Miramax International presents a Saul Zaentz production
GENRE:
Romance / Drama
SYNOPSIS/PLOT:
Beautifully filmed with remarkable performances, "The English Patient" is a complex epic of passion, tragedy and regret. Spanning six years--and linking two time periods--the movie tells the story of one man's emotional and physical decline, as well as the desperate lives of those around him.
A young Canadian nurse, Hana (Juliette Binoche), has agreed to remain in Italy with the supposed English patient; she sets up a makeshift hospital in a deserted Italian monastery for him to live out his final days in peaceful seclusion near the end of WWII. The patient, Count Laszlo Almasy (Ralph Fiennes)--who is actually Hungarian--is suffering from disfiguring burns, and spends his days listening to Hana read from one of his remaining possessions--a copy of Herodotus.
This eases his pain, as he slowly recalls his past, and the beautiful woman he so passionately loved. Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas) was the recently wed wife of aristocrat Geoffrey Clifton (Colin Firth). The couple came to the Sahara to be part of England's Royal Geographical Society, and to help with the mapping of the region, led by Count Almasy. Almasy and Katherine began a doomed affair that eventually destroyed them both, as well as Geoffrey.
At the monastery, the peace is disturbed by former thief and Allied spy Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), whose hands--minus his thumbs--are bandaged and concealed; he recognizes the Count, and covets the morphine Hana dispenses to her patient. Sikh minesweeper Kip (Naveen Andrews), another newcomer to the monastery, is grateful for every day he remains alive; Hana becomes attracted to him, though she fears that anyone she is close to is fated to die.
The English Patient was the big winner of the year 1996. It had twelve nominations and nine Oscar wins - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Juliette Binoche), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Film Editing and Best Costume Design. It lost its nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay (Anthony Minghella), Best Actor (Ralph Fiennes) and Best Actress (Kristin Scott Thomas). Its nine Oscar wins made it the third most-awarded film in Academy history - and tied it with two other films with nine wins: Gigi (1958), and The Last Emperor (1987). Previously, only two other films had more wins: West Side Story (1961) (with ten), and Ben-Hur (1959) (with eleven). One year later, in 1997, Titanic would win eleven Academy Awards.
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7.0
(23,361 votes)
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The English Patient
