THE ENGLISH PATIENT

The weekend allowed for the opportunity to view another of the Oscar-winning Best Pictures that I had not previously experienced. This time up to bat it was The English Patient. In 1997 the film would take home statues for 9 of the 12 categories for which it was nominated.

Given the prodigious central cast I was already certain that the acting would be phenomenal, and I was certainly proven correct. Ralph Fiennes, Kristen Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche (a personal favorite), and Willem Defoe all inhabited their roles to perfection. Naveen Andrews and Colin Firth were equally engaging in their supporting roles.

This romantic drama is actually two stories that are being slowly unfolded, back and forth. Both tales revolve around Ralph Fiennes’s character, in two different time periods of his life. Those time periods are his past, the early 1930s leading up to World War II, and his present, the mid-1940s as World War II comes to its conclusion. The two time periods represent drastically different stages in his human journey. His past lamented for what might have been, and his present endured with only one inevitable outcome. As his personal stories play out, the film incorporates the additional characters whose existences have been impacted by him, and with him, both past and present.

Visually this is an extremely beautiful movie. Emotionally it’s also beautiful, though not necessarily happily so. Scattered throughout are several scenes where the tension has the viewer on the edge of his seat. These tense scenes, along with the rest of the movie, are enhanced by one of the best musical scores I’ve heard in some time. The film won an Oscar for Editing, but I personally think that its run time could have been shaved down a bit more. But this is a small complaint for what is otherwise a brilliantly crafted and acted story of love, betrayal, and human connections.