A piece of rough brown paper fills the screen.  
A brush gently traces an abstract figure of an 
ancient swimmer.  The brown canvas gradually 
transforms into a blurred image of the ancient 
Sahara that suggests a feminine body and surmises 
infinity.  The swimmer fades into a bi-plane 
that along with Wagner-like music soars above 
the desert and, true to Wagnerian form, bursts 
into a blazing flame.

Like so many epic poems, The English Patient 
begins its story in the middle.  From this point, 
it relates two love stories, one in the past and 
one in the future.  The one in the past is 
constructed in the tradition of a grand romantic 
tragedy.  It is a story of forbidden love:  Two 
people driven and compelled by passion to do 
something the ordinary people would never do.  While 
the events of that story happened only a few years 
ago, the setting suggests that it might as well 
have happened thousands of years ago.  The remote 
desert serves as a vast theater upon which a grand 
tragedy unfolds as similar events must have occurred 
and repeated again and again for countless many times.
As a perfect theater, the desert remains the same for 
eons leaving no trace of the drama that once unfolded 
upon it.

It is a cosmic story.  The two main characters were 
carefully and deliberately constructed out of 
their respected space and time--remote, grand and 
mythical.  Unlike the people around them, they were 
the only ones who truly lived in and belonged to the 
desert, and totally oblivious to the contemporary 
events unfolding around them.  They understood the 
desert and its intricate language and the desert 
embraced them.  They never said much to each other, 
but the desert spoke for them and declared their love--
the sand storm and the stars it obliterated, 
Herodotus and his story of Gyges and the rain of 
blood on the English coast, a place and time even 
more remote than the desert.  They lived in the time 
and the cave of the ancient swimmers.

In an ancient monastery of Italy, another love 
story unfolds--not grand and cosmic, but an 
intimate one of plums, gardens and olive oil.  In 
contrast to the desert which obliterates everything, 
here all is green and steeped in history.  In this 
story, Count Almasy is like an ancient relic both 
physically and psychologically.  Structurally, all 
this serves to push the first story further back 
in time.  Ultimately, this too is a story of doomed 
love, but in a very human way.

The four lead actors did a fine job, but not outstanding.
In a film of this nature, a competent performance is all 
that is required.  Fiennes and Thomas come out far 
better than Andrews and Binoche but this is because 
Fiennes and Thomas had roles that are far better written.  
Binoche's character had a few cliches such as "Everyone 
I loved is dead" and in general suffers from talking a 
bit too much.  Andrews' character is not well developed.

The true star of the film is the desert and the desert 
speaks with the most solemn voice.  There was a scene 
in which a few characters exchanged a few comic lines.  
Then suddenly, came this overwhelming echo of a Muslim 
prayer.  Before seeing this film, I always thought 
these prayers a bit quaint.

Toward the end, we return to the desert with Almasy as his
plane takes off while Hana and Kathrine's voices merge 
into one, declaring they being the real country, and we 
remember the image of the infinite Sahara at the beginning
that resembles a feminine body.

* * * * out of 4.


Eugene Xia