The English Patient

Another Oscar winner and another long film that we watched in two sittings. The film opens with a sweeping desert vista and a fiery plane crash that leaves the pilot horribly burned and in the care of a medical convoy picking its way through the chaotic aftermath of the Italian campaign in World War II with land mines and unexploded bombs. Realising that the mysterious English patient hasn’t got long to live, nurse Hana (played by Juliette Binoche) resolves to stay behind and care for him in the bombed out ruins of a monastery. The man (played by Ralph Fiennes) slowly reveals more of his memories of what happened to him, going back to an archeological expedition in the North African desert just before the war where he was a pilot scouting ahead and making maps of the terrain.

The expedition is joined by a husband and wife team, and Count László Almásy (as we find out his name to be) starts a passionate and doomed love affair with Katherine (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) told through various flashbacks as the war in North Africa takes hold. The contemporary narrative in the present day mirrors the flashbacks as various other people come to the monastery - sapper Kip Singh (Naveen Andrews) defusing bombs and mines and David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a Canadian spy bearing the scars of torture at the hands of the Nazis.

The reveal of the truth of the matter is heartbreaking but sensitively handled. The film is gorgeously shot, especially for the desert scenes although my main criticism would be that the native inhabitants of the area are merely background details for the colonial English to ‘discover’. I guess that’s true to life, but it still feels uncomfortable.