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The English Patient Plot

The English Patient is a 1996 film adaptation of the novel by Michael Ondaatje. The film, directed by Anthony Minghella, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Ondaatje worked closely with the filmmakers to preserve his artistic vision, and has stated that he is happy with the film as an adaptation.

The film is set during World War II and depicts a critically burned man, at first known only as 'the English patient', who is being looked after by Hana, a French-Canadian nurse in a ruined Italian monastery. The patient is suffering from amnesia, but through a series of flashbacks he is gradually able to rediscover his past. It is slowly revealed that he is in fact a Hungarian geographer, Count László de Almásy, who was making a map of the Sahara Desert, and whose affair with a married woman ultimately brought about his present situation. As the patient remembers more, David Caravaggio, a Canadian thief, arrives at the monastery. Caravaggio lost his thumbs while being interrogated by officers of the German Africa Corps, and he gradually reveals that it was the patient's actions that had brought about his torture.

In addition to the patient's story, the film devotes time to Hana and her romance with Kip, an Indian sapper in the British Army. Due to various events in her past, Hana believes that anyone who comes close to her is likely to die, and Kip's position as a bomb defuser makes their romance full of tension.

The film is often radically different from the novel, which is far less focused on the love affair between Almásy and Katharine. Among other differences, Jurgen Prochnow's German character was an Italian officer in the book, and the circumstances of Caravaggio's capture by Axis troops were also drastically different.

Ondaatje based the central figure on the real Count László de Almásy, a famous Hungarian researcher of the Sahara Desert. Like the character, Almásy was a disciple of Herodotus, and discoverer of the Ain Doua prehistoric rock painting sites in the western Jebel Uweinat mountains, on the Gilf Kebir plateau in what is today remote Southwestern Egypt. However, the film's version of Almásy is still heavily fictionalised. A factual overview of his life is provided in the 2002 Saul Kelly book, The Hunt for Zerzura: The Lost Oases and the Desert War.

A central theme in the film is that national borders are a crude way to distinguish between people. Almásy is introduced as 'the English patient', but it is later revealed that he is Hungarian. Similarly, a song that he listens to, which Katharine assumes to be Arabic, turns out to be a Hungarian song: "My dajka sang it to me when I was a child growing up in Budapest". Almásy and his fellow surveyors are a multinational team who pride themselves on their friendship across national borders, but they are eventually divided by the war that erupts between their countries. When Caravaggio arrives at the monastery, Hana is delighted to meet a fellow Canadian, but Almásy says "Why are people so happy when they collide with someone from the same place? What happened in Montreal when you passed a man in the street? Did you invite him to live with you?"

National divisions cause the tragedy at the end of the film. When Almásy tries to save Katharine's life by walking across the desert for three days, he blurts out his name to a British officer he meets: Count László de Almásy. The officer assumes this to be a German name, and when Almásy loses his temper, he is knocked unconscious and sent away in shackles, so that Katharine is left to die.

Dying in the cave, Katharine's final thoughts linger on her aversion to political boundaries: she writes "I want all this [the emotions we have felt] marked on my body. Where the real countries are. Not boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know someday you will carry me out into the palace of winds. That's all I've wanted, to walk in such a place with you, with friends, an earth without maps."

Related to the theme of nationality is the word "ownership", which is repeatedly used in the film. When, after they sleep together, Katharine asks Almásy what he hates most, he offends her by saying, "Ownership. Being owned. When you leave you should forget me." The concept of ownership is important to Almásy's job as mapper of the desert: Madox tells him that owning the maps means owning the desert, but Almásy scoffs that the desert cannot be owned.

However, Almásy later begins to demand ownership of Katherine. At first, his claims are teasing: exploring her naked body, he says "I claim this shoulder blade" and then touches the cleft between her collarbones saying "I want this!"; he even gives it a name, the "Almásy Bosphorus". Later, in a crazed desperation to regain his relationship with Katharine, he says "I want to touch you. I want the things which are mine, which belong to me." Almásy insists that his love for Katharine entitles him to ownership of her, but she denies his demands.

A thimble given to Katharine by Almásy becomes a motif that reappears throughout the film. It is first briefly seen when it is lifted from the sand after the plane crash at the beginning of the film.

Later in the film, it is revealed that, in a reversal of gender norms, Almásy can sew and Katharine cannot. As she critically observes his clumsy repair job on the dress he tore off her shoulders, Katharine says "A woman should never learn to sew, and if she can she should never admit to it."

Later, in the market, Almásy is seen buying the thimble for Katharine on the same day as her wedding anniversary to her husband. However, Almásy states that it is filled with saffron dye, implying that it is not intended to be used for sewing.

Katharine views the thimble as a symbol for their illicit love. After she has ended the affair and Geoffrey has killed himself by crashing the plane, Almásy says, "You're wearing the thimble." She replies, "Of course. You idiot. I always wear it. I've always worn it. I've always loved you."

When Almásy returns to the cave to recover Katharine's body, he opens the thimble and rubs the saffron across her face and neck. Her death, of course, has made her pale, and by rubbing the dye across her face, he makes her face yellow.

In his book, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film (2002), Michael Ondaatje records his conversations with the film's editor and sound designer Walter Murch, who won two Academy Awards for the film. Murch describes the complexity of editing a film with multiple flashbacks and timeframes; he edited and re-edited numerous times, and notes that the final film features over 40 time transitions.

The film garnered widespread critical acclaim and was a major award winner as well as a box office success; its awards included the Academy Award for Best Picture, the Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Film. Juliette Binoche won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, nosing out Lauren Bacall for The Mirror Has Two Faces (it would have been Bacall's first Oscar win, and in her acceptance speech Binoche graciously commented that Bacall ought to have won). Anthony Minghella took home the Oscar for Best Director. Kristin Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes were nominated for Best Actress and Best Actor. Thomas's nomination came as a gratifying affirmation of her success after having received the dubious honor of being nominated for "Worst New Star" in the 1986 Golden Raspberry Awards. In all, The English Patient was nominated for an impressive eleven awards and ultimately walked away with nine.

An episode of Seinfeld was devoted to lampooning the film's fervent supporters: Elaine is dumped by her boyfriend because of her tepid response to the film, and her critique culminates with the outburst, "Quit telling your stupid story, about the stupid desert, and just die already! Die!!.