The English Patient

The English Patient (in English: The English Patient) is a 1996 British film directed by Anthony Minghella, based on the homonymous novel by Michael Ondaatje, and set during the interwar period. It was the most awarded film at the Oscar Awards gala that year, with a total of 9 statuettes out of 12 nominations, and a great box office success. It was filmed in Tunisia and Italy.

Plot

The story is set in two different chronotopees at the same time; in Tuscany during World War II and in Egypt between the wars. It tells the story of a severely burned man known only as "the English patient" who is being cared for by Hana (Juliette Binoche), a French-Canadian nurse in an abandoned Italian monastery. The patient is reluctant to reveal personal information and it is only through a series of flashbacks that his past can be accessed. It is gradually revealed that he is actually a Hungarian cartographer, Count László Almásy (Ralph Fiennes), who was making a map of the Sahara desert and whose affair with a married woman, Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), ultimately instance led him to his current situation. As the patient remembers more, David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a former Canadian intelligence operative and trained thief, arrives at the monastery. Caravaggio lost his thumbs while being interrogated by a Nazi army officer and gradually it is revealed that it was the patient's actions that had led to his torture. In addition to the patient's story, the film spends time on Hana and her romance with Kip (Naveen Andrews), an Indian Sikh sapper in the British Army. Due to the various events in her past, in which her boyfriend and a friend were killed in a short period of time, Hana believes that anyone who gets close to her is likely to die, and Kip's position as a bomb disposal makes May your romance be full of tension.

In the first phase, set in the 1930s, the gentry Hungarian count Laszlo de Almásy is co-leader of a Royal Society of Geography archaeological and surveying expedition in Egypt and Libya. He and his English partner Madox are academics at heart, having to do their jobs amid Europe's political turmoil. At the beginning of the film, the Clifton couple, Geoffrey (Colin Firth) and Katherine, join the expedition by providing a generous financial contribution and raising the spirit of the group quite a bit. Although at first skeptical that his presence in the camp will help him, the earl falls for the beautiful and refined Katherine. Since Geoffrey is often away from the group on other matters, an affair arises between the two. The last months before the start of the war will bring a great archaeological achievement: the discovery made by the count of the "Cueva de los Nadadores", an ancient sub-Saharan cave decorated with "swimming figures", cave paintings dating from prehistoric times. In this part of the film, the romance between Katherine and the Count develops to its fullest, but then apparently fades away. Katherine feels guilty for her infidelity, while the earl shows a streak of jealousy along with an imbalance that later haunts him.

The fall of 1939 and the onset of war bring all digging in the cave to a close, forcing Madox and the Count to go their separate ways. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Clifton has discovered his wife's affair, and seeks sudden and dramatic revenge: a crash with his plane, with Katherine aboard, at the earl's camp in the desert. The accident kills Geoffrey instantly, he severely injures Katherine, and despite his attempts to end the earl's life, he fails. Almásy manages to take Katherine to the shelter of the Cueva de los Nadadores. Because she is unable to walk, he leaves her with food, water, a flashlight, and a fire, and then begins his blistering three-day journey on foot to the nearest town for help. The city is in the hands of the British Army and the earl, dazed and dehydrated, with his name not his English, is unable to coherently explain to officials the plane crash and Katherine's plight. In his place, he loses his temper during the interrogation, so they put him in the military prison thinking that he may be an enemy of the Axis. Sent chained to a train north of Benghazi, he escapes, meets up with the German Africa Korps lines, and quickly negotiates to trade his desert maps with the Germans for gasoline for Madox's plane, a de Havilland Tiger Moth that had left near the site of his archaeological expedition. By the time he returns to the cave, Katherine is dead, something that devastates the earl terribly. He manages to place Katherine's body on the plane and it takes off. However, mistaking the Tiger Moth for an RAF reconnaissance plane, a German anti-aircraft battery shoots and shoots down the plane that Almásy is piloting in the desert. This, though horribly burned, still lives, and is rescued by Bedouin tribesmen, who rescue him and begin treating him with herbs and ointments.

The second phase of the film moves to Italy and takes place during the last months of the war. The Count is already an invalid patient, and totally dependent at that moment on morphine and the care of his French-Canadian nurse Hana, who had separated from her medical unit and established herself in an Italian monastery in order to better care for him. That place becomes the focal point of the plot threads, joined by some new and some unfinished from the North African phase, themed around love, chance, and the backdrop of war. Hana has seen two of her loved ones die in the Italian campaign and wonders if her relationship with a British-Indian lieutenant will break her cycle of love and grief or if it will simply continue. A visitor to the villa named Caravaggio is searching for the disfigured count who he believes plays a role in his troubled time in Egypt and Libya. But Caravaggio inadvertently stumbles across the remnants of the Count-Katherine-Geoffrey love triangle of 1940-42. He has lost both thumbs in a horrific interrogation at the hands of the Nazis and has since hunted down and killed those he holds responsible for his fate. He believes that the Count was part of a network of espionage and intrigue in the desert and knows that he traded maps with the Germans and for this he seeks revenge. Caravaggio confronts the count with the news of the suicide of Mádox, a friend of Almásy, and posits that the count killed the Cliftons. Only a full account in the villa of the accident at the Cliftons and the Count of Maps' deal with the Germans to get Katherine back leads Caravaggio to understanding and forgiveness.

Hana also finds reconciliation at the end of the film. Her lieutenant survives a brush with death on the last day of the war by defusing a bomb and hope in love resurfaces. Kip will have to leave to continue his work, but he says goodbye to Hana, leaving the hope of a future reunion between them. Right after, the count asks his nurse for an overdose of morphine, to free him from the terrible suffering caused by both physical and psychological injuries and Hana, moved, euthanizes him.

One of the most memorable scenes sees Hana illuminating frescoes in a chapel with a torch. This cycle of frescoes, Legend of the Cross, is located in the Bacci Chapel of the Basilica of Saint Francis, in Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy, and was painted by Piero della Francesca. This scene is comparable to another that also appears in the film: the moment in which László illuminates the cave paintings that he discovers in the Cave of Swimmers with a flashlight.

Historical assessment

The film is located halfway between reality and the film and is that it takes as a reference the biography of the historical figure of the Hungarian László Almásy to develop its interesting plot. Despite this, he disfigures her until he turns her into a character of the director and the writer on whose novel this feature film is based.

László Almásy was born in the summer of 1895 in Hungary into a wealthy family. There are debates about his title of count, since it is known that he did not inherit it, but rather received it in later years, but there are those who say that said title never had any real validity. He was a pilot, businessman, geographer, hunter, cartographer, and explorer. When touring the north of the African continent on several occasions, he fell in love with it. It was on one of his expeditions that he heard of the legend of the Zerzura Oasis. Almásy would become infatuated with this mysterious settlement that had never been located by anyone and he undertook an expedition with several men to find it. They only knew that it was located between Egypt and Libya. Thanks to the aerial expeditions that he carried out with his plane and his innate piloting skills, he was able to find the Wadi Sura , where the famous Cave of the Swimmers was located; discovery that showed that thousands of years ago Africa was not as dry a continent as it is today, but that there were places to swim.

After the start of World War II, the expedition had to be put on hold. The count, due to his Hungarian origin and his vast knowledge of piloting, joined the Afrika Korps, a military corps through which he infiltrated groups of German spies into African territory to help Mussolini in his control of North Africa. When the war ended, Almásy would be tried for being considered a war criminal, but they had to release him because they did not have enough evidence. He died in Austria of amoebic dysentery in 1956, having contracted the disease while searching Africa for the buried army of Cambyses II.

The film, therefore, tells the biography of the Hungarian pilot in half measures. He did not collaborate with the Germans out of necessity to save Katherine, but out of his own conviction. He did not have an extramarital affair with Mrs. Clifton, as this is an invented last name and, even more important, he was a confessed homosexual. And, above all, he never met an end as an English patient, covered in burns, but instead died in Austria of a disease contracted in Africa during one of his many expeditions.

What the film does reflect in a way attached to the facts is the work of the war nurse. Manifested mainly in Hana, it shows the resources available at that time, the huge number of war wounded and the mentality of the moment with respect to their care. A current was popularized that defended that spending time with the patient helped him to improve his condition. In addition, the introduction of the woman as one more soldier of the battalion is also shown, in her nurse's position. Hana embodies the true role of the nurse during the war.

Cast

• Ralph Fiennes... Almasy
• Juliette Binoche... Hana
• Willem Dafoe... Caravaggio
• Kristin Scott Thomas... Katharine Clifton
• Naveen Andrews... Kip
• Colin Firth... Geoffrey Clifton
• Julian Wadham... Madox
• Jürgen Prochnow... Major Müller
• Kevin Whately... Hardy
• Clive Merrison... Fenelon-Barnes
• Nino Castelnuovo... D'Agostino
• Hichem Rostom... Fouad
• Peter Rühring... Bermann
• Geordie Johnson... Oliver
• Torri Higginson... Mary
• Liisa Repo-Martell... Jan
• Raymond Coulthard... Rupert Douglas
• Philip Whitchurch... Corporal Dade
• Lee Ross... Spalding

Awards