Continuing to make my way through the 1990s Best Picture Winners (has anyone ever heard of Unforgiven?…. NOOO it’s a Western!!), I thought I would see this one while it’s still on Netflix.
The English Patient is simultaneously a love story set in the vast, unexplored continent of Africa during the years before World War II and a story of loss in the Italian countryside in 1944 up until the end of the war.
And yes I do use those descriptors of Africa ironically.
The movie opens on a plane being shot down in the desert, where one survivor is horribly burned but alive. Then, we are in Italy, where a Canadian nurse, Hana (Juliette Binoche), after experiencing the death of two loved ones, decides to stay behind and take care of a man who is disfigured from burns and does not remember his name. They settle in a bombed monastery in the countryside.
This is only gif of Juliette Binoche I could find from this movie! That’s her meeting David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), who was a Canadian Intelligence Corps operative (thank you Wikipedia).
Meanwhile! Back in Africa in the late 1930s, the Royal Geographic Society is tasked with mapping out parts of Libya. There’s Geoffrey and Katherine Clifton, played by Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas. And there’s Count László de Almásy, played by Ralph Fiennes. The Count and Katherine soon have an affair.
Drama! I wasn’t expecting the “I’m a socially awkward and actually pretty rude white man, but you’re going to fall in love with me anyway,” but surprise! It’s here. They pretty much hate each other the first moment they meet. The Count is self-righteous, pretentious, and annoying.
Meanwhile, Hana is taking care of this man who is slowly remembering his life before his accident, with the help of Caravaggio’s suspicions that he is a traitor and a spy. Also we meet Hana’s love interest, Kip (Naveen Andrews), a bomb diffuser!
Besides the 2 hour and 42 minute run time, I think that I liked The English Patient. It definitely didn’t have an impact on me, but it wasn’t intolerable to watch, like it was for some people in the 90s.
I cared way more about whatever Juliette Binoche was doing than about the stuff going on in the desert, which I guess is why she won an Oscar and Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas lost.
The English Patient did go on to win 9 of its 12 Oscar nominations though, including Best Picture, which is insane, and also the same number of Oscar wins as Gone with the Wind, a movie that is 1 hour and 26 minutes longer than this one!
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