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cin-e-rama: triptych format (three cameras, three projectors) employing a high, wide, deeply curved, three-panel screen, yielding a panorama that extended nearly to the limits of peripheral vision; introduced in 1952.
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An Intensely Personal Epic I was swept away by Anthony Minghella's beautiful adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's 1992 novel. This film burns with a gem-like flame as it moves from the arid deserts of pre-World War II Egypt to the lush hillsides of post-war Italy. It is a compelling meditation on the claims that love and nationhood have on personal identity, and on the power of war to skew those claims. Following the paths of lovers before, during, and after the war, Minghella's movie centers on the adulterous affair of an archaelogist, the Count (Ralph Fiennes), and his colleague's wife, Katherine (Kristin Scott Thomas). During one rendezvous, Katherine asks the Count what he hates most in the world. Perhaps thinking of her husband's claim on her, he tells Katherine that he hates ownership. Katherine reacts furiously to his words because she sees his hatred of ownership as a fear of love. She wants him to own her, to love her, but he is afraid to acknowledge his passion. This one moment typifies the emotional complexity of this film. The English Patient is about many different types of ownership, many different modes of possession: a husband's possession of his wife, a country's possession of its citizens, and two pairs of lovers' possession of one another. The personal and the political are continually mapped and remapped over each another, until bodily flesh and sand dunes seem to be two parts of the same landscape of desire.
Minghella's Lean-influenced vision combines sharply intellectual characters with irrational and all-consuming passions. See it on the big screen while you can; the cinematography is breathtaking, and the epic nature of the love story makes the trip to the theatre well worthwhile.
Rating (1-5): 5.0
The English Patient (1996) |
Fiennes gives an intense, haunted performance; his eyes smoke and smolder over his tightly-pressed lips. Thomas is simply radiant; she acts with rare passion and intelligence. As an
Italian nurse taking care of the burned Count at an abandoned villa
after the war, Binoche acts with softness and subtlety. Naveen Andrewes
gracefully plays Binoche's romantic partner, a role not often given to
Indian men in American cinema.