THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996)

I hope you’re reading our blog, because I can’t take my eyes off the passion!

So here we are, at 1996’s The English Patient. A Canadian nurse (Juliette Binoche) in the closing days of WWII finds herself caring for a mysterious, amnesiac plane-crash survivor (Ralph Fiennes), unrecognizable from the burns he sustained when he went down in the desert. She sets up an ad hoc hospice in a bombed out Italian monastery, soon joined by a demolitions officer and a Canadian intelligence operative with a shadowy agenda of his own. As the patient slowly, slowly succumbs to his injuries, flashbacks unveil his story; how an ill-considered and ill-fated love affair with a married woman (Kristin Scott Thomas) during an archaeological expedition in North Africa before the war led him to a military hospital. 

The English Patient has become known for divisive opinions among its audience, so much so that at this point it’s probably most famous as the subject of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine, incredulous at everyone’s fawning over the film, finds herself trapped in a repeat viewing. I was curious to see if I’d dig it, or if I’d scream at Ralph Fiennes to “just die already.”

The film dragged a bit for me, but there were many aspects I really loved. The flashbacks to the patient, Almásy, beginning his love affair with Katharine who is a married woman are compelling; he as a cartographer is also given clues by a local Bedouin man which help him make his way to the Cave of Swimmers, a site of cave paintings which grows to have a lot of significance in the plot. I liked also that while Almasy is sharing his story about this past illicit love affair, involving sketches and missives and stolen kisses, Hana the nurse taking care of him also begins her own affair with Kip. He is a Sikh sapper in the British Army whose job it is to clear bombs including at the monastery where Hana and her patient are both posted.

A powerful theme that resonated for me in this film is that some relationships and love affairs are time and place specific, and short in their nature. That doesn’t make them any less compelling, powerful or transformative. They can alter the lives of the people who have them. I think this is an idea we all could stand to embrace more culturally. Relationships can change our lives and make our spirits grow and stretch even if they cannot endure over the long haul. Not sure that is what the filmmaker wanted me to get out of the film, but I chose to.