THE ENGLISH PATIENT
The English Patient Directed
by Anthony Minghella, screenplay by Anthony Minghella, based on the novel
by Michael Ondaatje, starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe,
Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth, Julian Wadham, Jurgen
Prochnow.
Trap: It’s probably not
fair of me to compare a film to a source novel, especially one I haven’t
read, but since I need something to use as a starting point, I’m going
to do it anyway. Judging by the final results, this strikes me as a book
that was probably very difficult to adapt. In spite of being set against
the epic tumult of the Second World War, it’s ultimately a very intimate
love story. Unfortunately, for me at any rate, it didn’t quite work, either
as an epic or as a love story.
Bluesy:
Ah, that’s because you’re a guy.
Trap: Very
perceptive of you. Perhaps you’d care to elaborate?
Bluesy:
Well, this was obviously a penultimate "chick flick." Ralph Fiennes
(looking gorgeous as always), Willem Dafoe (shirtless and rippling away),
men professing undying love to women, guys pining (pining, is especially
attractive in movies… every woman dreams of having a guy pine after her),
stormy love scenes in dimly lit rooms with clothes being torn up, then
sewn together by men… definite chick flick. And hey, I cried at the end.
Trap:
Really? I must have been too busy checking my watch to notice. Look, I
don’t want to come down too hard on the film – there was nothing particularly
wrong with it, but it just never really moved me.
At the beginning of the film we are introduced to the English patient of
the title (Fiennes), an amnesiac recovering from severe burns sustained
in a plane crash in North Africa. World War Two is winding to a close and
he’s evacuated to a ruined monastery in Italy in the company of a Canadian
nurse (Binoche), who has her own demons to deal with. As she tends to him,
we learn in flashback about his past as an cartographer and his ill-fated
affair with a colleague’s wife (Scott Thomas).
Now, as I said, I haven’t read the novel, but I couldn’t help thinking
as I watched this that, as with so many books in which the internal lives
of the characters is the central concern, adapting it must have been a
matter of picking out the most dramatic or visual scenes, stringing them
together and hoping for the best. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Here we wind up with a few well-acted "big moments" and some
pretty scenery, but with the connective tissue of the characters’ inner
lives to hold them together they just kind of stick there, like raisins
in a bowl of rice pudding. I wasn’t flat out bored, but I never really
felt it building toward anything.
Bluesy: Well,
I’ll give you that it was a long movie (almost 3 hours) and it wasn’t Dr.
Zhivago or any David Lean film, by any stretch…
but I did end up caring about the characters in the film, always a plus.
The problem I had with it, was that it took too long to really get into
what was going on and I got a false start thinking that Binoche and Fiennes
were supposed to be paired up somehow. I didn’t really get into her particular
storyline, in fact. She felt sort of like a bookend to me… and she’s too
good an actress (and okay, I’ll give you a really beautiful one) to be
part of a "B" plot. I liked that they were trying to draw parallels
between her and Fiennes dilemma’s… she, someone who’s afraid to love someone
because everyone seems to die on her, and he someone who was "killed
by love." But it wasn’t his inability to love or go after the woman
he loved that really did him in… it was more one of circumstance, and that
bothered me. Anyway, that’s the long way to say it may not be perfect,
but it wasn’t too bad either.
Trap:
The Binoche subplot is precisely the sort of thing that bothered me about
this film. Obviously it was meant to complement the main one, but in the
end it never really went anywhere either. Like the main plot it was just
too restrained and distant to really catch fire. Passion is an inherently
messy thing, and this just struck me as a little too tasteful for its own
good. I don’t mind watching beautiful people in exotic settings, but if
I’m going to be investing three hours of my time, I expect a little more
of a return than I got here.
Bluesy:
Passion, an "inherently messy thing?" Why, Trap, you’re sounding
a tad bitter.
Trap: Yeah.
And that’s why I’m dedicating my half of this review to my ex – wherever
she is.
Bluesy:
And on that note… let’s just say I see this particular glass half full,
you see it…
