11/22/96
MOVIE REVIEW: The English Patient
Smouldering in the desert

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**** (out of five)
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth. A Miramax Films release written and directed by Anthony Minghella from the novel by Michael Ondaatje. Rated R, contains violence, sex, nudity, profanity. Running time: 163 minutes.

Although it takes a little time to catch fire, at least figuratively, be patient with The English Patient and you'll be rewarded with the most dreamily romantic film of the year.

And epic, too.

Yes, some people have compared scenes in The English Patient, most of which takes place on the eve of World War II and then in its final days, to Lawrence of Arabia. But really, the only resemblance to that World War I saga is the desert.

For though there's certainly sweep and style in The English Patient and action, too -- the mysterious opening has a biplane carrying what looks to be an unconscious woman being shot down by German troops in the North African desert -- at heart the film is really about heart. Or rather the rediscovery of heart.

There are two romances in the film. One, eked out very slowly in this nearly three-hour movie, revolves around the strange flier of that biplane. Burned beyond recognition, he has amnesia which only slowly recedes into fragments of memories that are rekindled by the notes of a song or as a passage from a book or a letter is read to him. Then we're into flashbacks which will resolve the man's mystery completely -- why he was on that plane, who his passenger was -- but not until the very end.

The other romance revolves around his nurse, Hana, who cares for him in a bombed-out monastery in Italy in the final days of 1944. Hana (Juliette Binoche), a Canadian nurse, has been damaged by the war, too. Her boyfriend has been killed. The men she has cared for often die in front of her. Her best friend is blasted to bits by a land mine.

But caring for "the English patient," for that is what he has been called for lack of positive identification, slowly brings her around to the land of the living. She even begins to be able to love again, falling for a Sikh from India named Kip (Naveen Andrews) who defuses land mines and unexploded bombs.

And though Hana begins to think of her patient, with his monstrous Phantom of the Opera scars, as a saint because of his magical effect on her, those thoughts are soon erased by the sudden arrival of a man who calls himself David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), though that's quickly established as being a phony alias. Caravaggio believes that he knows the real identity and not-so-brilliant past of Hana's patient. And he's determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Based on Michael Ondaatje's prize-winning if impressionistically elliptical novel, director Anthony Minghella has woven a film of war and identity and, most of all, romance.

It does take time to set all this up, however. Although there's a definite attraction between the Hungarian Count Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), who is who the burned pilot turns out to be, and the married Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), their affair is on simmer rather than sizzle.

The film's biggest failing is that, cast with brittle and circumspect British actors, all that passion is a little slow to percolate. Even when these elegant people are thrashing around in the midst of passion, they always manage to pronounce things properly. It defuses a little of the film's heat . . . at least until everything comes together toward the end in such a sentimental way that anyone who has ever been in love is sure to weep. See The English Patient with someone you love.

Fiennes, a man of little fire but great abruptness, may have been a strange choice for the title role. Yet there is a measure of dash to him -- especially when he's trying to keep his lover alive during a raging sandstorm. And he looks great in a tuxedo.

Scott Thomas looks radiant, too, even when naked in her bath. Minghella has shot her so that she positively glows. Yet there's always that slight reserve that, for nearly too long, detracts from the romance that's bubbling beneath the surface.

Binoche, on the other hand, is much earthier and freer to show emotions. Well, she's French, though playing a nurse from Montreal.

Hana's budding romance with Kip is sweetly portrayed. A moment when he hauls her to the top reaches of the monastery chapel to explore its frescoes is charming.

And so when she fears that one of his many dangerous missions is going to be his last -- defusing a very large bomb below a bridge as heavy tanks rumble across it -- her terrors terrify us. We've seen enough of these movies so that when someone has a premonition of danger, watch out!

Eventually, too, the film's mysteries unravel. We learn whether those whispers about the English patient actually being a spy who handed over top-secret desert maps to the Nazis are true . . . and in a surprising way.

In the end, it turns out that war is hell only so long as it's being fought. The English Patient's sense of healing and forgiveness is its strongest card.

Frustrating as it is to fathom at times, in the end it's a richly rewarding experience.