Anthony Minghella's grand epic scale of love is a triumph. It won 8 Oscar trophies back in 1996, including Best Supporting Actress, Best Sound, Best Picture and Best Director. It's like Brokeback Mountain without the Best Picture nod, without the landscape of Wyoming but on the swirling sands of Sahara, and of course, about forbidden love but not about men but about a man and woman who were both struggling to find contenment in their own lives. But sometimes, we feel movies are never perfect. Not a single one is. All those A+ rated films are just paradigms of near-perfection. The English Patient is actually a very good film, very well directed and acted as well. It boasts a cinematography to boot, a musical score that haunts and a script that would make the Academy proud. The movie's only weakness was its dragging parts; there are scenes which were so apparently unconventional. However, such a movie with a grandiose scope could simply cover those flaws with the sands of cinema-making. Ralph Fiennes, for example, is nonetheless impressive. He's one of the finest actors working today I believe and I could say the he would continue doing more good movies in the future time. His portrayal of his character brings out the very best in him, playing a the Count Almasy who defined emptiness beneath power and wealth. He wasn't actually English. He was a Hungarian count who stayed in Egypt before the war broke out. And his skin was badly burned, and his memory was almost impossible to disclose.
The way the story developed was like reading an epilogue then its prologue. At the end of the film, you would somehow consider how fate had tried to bring two people together, putting all the pieces together and forming one final haunting vision - the essence of doomed love. One fantastic role her was played by Juliette Binoche (that actress from the recent French thriller, Cache). He ensembled many emotions into one complete portrait of a woman haunted by the death of everyone she loves, and then finally settled in one kind of fear that would bring her heart closed to any possible romance. The way she put it, "I must be a curse. Anyone who loves me - who gets close to me - gets killed." It amazingly squeezes a mighty punch in the heart, that sometimes you would feel the character is deeply wounded. And she resists in loving her patient, the one English patient she wanted to save. All this scenes come across together in such a beautiful way, like how the burned Count Almasy recollected every bit of information; his life, his love and his fated doom. Once again, Ralph Fienned performances is a definite top-form. Seeing him as he burned Count would let you remember his Harry Potter's Voldemort role with compassion, love and of course, heart.
This movie is an almost fantastic, heartwrenching journey into the deepest dooms of being human. Its worth watching, just ignore some dragging scenes, and catapult right into the film's message, especially in the last scene of the film where Binoche's character Hana travels under the lazy sunlight running past the gaps in the trees, seeing hope in the bleakest of summers. The English Patient whom she tried to save became such an inspiration to her to not be afraid of loving. And that she must be really lucky, realising that she's not the most wounded person in the world, and that there's indeed hope in very little things that we encounter every single day.
Rating: A-
