By CHRISTINA STUCKEY
Special to WordSmith
What do �The English Patient� and the Heaven�s Gate saga have in common? They will bore you to death. Yes, �The English Patient,� winner of the 69th-annual Academy Award for best picture is full of undeveloped characters and plot shortcomings.
The film starts in the last year of World War II in an Ally hospital. This is where we meet the title character, a horribly burned pilot played by Ralph Fiennes, who can�t remember anything. A shellshocked nurse played by Oscar winner Juliette Binoche takes him to an abandoned church in the hills of Tuscany to die. Here we find some of the most shallow characters ever for a film considered to be first-rate. Through a series of flashbacks, we find that Fiennes� character was a mapmaker in Africa who falls in love with a pilot�s wife, in the end taking all their lives.
This would be a beautiful love story if the audience ever got the feeling this pair even cared about one another. The only time it gets emotional between them is after she�s gone.
In dual plots, the nurse also falls in love with an Indian Ordinate. There�s also the typical druggie (William Dafoe), who seems to have no place in the film, even after we learn of his ties to the patient.�The English Patient� was nominated for more Oscars than any other film and won in almost all of those categories. Obviously, the film was aimed at the British moviegoer and it eludes the American attention span and style.
If you have three and one-half hours to watch a movie, go rent Kenneth Branagh�s "Hamlet." At least in this version of Shakespeare�s tragedy, we know where the characters are coming from.
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