THE ENGLISH PATIENT: Blu-ray (Miramax, 1996) Miramax Home Video

BEST PICTURE – 1996

By the summer of 1996, Hollywood’s yearly output had experienced an unheralded rekindling of an almost decade’s long love affair with the costume drama. And it wasn’t only the highbrow Brit-based, Merchant-Ivory Company that was producing them. In tandem with the American movie industry’s usual spate of contemporary romantic comedies, B-budgeted horror/slasher flicks, and, costly sci-fi extravaganzas; also, teen-obsessed sex farces, one could count upon a steady digest of period pictures being trundled out from a seemingly bottomless wellspring of time-honored literature, written by authors who, in some cases, had been dead for more than a century: Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Edith Wharton, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, E.M Forster, Patricia Highsmith, etc. et al. In retrospect, one could easily see the appeal on both sides: done properly, and done up in a bow of faux history, tricked out in sumptuous costumes, lush settings, and some truly gorgeous production design. In 1996, at least, there appeared to be no end in sight. While the authorship of Philip Michael Ondaatje could hardly be counted upon for inclusion in such esteemed company, his book – The English Patient (published in 1992), had been an immediate best seller, garnering precisely the kind of notoriety Hollywood simply cannot ignore. Moreover, Ondaatje’s prose was set in the ever-popular period of WWII – making the novel an ideal choice to be adapted into a major motion picture, in keeping with the then present-day tastes of the time. However, it would take another 4-years for The English Patient (1996) to reach the screens – by then, ever so slightly rewritten by Minghella with a slant towards the bittersweet romantic tragedy.

Perhaps more than any other sub-genre, the period costume epic is what celluloid art was meant for: pictorial travelogues, tempered with a bit of laughter and more than a few tears likely to be shed – the timeless appeal of such morality plays, brought into focus within the graceless modern age, presumably stimulated only by the occasional steamy sex scene and adrenaline-pumping car chase. Nevertheless, audiences packed theaters to see them, and, for the most part, were richly entertained by directors like Kenneth Branagh, Douglas McGrath, Gillian Armstrong, Ang Lee, and, Andy Tennant. Initially, producer, Saul Zaentz had expressed his desire to work with Minghella, thoroughly impressed by his Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990).  Alas, early in pre-production, it looked as though Zaentz and Ondaatje would be doing a deal at 2oth Century-Fox, to include Demi Moore as Katharine Clifton, the ill-fated adulteress and wife of an ambitious spy. The very thought of Moore sickened Ondaatje, who was fervently convinced only Kristin Scott Thomas could play the part. Who?!? Indeed, Thomas, well-known in British film and theater, was a non-starter in North America then. But there was still a ray of hope for her casting, particularly as Qatari-owned U.S. entertainment company, Miramax stepped up to the plate.  

Founded in 1979 by brothers, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Miramax would be acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 1993; the Weinsteins, then, enjoying unprecedented autonomy to continue pursuing projects of their creative choosing. In hindsight, The English Patient is, ostensibly, the final jewel in the Weinsteins’ crown; the deal with Disney Inc. souring shortly after its release, and Miramax – only 3-years earlier, having risen like a phoenix through the ranks to become a major player in Hollywood -  suddenly, and rather uncomfortably, relegated to the status of a minor entity, whose penultimate success with Cold Mountain (2003) would ultimately spell the end of an all too brief, though nevertheless heady production period.   The English Patient was, in fact, brought to the studio’s attention by Minghella, who had absolutely fallen in love with Ondaatje’s prose. Free to cast the picture as he wished, Minghella’s first hire, was Kristin Scott Thomas, who previously was known to international audiences as the somewhat bitchy sophisticate, Fiona in Mike Newell’s sleeper hit, Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). To play the romantic lead, Minghella made an even more unorthodox decision in Ralph Fiennes, whose nightmarish portrait of the Nazi, Amon Göth in Schindler’s List (1993) might otherwise have typecast the actor as the proverbial baddie for the rest of his North American film career. To be sure, Fiennes had the exotic, masculine look of the dashing, if fiery-tempered Hungarian cartographer, Count László de Almásy.

For the winsome French-Canadian nurse - Hana, Minghella turned to Juliette Binoche, a fresh find indeed, having appeared only in foreign movies, but proving – as though proof were required – that she possessed not only the look and charm of a regal leading lady, but also the acting chops to carry off this rather demanding role. Minghella had hoped to satisfy his American backers by casting Wilem Dafoe as the beady-eyed pickpocket, Carvaggio; the studio, praying Minghella would see to reason and cast the more popular, Bruce Willis in his stead. For his part, Willis politely declined the offer on advice from his agent.  He would forever after regret this decision when The English Patient became a bona fide box office hit. While the picture was pitched to Fox, the forerunners for this part were John Goodman, Danny DeVito and Richard Dreyfuss, although a dark horse loomed; whispers through the proverbial ‘grapevine’ that Sean Connery was eager to play the part. In the end, the deal with Miramax allowed Minghella to hire Dafoe; the actor, proving just right for it.

Straddling an ambitious shooting schedule, to include locations in Tunisia and Italy, The English Patient’s $31-million budget was offset by Minghella hiring of renown editor, Walter Murch to make sense of it all; Murch, initially dreading the thought of having to grapple with yet another picture that included multiple storylines and many flashbacks. Eventually coaxed to partake, Murch found the footage taking him in a direction apart from Minghella’s scripted page. To clarify – and perhaps defend his motives for cutting the picture as he did - Murch also met with the original author, sharing his thoughts on how the picture ought to be assembled with Ondaatje. Under Minghella’s aegis, The English Patient emerges as a sumptuously-mounted historical epic. At its crux are a pair of star-crossed love stories; the first, between Hana and Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh sapper in the British Army, romantically incumbered by racial tensions; the latter, dangling from a lover’s triangle between Almasy, Katharine, and her emotionally-wounded husband, Geoffrey (Colin Firth), utterly obsessive and marred by tragedy. The motif of a lover's triangle is as old as the movies itself. But unlike many, The English Patient avoids practically every pitfall and cliché. Told primarily through vignette flashbacks, Minghella's screenplay wastes no time in setting up its premise. Although the first-time viewer has no way of knowing it at the start, the picture’s prologue is actually its epilogue in reverse; a biplane carrying the remains of Katharine Clifton and her paramour, Count Laszlo de Almásy, sailing over the auburn sand dunes until, mistaken by the Nazis for an English plane, it is shot down in flames. Barely surviving the wreckage, Almásy is crudely treated for his unsustainable burns by a roaming Bedouin tribe. The movie fast tracks to Almásy’s supposed recovery at a makeshift army hospital near a beach in Italy. Actually, Almásy is dying. It is only a matter of time. Forced to relocate, Hana and her good friend and fellow nurse, Mary (Torri Higginson) board the caravan along with the rest of the wounded. Regrettably, a roadside bomb blows Mary’s jeep to bits.  

Electing to remain behind with Almásy, until he quietly expires, Hana has the caravan leave them at an abandoned monastery. Unaware her patient has faked amnesia to avoid prosecution from the Allied Forces, Almásy is actually a Hungarian cartographer, who was making maps for the British when he became romantically involved with Katharine Clifton, the wife of the expedition’s benefactor, Geoffrey, and his right-hand man, Madox (Julian Wadham). No one is aware of the fact the Cliftons are working on a top-secret spying mission for the British government. As the hours melt into days, Hana befriends Almásy. He gradually begins to open up to her about his remembrances during the war. In the midst of their research to find an ancient cave, Geoffrey departs, presumably for Libya. Actually, he has returned to London to inform the government of their findings. Enduring a hellish sand storm, Almásy and Katharine become better acquainted while taking refuge in an automobile. Earlier, she had found Almásy boorish and petty. But now, her heart tugs to know him better. And indeed, their casual acquaintance quickly escalates into a searing white-hot affair.

Although Katharine was initially faithful to Geoffrey, she relents to Almásy's temptation. This burns bright for a brief wrinkle in time, but then, just as unexpectedly, cools. Overwrought with guilt, Katharine ends the affair. Alas, Geoffrey has already found the lovers out. Meanwhile, Almásy reverts to his old arrogant self, becoming drunk and condescending, and all but publicly calling Katharine out as a wanton. Meanwhile, pickpocket, David Carvaggio has intruded upon Hana’s isolation at the monastery; presumably, to befriend her. Instead, his ulterior motives are more sinister. He intends to murder Almásy – if, in fact, he is the man he has been searching for since the last days of the war. As a Canadian intelligence operative, spying for the Americans, Caravaggio was captured by the Nazis and tortured by Major Müller (Jürgen Prochnow) who had a nurse crudely amputate both his thumbs with a straight razor. Although Almásy admits to nothing at first, gradually he begins to reveal more and more. But the truth is far more complex than Caravaggio could have ever imagined. Geoffrey was called upon by Madox to collect Almásy from their dig in the desert. Insanely jealous, Geoffrey instead elected to take Katharine in his biplane and then, try and kill them all by nosediving his plane into Almásy, waiting on the ground. The plan is only partly successful. The plane tanks, killing Geoffrey. Katharine suffers broken ribs, a broken wrist and a broken ankle.

Freeing her from the wreckage, Almásy carries Katharine back to the cave, leaving her with a flashlight, his diary and provisions of food and water, while he endeavors to cross the desert on foot – a 3-day forced march to the nearby town, occupied by the British. Regrettably, the Brits do not believe his story, and, suspecting he is a German spy, incarcerate him on a train bound for one of their internment camps. With a bit of luck, Almásy tricks one of the guards into allowing him a lavatory break, then murders the man before throwing himself off the train, and limping the rest of the way back to the cave on foot. Meanwhile, at the monastery, Hana and Kip’s friendship blossoms into full-blooded romance. Kip takes Hana to one of the churches in the nearby village, and provides her with a bird’s eye view of their impressive fresca paintings. News of the liberation reaches the village. However, as everyone prepares in celebration, a hidden bomb in the town’s statue is detonated, killing Kip’s fellow officer. Unable to reconcile this fate with his own, earlier tested after a near-fatal encounter with a ticking time bomb under a bridge, Kip elects to end his affair with Hana.

Almásy’s story concludes as the thorn of revenge is plucked from Caravaggio’s wounded psyche. He cannot kill Almásy, and instead, decides to depart the momentary. Hana bids Kip goodbye. Now, very much on his last length, Almásy gingerly coaxes Hana to inject him with a lethal dosage of morphine. Tearfully, she complies, reading to him aloud from the last love letter Katharine wrote him while she lay dying in the cave. This scene dissolves into the movie’s prologue – the biplane chartered by Almásy, carrying Katharine’s remains across the auburn dunes. Caravaggio calls out to Hana. He has secured her a ride where she will likely be reunited with the hospital caravan that she left behind to care for Almásy. As the noon-day sun filters through the trees, Hana casts her head upward, hopeful with promise, that perhaps she will one day be reunited with Kip.

The English Patient is a curious war epic, the picture’s end credits cautiously noting that while some of the characters depicted are based on actual people and events, the story itself is wholly a work of fiction. Billed as a romantic drama – the likes of which Hollywood has not produced since David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (1964) or Ryan’s Daughter (1970), the greatest oddity of The English Patient is that it is not exactly a love story. The love-making interludes between Katharine and Almásy are decidedly of the tawdrier ilk, on occasion, teetering toward unflattering depictions of forced sex; Fiennes’, with his inimitable penetrating stare, pawing at Kristin Scott Thomas’ dress, tearing its virginal white lace, before burying his mouth full against her breasts. Perhaps, in viewing his rough cut, Minghella might have conceded to having gone too far; this feral display of carnal lust, cutting directly to a scene depicting Almásy, rather patiently, stitching back together the tattered remnants of Kate’s dress, with a playful exchanged of banal ‘cute meet’ dialogue. Later, the couple share a full-frontal bath together; Kristin Scott Thomas, slipping in and out of the ball and claw tub to reveal everything in medium close-up. Passion is one thing, and certainly, there have been other movies gone even further to convey this base instinct. Yet, within the context of its glossy epic treatment, these sexually explicit inserts, with their naked bodies crudely bumped and ground against each other, becomes off-putting, rather than an illustration of inflamed desire at its most erotic.

Winner of nine Academy Awards, The English Patient retains its sweeping arc for passionate storytelling. Minghella’s direction employs unusually long takes; cinematographer, John Seale using the Steadicam in only a few instances – and then, mostly to convey danger; his set up of static master shots, filling the screen with some of the most gorgeous and breathtaking vistas of the desert, harking all the way back to another David Lean epic – if not, entirely, in spirit, then certainly in its production values. The desert sequences, particularly the sand storm, are thrilling. Still, it must be reiterated, that Fiennes and Thomas, as the ravenous lovers, are problematic. As this is hardly a story of soul-mated lovers, but rather a tale of two who could not even stand one another at the start, and have only just discovered ‘common ground’ as hot – if abusive – lovers, it would have perhaps served the story more to have either lead focused on achieving a sense of compassion, or, at the very least, empathy. Instead, Thomas’ Kate is a vindictive sort, not above slapping her lover full on the face, or denying him her body after she has already teased him to wild distraction. As for Fiennes, he is just too damn intense to be thought of as the sexy leading man. Perhaps, his prowess as an actor has been irreversibly tainted by that other brilliant performance in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993). Or it is simply a matter of miscasting, as Fiennes, in physical stature and his outward demeanor, exudes embittered insolence, too shifty-eyed, too sullen and too moody to be the truly, madly, deeply sex-crazed love interest. Minghella has much better luck with Juliette Binoche's tender and introspective Hana and Naveen Andrews’ Kip; each, in their own unique way, tenderly wounded ‘old souls’ of the war, fraught with worrisome denial of their emotions, even as they momentarily succumb to passion, only to unearth its momentary happiness.

Miramax/Alliance Home Video's newly remastered Blu-ray rectifies the absolute travesty of Alliance Canada Home Video's initial hi-def release of The English Patient. This time around we get a progressive, dual layer 1080p transfer and it is about time! It should be noted Miramax's Blu-ray veers radically away from previous home video incarnations in its reproduction of color. The new Blu adopts a very warm palette with almost copper/sepia tones. Fine details take a quantum leap forward. Contrast is very nicely balanced with deep blacks and very solid, although somewhat yellowish, whites. The audio has been remastered in 5.1 DTS and is very aggressive in spots. Dialogue sounds quite natural. The sand storm sequence will rock your speakers. Extras are all imports from Miramax's extensive 2-disc DVD from 2000 and include a very comprehensive commentary by writer-director, Anthony Minghella, producer, Saul Zaentz and author, Michael Ondaatje. The CBC’s documentary on the making of the film is somewhat disappointing, relying heavily on trailer junkets and very little, except sound bites from cast and crew. There are also featurettes on scoring the film, writing the film, Minghella's career and Ondaatje's writing style, plus a theatrical trailer to sift through when time permits. Bottom line: recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

3.5