The English Patient (1996)

At the close of WWII, a young nurse tends to a badly-burned plane crash victim. His past is shown in flashbacks, revealing an involvement in a fateful love affair.

Director:

Anthony Minghella

Writers:

Michael Ondaatje (novel), Anthony Minghella (screenplay)

Stars:

Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe

Won 9 Oscars. Another 53 wins & 75 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Ralph Fiennes	...	Almásy
Juliette Binoche	...	Hana
Willem Dafoe	...	Caravaggio
Kristin Scott Thomas	...	Katharine Clifton
Naveen Andrews	...	Kip
Colin Firth	...	Geoffrey Clifton
Julian Wadham	...	Madox
Jürgen Prochnow	...	Major Muller
Kevin Whately	...	Hardy
Clive Merrison	...	Fenelon-Barnes
Nino Castelnuovo	...	D'Agostino
Hichem Rostom	...	Fouad
Peter Rühring	...	Bermann
Geordie Johnson	...	Oliver
Torri Higginson	...	Mary

Storyline

October 1944 in war torn Italy. Hana, a French-Canadian nurse working in a mobile army medical unit, feels like everything she loves in life dies on her. Because of the difficulty traveling and the dangers, especially as the landscape is still heavily booby-trapped with mines, Hana volunteers to stay behind at a church to care solely for a dying semi-amnesiac patient, who is badly burned and disfigured. She agrees to catch up to the rest of the unit after he dies. All the patient remembers is that he is English and that he is married. Their solitude is disrupted with the arrival at the church of fellow Canadian David Caravaggio, part of the Intelligence Service, who is certain that he knows the patient as a man who cooperated with the Germans. Caravaggio believes that the patient's memory is largely in tact and that he is running away from his past, in part or in its entirety. The patient does open up about his past, all surrounding his work as a cartographer in North Africa, which ...

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Plot Keywords:

patient | nurse | flashback | english | church | 

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Taglines:

In memory, love lives forever.

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Genres:

Drama | Romance | War

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sexuality, some violence and language

Details

Official Sites:

Juliette Binoche: The Art of Being - Official Fansite Official Facebook

Country:

USA UK

Language:

English German Italian Arabic

Release Date:

6 December 1996 (USA)

Also Known As:

El paciente inglés

Filming Locations:

Degache, Tunisia

Box Office

Budget:

$27,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$278,439, 17 November 1996, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$78,651,430, 7 September 1997

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$134,700,000

Company Credits

Production Co:

Miramax,Tiger Moth Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

162 min 250 min (rough cut)

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital SDDS (8 channels) DTS-Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film has two Christ actors. Willem Dafoe played Jesus Christ in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), while Ralph Fiennes was the voice of Jesus in The Miracle Maker (2000), an animated TV movie.

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Goofs

Katharine Clifton (Scott -Thomas) explains to Count László Almásy (Fiennes), that her husband is map making in Ethiopia. The year at this point is 1939, and the country was known as Abyssinia until 1945.

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Quotes

Muller: You are a Canadian spy working for the Allies. Code-name Moose.

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Crazy Credits

Disclaimer in end credits: "While a number of the characters who appear in this film are based on historical figures, and while many of the areas described - such as the Cave of Swimmers and its surrounding desert - exist and were explored in the 1930s, it is important to stress that this story is a fiction and that the portraits of the characters who appear in it are fictional, as are some of the events and journeys."

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Connections

Referenced in Madonna: Frozen (1998)

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Soundtracks

The Japanese Sandman
(1920) (uncredited)
Music by Richard A. Whiting
Lyrics by Ray Egan
Played as background music

User Reviews

a patience taking movie.. ;)

as can be read in many reviews here it is a movie you love or hate - apparently not so much space for opinions in between. I for one think that is a good sign.

I always appreciated this movie, although the genre is not my typical style (I never watched Titanic for instance, and am not planning to).

The English Patient grips because it shows how people can be different when they are in an exotic environment as opposed when they are 'home' (Katherine), it shows how destructive love can be in a slow, strong and utterly painful way, it excites because of the extremely passionate affair, the pain of the one(s) who leave behind, how pointless one can feel to move on.

The photography is just stunning, not to mention the play of the actors. The pace is slow, but timely, and that does justice to the book, the timeline, and the depth/development of the characters. To put this in 110 minutes (as some seem to suggest here) would amputate the multi-layeredness of this movie. People tend to have difficulties with the pace of movies... as if they are in a rush to get to work.. hey - get a life ! ;-) enjoy...

I give this movie 4.5 out of 5.