The English Patient (1996)

"Seinfeld" fans will remember the episode where Elaine was dragged to "The English Patient," and could not fathom why so many people she knew came to love it. I stand with Elaine.

In the closing days of World War II in Italy, Canadian nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche) is not having a good week. She finds out her boyfriend has been killed in action, then watches another friend roll over a land mine. She decides she is cursed, and volunteers to stay behind with a mysterious burn patient and wait for him to die, then she will meet up again with her medical detachment. The patient is suffering from amnesia, not remembering his own name. He has flashes of memory, including a wife. The pair stay at an abandoned monastery, but soon they receive visitors. Kip (Naveen Andrews) is a bomb detonator who takes a shine to Hana. Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe) is a thumbless morphine addict who immediately senses that he has met the burn victim before.

In the film's opening moments, we see the patient Almasy (Ralph Fiennes) and Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas) suffer a horrible plane crash. The majority of the film is Almasy's recollections of meeting Katharine and falling in love with her. Almasy was with some geologists, mapping the desert of North Africa. With war looming, the maps have become desirable to both sides of the conflict. Geoffrey (Colin Firth) arrives with wife Katharine in tow. Almasy and Katharine do not like each other, but certainly become good friends when they are trapped alone in a car during a sandstorm. They carry on an illicit affair, and Geoffrey soon finds out. Katharine breaks off all the sweaty sex, and Almasy mopes. I cannot give out too much about what happens to the pair, but the final fifteen minutes of the film are the best.

Anthony Minghella directs his own screenplay, but his editor should have put his foot down. While the film clocks in at one hundred and sixty-two minutes, it actually feels longer. Almasy and Katharine's story mostly takes place before the war, and Hana's story in the last days of the war, but the film feels as long as the combat that filled in those half dozen years. The film is certainly pretty, but Minghella gives us scenes from the novel without any deep characterization behind them. The courtship between Almasy and Katharine is mechanical and old-fashioned. Romantic lines that were old back when Humphrey Bogart made woo with Ingrid Bergman are transposed with hot and sweaty sex and nudity more akin to Cinemax After Dark. Colin Firth's reaction upon finding out about the affair is so overdone that it is funny. Willem Dafoe's Caravaggio should have been cut from the film completely. He is an info dump listener as characters tell him everything. Watch for the completely unnecessary thumb losing scene, unless the world really needed a Jurgen Prochnow cameo. The rest of the performances are strictly one note until the final scenes when actual passion suddenly explodes onto the screen in between the frustration and the uninteresting wartime espionage subplot. Juliette Binoche's Oscar winning performance is a blank canvas left blank. She makes no impression whatsoever, Joan Allen should have won that year for "The Crucible."

"The English Patient" might be one of the worst Best Picture Academy Award Winners ever made. I do not want to waste another three hours of my life sitting through it to be convinced otherwise.

Stats:
(1996) 162 min. (2/10)
-Directed by Anthony Minghella
-Screenplay by Anthony Minghella based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje
-Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Colin Firth, Naveen Andrews, Jurgen Prochnow, Julian Wadham, Kevin Whately, Clive Merrison, Nino Castelnuovo, Hichem Rostom, Peter Ruhring
(R)
*Academy Awards*
-Best Picture (won)
-Best Actor- Ralph Fiennes (lost to Geoffrey Rush "Shine")
-Best Actress- Kristin Scott Thomas (lost to Frances McDormand "Fargo")
-Best Supporting Actress- Juliette Binoche (won)
-Best Director (won)
-Best Adapted Screenplay (lost to "Sling Blade")
-Best Cinematography (won)
-Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (won)
-Best Costume Design (won)
-Best Sound (won)
-Best Film Editing (won)
-Best Dramatic Musical Score (won)
*BAFTA*
-Best Film (won)
-Best Actor- Ralph Fiennes (lost to Geoffrey Rush "Shine")
-Best Actress- Kristin Scott Thomas (lost to Brenda Blethyn "Secrets & Lies")
-Best Supporting Actress- Juliette Binoche (won)
-David Lean Award for Best Direction- Anthony Minghella (lost to Joel Coen "Fargo")
-Best Adapted Screenplay (won)
-Anthony Asquith Award for Music (won)
-Best Cinematography (won)
-Best Production Design (lost to "Richard III")
-Best Costume Design (lost to "Richard III")
-Best Editing (won)
-Best Sound (lost to "Shine")
-Best Make Up/Hair (lost to "The Nutty Professor")