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Around the time of its release, there was a lot of excitement about The English Patient. Reviewers were quick to compare Anthony Minghella's directorial touch with that of legendary British filmmaker David Lean, while the desert landscapes contained within The English Patient resembled those in Lawrence of Arabia. It was the sort of romantic epic that hadn't been seen for a generation, and though its Britishness is a contentious point (Minghella was from the Isle of Wight, but the film was financed by Miramax and shot in Italy and Tunisia), it was hailed as a modern British classic. Oscar bestowed as many as nine figurines upon it, ranking it up there amongst the biggest hauls of all time. Now, though, there seem to be few fond memories of it amongst film aficionados - indeed, few memories at all.
In the wake of the untimely death of the director last year, the film seems ripe for a reappraisal. It was Minghella's third film; his previous two (Truly, Madly, Deeply and Mr. Wonderful) were not widely seen, and The English Patient was a complete departure from them. Yet, backed by producer Saul Zaentz, Minghella crafted a film that operates on an epic canvas, while maintaining focus on its two intertwined love stories. The dual narrative follows two different timelines, adapted with great care and precision from difficult source material. The common thread between the strands is Ralph Feinnes' Count Almasy; at the start of the film he is shot down while flying a plane over the Sahara in the dying days of World War 2. He emerges from the wreckage heavily burnt, and much of the film consists of him being cared for by Canadian nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche) while he recounts the events that led to the plane crash, revolving around married socialite Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas). But a brief summation such as this cannot encapsulate the complexities of the plot, which Minghella and famed editor Walter Murch do well to condense into a below-3-hour runtime.
A criticism that the film has faced (and probably the reason its popularity does not seem to have endured) is that it does not allow for an emotional connection with its protagonists. Such a complaint is understandable, and indeed the cross-cutting does occasionally make the film seem too disjointed. Apparently there are forty time transitions during the film, which proves to be too many (compare it to, say, The Godfather Part II, where there are perhaps only a dozen such shifts, if that). Nevertheless the acting - by a largely unknown-at-the-time cast - is strong enough and the story compelling enough that the film surmounts the hurdle. Gradually, towards the later stages, Juliette Binoche's character strand begins to receive more attention and it is her romance with an Indian bomb-disposal expert (Lost's Naveen Andrews) that provides a beating heart and leads to some of the film's best sequences.
The English Patient is a film that takes some time to appreciate, but that does not mean it is emotionally barren. Far from it, in fact: this is a richly textured and sweepingly romantic story that invites and benefits from repeat viewings.
The extras
Anthony Minghella features on two separate commentaries on the first disc, one alone and one with producer Saul Zaentz and novelist Michael Ondaatje. Both are worth a listen, and there's suprisingly little repetition. The picture quality of the film itself is slightly disappointing, with some dirt and grain quite visible at times, and not a great depth of colour.
Disc 2 at first appears to contain relatively little of substance but that proves to be incorrect. The main feature is an accomplished 53-minute doc made for Canadian TV which was evidently completely shot on location (including the interviews). 20 minutes of deleted scenes, accompanied by the director's comments, are interesting, but some deleted footage mentioned - it seems there was quite a lot - is annoyingly omitted. A brief featurette examines the real Count Almasy on whom Feinnes' character was based. Most of the remaining material consists of talking-head interviews, but there are a lot to choose from. Participants include Minghella, Zaentz, Ondaatje and Walter Murch; each are divided into short chunks without a 'play all' function, annoyingly. There's well over an hour of very enlightening interview footage, but they could easily have been edited together to form a compelling retrospective documentary. Despite this missed opportunity, the fact remains that there's a lot here.
The summary
A meticulously constructed romantic epic that may not live up to some of the David Lean comparisons but is nevertheless highly successful on its own terms.
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