The English Patient (1996)

What a marvelous film. Beautiful story. Sad story.

Yes, this was a beautiful film.

I only liked the flashback portions in North Africa rather than the Italian portions of the film.

R3 Those were the best scenes in the movie. However, Fiennes and Binoche acted the hell out of those scenes.

Great music by the Lebanese-French composer Gabriel Yared.

It truly is an international film.

I just remember the hot shirtless Indian guy.

Elaine Benes was right---it's endless. Oscar bait that falters on its own seriousness.

Definitely better than the book.

r7 I never wanted to see it based on Elaine's reaction to it. She and I shared similar opinions on many things.

I have no patience with those who say it was too long or boring. Anthony Minghella directed the hell out of a screenplay based on a best-seller that many said simply couldn't be filmed.

My only quibble is that he excised some extremely beautiful sequences he shot in Tuscany with the nurse and detonation expert on a motorcycle because he said the scenes made the movie too long. However, they are available as extras on some discs. I think it was a mistake and a missed opportunity.

I'm glad to see all the positive comments here. The movie became a punchline. Personally, I liked it a lot and thought a lot of the criticism was unfair.

I didn't find it boring but I did find much of it tacky and overblown in photography and design.

Was this Ralph Fiennes at his peak sexiness?

A truly beautiful movie.

This scene alone deserved the 9 Oscars.

R13 I don’t know, but I wanted to be ravaged by him in the North African desert.

I'll be back.

[quote] Great music by the Lebanese-French composer Gabriel Yared.

With great chunks of it lifted from Camille Saint-Saëns and Zoltan Kodaly.

[quote] Anthony Minghella directed the hell out

What does that actually mean?

It was OK in parts but the plot went forward and then backward and then backward again.

And then it went sideways and backward again. And then forward.

R6 Are you talking about this brief scene?

Are there any butt scenes in this movie?

Minghella had buttocks in his next two movies.

Kristen Scott Thomas was robbed of an Oscar.

Sadly you share the same dancing ability, r9.

I assume that the dismissive title 'English patient' refers to the nurses gossiping about the strange, mutilated man they were nursing.

But he wasn't English at all? He was Czechoslovak, wasn't he?

This movie has lots of sensuous delights but the plot was impossible to follow (and I can't be bothered reading long-winded fictional books anymore).

I love a historical movie. This was an epic yawn fest. I made it halfway thru,then fast forwarded to the end.

HATED IT.

So boring even straights couldn't stand it.

I'm not much good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the fate of humanity doesn't amount to a hill of bean in this crazy world next to the problems of two little people.

[quote] two little people.

Which two? This movie seemed to have four main characters in two different plots.

Okay, four little people. It's an inversion of the famous line from the end of "Casablanca," that some wag applied oh-so-aptly to TEP.

Will someone please summarize plot for me WITH spoilers?

I hated Fiennes character. It was shit except for the plot with Juliette Binoche, that was the best part of the film, it filled my heart and brought me to tears.

I know, MARY!

[quote]Great music by the Lebanese-French composer Gabriel Yared.

[quote]With great chunks of it lifted from Camille Saint-Saëns and Zoltan Kodaly.

So what's the problem?

He was Hungarian, R24.

R31, I'll do my best and hope for corrections afterward...

Dude works for the Foreign Service in some desert country that's very hot. Has his eye on an administrator's wife. Hooks up with her. Falls madly in love. Professes his fewwings at a big official bash. He and wife run away, him flying a biplane out of the whole mess. The plane crashes in the desert (where the fuck elsewhere would it crash as it's nothing BUT desert for thousands of miles. Are you seeing the connection made between doomed love affair and the desert?). His girlfriend survives the crash, looking better than she ever has. Dude brings her to a cave so she's not exposed to the elements of... you guess it, the desert.

(The next part is hazy and I'm going only from memory)

He must have repaired the airplane, because he promises her he'll be back. Here's where I have a memory blank. I 'think' he crashes the airplane again (in his next lifetime, our present day, I think he works for a regional carrier in a third world country. I mean, crashing the fucking plane twice? Puh-leez!). So now the focus shifts to dude in an Italian hostpital, burned really badly. He's administered morphine by a really beautiful young nurse. The morphine induces memories in a hallucinatory haze. His memories are vivid, and we see them in a series of flashbacks.

Have you guessed yet that his girlfriend snuffed it waiting for him? She did, and died more beautiful than we've ever seen her.

At the end of the movie, Dude (the patient of the same title) convinces beautiful nurse to administer a fatal overdose of the morphine. Heart stops, movie ends.

This is what I can remember. It's a long movie. If you can get hold of the soundtrack, it's scintillating. The first track alone brings you into the dramatic vortex of the pathos of the story.

Thank You, r35

R4

[quote] Binoche acted the hell out of

R10

[quote] Minghella directed the hell out of

If it wasn’t for this fucking movie and that French bitch, well…you know.

I loved it. But I’ve seen it so many times.

Thank you for that precis, R35. So just to confirm, Ralph Fiennes Is the dude hooking up with Kristin Scott Thomas and who has the plane crash while joy-riding. Later he’s burned then nursed by Juliette Binoche who eventually administers the fatal morphine.

I suppose I shouldn't complain about a plot which may have seemed profound in a novel but seems to ramble on screen.

The film spends a lot of time with Canadian Willem Dafoe suspecting the burns victim of cooperating with the Germans. And a lot of time spent with Juliette Binoche having an affair with Naveen Andrews.

The cinematography and cast is gorgeous. But it is over-the-top

Love and death is over-the-top

You know when a movie has a fake epic movie-within-the-movie that is over-the-top? That is what English Patient reminds me of

R35 and R40 You forgot about Colin Firth being the clueless husband. Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas kill him in the plane crash.

Also Julian Wadham is sexy as Fiennes business partner who tells him how out of control he is doing. Wadham is underrated.

Jürgen Prochnow makes an appearance as a Nazi that cuts off Willem Dafoe's thumbs.

Loved the Binoche movie. Didn't like the KST movie...

[quote] Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas kill him in the plane crash.

Did they deliberately kill him to mitigate their adultery?

I laugh when Juliette cuts her hair and comes out looking boutique chic.

Close R35, but it's the husband who crashes the plane, while flying with the wife in what looks like a murder/suicide. He knows about the affair and aims the plane at Fiennes' character on the ground, but the latter gets out of the way in time. Husband dies in the crash and Fiennes brings Thomas to the cave trying to save her life.

Another important detail--after he leaves Thomas in the cave to get help, Fiennes comes upon the British army, who inexplicably don't believe his story and decide he's some kind of spy and arrest him. He escapes and in desperation he turns to the German army who inexplicably don't suspect him and trades Allied secrets for a plane to get back to Thomas' character (but it's too late). So you see the good guys are bad and he is forced to help the bad guys for a good reason. That's already a suspect narrative, but the story is loosely based on and a total whitewash of a real life cartographer who helped the Nazis in WWII (but without such a noble reason as having to save the woman he loved--in fact real life guy was probably gay).

I need to revisit this film. I was a little kid when this came out, but remember it being *the* movie event of 1996 because my parents went so wild over it. I remember them watching it in our living room and catching the moment when Willem Defoe gets his thumbs cut off. I've never forgotten that scene.

It's one of my favorite movies. Brew some mint tea, and on a rainy day, watch it and 'The Sheltering Sky'.

Delightful

It is one of my favorites too, and I am tired of hearing Elaine Benes’ opinion used as an excuse for calling it dull. Elaine just wants to go see a comedy about a family that lives in a paper sack. I guess we are all in that mood at times, but between this and Schindler’s List the Seinfeld writers seem to have it in for movies that dare to be serious instead of dopey. I wonder how Jerry or Elaine would fare at a Godard, Antonioni or (gasp) Tarkovsky movie, or even just a David Lean.

Colin firth was a fattie in this, Ralph Fiennes was so handsome. Kristin Scott Thomas was ethereally beautiful in this. You could feel the intense yearning between the two having the affair and if I recall correctly there was a particularly sensual bathtub scene.

The bathtub scene, omg. Then the bit afterwards where he trying to mend her dress that got ripped off.

Like Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago or Henry James's The Wings of A Dove, it takes a melodramatic story and turns it into a more difficult work of prose by obfuscating the big events, and then the movie version (as with the other two books) twists it again by putting all the melodrama front and center.