty, it’s like having an accelerant just sitting around. Perhaps it’s this beauty that allows us to hold Katharine and Almásy blameless for their cruel and destructive affair, making it feel more like a chemical reaction that was teleologically inevitable.
The movie alternates between two chunks of time. The “present” takes place in Italy, during the waning days of World War II. Hana, the combat nurse played by Binoche, is taking care of the English patient, a horribly burned man who claims not to remember his name. He’s known as the English patient due to his accent, and like a fucking badass, his only belonging is a leather-bound copy of Herodotus’s Histories, with photos, notes, and drawings tucked inside.
The other time period is the years shortly before the war, where we see Katharine and Almásy pulled into a love affair despite taking reasonable precautions. As Hana tends to his burned body in the present, relying heavily on morphine, the English patient tells her about his time in the desert with Katharine, taking us into his past and the mystery of his identity. Or as Roger Ebert put it in his beautiful review:
Backward into memory, forward into loss and desire, “The English Patient” searches for answers that will answer nothing. This poetic, evocative film version of the famous novel by Michael Ondaatje circles down through layers of mystery until all of the puzzles in the story have been solved, and only the great wound of a doomed love remains. It is the kind of movie you can see twice–first for the questions, the second time for the answers.
Jesus, Ebert, you were the fucking poet laureate of movies.
When I rewatched the movie last week, I was reminded of the reasons behind several past and ongoing decisions. Why I wanted to join the Peace Corps. Why I had initially requested an Arabic-speaking country, preferably in North Africa. Why, as a volunteer, I valiantly attempted to carry a leather-bound diary that remained embarrassingly empty. Why I’ve grown my hair, and even why I have an appreciation for older, elegant women.
The English Patient
Written by Michael Ondaatje and Anthony Minghella; Directed by Anthony Minghella
1996
162 minutes
English, German, Italian, Arabic
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Hoopla! It’s free if you have a library card, and everyone should have one.
You’ll like this if you like: Parts of Legends of the Fall and The Mummy.