The SmarK DVD Rant for The English Patient

OK, I’ll admit it – I avoided this one like the plague in the 90s, because the advertising made it look like a typical chick flick with Ralph Fiennes as a sensitive guy and Juliette Binoche nursing him back to health. Even when it won Best Picture, I figured it was just Miramax buying the Oscar, which they seem to have a habit of doing.

I was happy to be proven totally wrong by this one.

The Film

Set during the wacky years of World War II, the movie is immediately elevated from mere chick flick by the inclusion of a horrific and slightly mysterious plane crash that leaves the pilot burned to a crisp and his apparently sleeping passenger killed. We immediately segue into a battlefield scene and meet a nurse (Juliette Binoche) who is war-weary, and tired of everyone around her that she loves dying on her. Taking care of a burned pilot in an abandoned monastery in Italy seems to be the perfect cure for her distress.

It is off this basic premise that all the threads of the movie start to come unfurled. Once there, they are joined first by petty thief Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe, his usual cool self) who seems to be missing a couple of thumbs and harbors resentment towards the recovering pilot. With nothing better to do during the day, the English patient begins recalling the circumstances that brought him to his deathbed, thus beginning another half of the plot.

In this subplot, it’s 5 years earlier and the Count Almasy (as we learn his name is) is part of a group of globetrotting surveyors, flying through desert plains looking for evidence of paradise. A tall order, to be sure, but you know rich people. We also discover that the woman in the plane with him at the beginning of the movie was the wife of his colleague, Geoffrey Clifton, which further complicates matters. Much like everyone else in the movie, Clifton is not what he seems, as we find out after Almasy and Katherine are stranded in a sandstorm together. Alone. Uh oh. Soon enough the gratuitous female nudity is in evidence, and they’re making with the love-talk and sleeping around behind Geoffrey’s back.

Back in the monastery, the burned Almasy and his nurse are joined by a roving group of bomb squadders from the British army, including Kip, who immediately falls in love with Hana, the nurse. This is more visually interesting than most on-screen romances, because Kip is a Sikh, rather than the clichéd square-jawed English hero. While they work out their rather unconventional romance, Almasy continues to flash back to 1939, and we learn the consequences of his affair with Katherine Clifton, of which there are many, and it leads to a change in our sympathies for the character (well mine anyway) as we realize just what he did for love. Whether or not it was justified is up to the viewer to decide, I guess.

The great thing about this movie was that it held my attention on several levels – as a character study of the motley crew of soliders and nurses, as a Lawrence of Arabia-esque adventure, as a war intrigue movie, and as a romance. The performances are uniformly strong, the direction is beautiful, and frankly I have no idea how it was even green-lighted by Hollywood without getting cut to pieces by studio executives. It is without a doubt a perfect piece of film-making for many reasons, and well deserving of the Best Picture Oscar it received as a result. Highest recommendation.

The Video

Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, this is a redo of the original release in the early days of DVD, and it looks really good. This movie is all about the contrasts and darks v. lights, and it handles them really well. There’s some grain and dust from the original print, but that might be intentional. Very nice overall.

The Audio

This was also impressive. Available in either DTS or Dolby Digital 5.1, both are surprisingly full and immersive mixes for a movie that wouldn’t normally lend itself to a wide sound stage. The explosions during the war scenes boom out of the subwoofer, the flying scenes boast some nice usage of the surrounds, and all the ambient sounds are mixed into the back, as they should be. Dialogue was clear on both mixes, although better on the DD one than the DTS one, oddly enough, but both are great otherwise.

The Extras

Here’s where the redo really shines, as you get TONS of stuff on the making of the film and the original novel.

Disc One: First up, two audio commentaries. One has the director, author, and producer together (which was actually ripped right off the laserdisc), and the other just has the director. Both are interesting and insightful, as they offer their interpretations of the characters and differences between the movie and the book, rather than the standard dry technical commentary.

Disc Two: You get a veritable bevy of featurettes here, broken down into sections covering different aspects of the movie and running about 2 hours total. They include a lengthy interview with author Michael Ondaatje, interviews with the cast and crew, several features on changing from the original novel to the movie (no small task), reviews by film critics in text form, 20 minutes of deleted scenes presented in a “Master Class” special ported from the laserdisc, and an hour-long documentary from CBC on the making of the movie. Quite the collection of stuff, and I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to know about it afterwards.

The Ratings:

The Film: *****

The Video: ****1/2

The Audio: *****

The Extras: *****

The Bottom Line: Some people (like me) were upset when this movie beat out Jerry Maguire for Best Picture, but I think time has shown that it’s the better movie and was well deserving of the win. Some think it’s overly long and dull, but that’s what differing opinions are for. Regardless, don’t be scared off by the “chick flick” reputation of the movie, because it’s not – it’s a fascinating war movie with great dialogue and writing and terrific characters and acting. And lots of gory violence and nudity.

Final Score: 10.0