English Patient 英国病人 英语影评

An epic of life, death, betrayal and lust, The English Patient paints a beautiful and intriguing portrait of the desert during wartime. Somewhere in the Sahara Desert, in 1943, a biplane flies low over the curvaceous dunes. Spotting the British colours, a German anti-aircraft emplacement brings it down in a ball of fire. The pilot, Count Laszlo Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), fails to die despite his terrible burns, and is instead rescued by passing Bedouin. Turned over to the Allied authorities a little while later, he is unable to recall anything of his past (except that he's not German). With so little to go on, he is named the "English Patient" and winds up in the care of a Canadian medical unit stationed in Italy. One of the nurses, Hana (Juliette Binoche), takes special care of him and an attachment forms. Realising that her charge hasn't long to live, Hana manages to persuade her superiors to let her hole up with the Count in an abandoned villa, alone until he succumbs to the inevitable.

Dosed up with morphine and lulled by Hana's out loud readings, the Count drifts between lucidity and memories of the past. The hint of romance that Hana exudes brings to mind pre-war times, when the Count was a desert-based archaeologist. A characteristically reticent individual of Hungarian descent, Laszlo liked nothing better than to explore and chart the emptiness of the shifting sands. At one point, a fellow adventurer and member of the Royal Geographical Society, Geoffrey Clifton (Colin Firth), flies out from Cairo to join the team, accompanied by his beautiful wife Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas). Laszlo reacts badly to the unwanted female company but manages to tolerate her by retreating even further into himself and moaning to his friend Madox (Julian Wadham). Gradually Laszlo thaws though, as Katharine proves herself the equal of anyone else, even if her desert common-sense skills leave a lot to be desired (such as gazing placidly towards an oncoming sandstorm).

In the Italian villa, Hana is grateful for the time to reflect and come to terms with the recent deaths of both her boyfriend and a close friend (in separate incidents). Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a strange, elusive individual turns up out of the blue. Seemingly a good Samaritan, due to his gift of precious eggs, Caravaggio seems fascinated by Hana's hideously scarred patient and stays a while. Various troops pass by, such as mine-clearers Kip (Naveen Andrews) and Sgt. Hardy (Kevin Whately), but mostly it's just Hana and Laszlo. Made mysterious by virtue of revealing nothing, Hana is content to find out what she can while Laszlo paddles on the shores of remembrance. Caravaggio does exactly the same yet his questions are slightly more pointed, almost as if he knows something special about the Count. Perhaps he can shed light upon who the Count really is (or was)?

Based upon the fine novel of Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient gave every impression of being unfilmable. However, Anthony Minghella has managed to fashion a lush, romantic, sweeping tragedy from the given text, admirably converting its lyricism into visual poetry. Hence the most striking aspect of The English Patient is its photography, superb on both the endless scale of the desert and on the intimacy of the human face. It's impossible to make the Sahara look bad, yet the film goes a step further by making the passion that Laszlo feels for it palpable. Nearly as impressive are the editing and score; the former delights in its fades between the past and present, suggesting contacts across time, while the latter soars and howls with vigour, perfect accompaniment to the pain that squats in the hearts of every major character. Maybe that's the problem. Everyone is broken inside, a victim of fate, yet without the contrast of normality, how can you tell when anything's wrong?

The level of acting within The English Patient is uniformly high, from the central characters to the smallest walk-on roles. Confronted with dialogue that rolls off of the tongue, the cast take up the challenge and put what they can into interpretation and nuance (such as conveying their real emotions through the eyes). Unfortunately this doesn't, frustratingly, equate to excellent performances, for two reasons. Laszlo is the bridge between the parallel storylines yet while the pieces of his story are interesting, they aren't involving. Fiennes plays the Count at a distance, which then rubs off on those around him, such as Scott Thomas and Binoche (though at least they get given strong characters). Passion bubbles away throughout the film but it's only at the end, with the scenes of closure, that it erupts. In addition, the characters that interact only in Italy fail to develop the depth or resonance of those in the desert. They're the poor relations, starved of dimension yet given enough screen time to promise a great deal more. There are moments of joy for sure but The English Patient ultimately short-changes its cast.

A maze of flashback and inference, The English Patient is at its best as it pastes together the fragments of a life destroyed by desperation and love. Echoing the last gasps of the British Empire at play, before being brought down to Earth by WWII, betrayal is a key factor in this enveloping destruction. Laszlo betrays himself by refusing to yield to his desires (then swinging too far the other way), Katharine betrays herself and her husband by giving in to the inevitable, British troops betray both Laszlo and Katharine through sheer xenophobia, leading to the betrayal of Caravaggio and so on. The circle closes and everyone loses out. In the end, what drives The English Patient is a need to know how Laszlo came to be in Hana's care, why he's burned beyond recognition and who he is. This is pure mechanics though. The heart of the film lies in the sorrow of discovering what you've lost when it's already gone, for this is where the pain lies. Unfortunately, this only emerges as the film reaches what it had been building up to throughout and by then it's too late for all concerned.