English Patient [Collector's Edition]

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"The English Patient" was one of the first DVDs released by Buena Vista (parent company of Disney, Touchstone, Miramax, and Dimension) in 1998. "The English Patient" was released in 1996, and it won nine Oscars in March of 1997 (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress). Therefore, Buena Vista probably hoped that a prestige production would be a good way to test the waters with the then-new DVD format. However, that DVD was a barebones affair, and the movie´s fans were dismayed to see such shoddy treatment towards a big-time Oscar winner. What´s more, The Criterion Collection released an extras-laden box set of the movie on LaserDisc. The extras were there, but not on the more convenient of the two technologies.

Now, in 2004, Buena Vista is finally releasing a two-disc special edition of "The English Patient" in order to coincide with the DVD release of director Anthony Minghella´s latest prestige literary production, "Cold Mountain". What´s funny about using a new release to promote a catalog title is that "The English Patient" much, much better than "Cold Mountain". While the new movie is lumpy and lacking in thematic and emotional depth plus featuring an out-of-place performance by Renee Zellweger, "The English Patient" was a near-perfect union of cinematic elements. Fortuitously, "The English Patient" turned out to be a great movie despite its troubled production history, beginning with Fox´s demands to cast Demi Moore in one of the key roles and to limit the budget to small-movie costs. Just before principal photography began, Fox pulled the plug on the production, and Miramax stepped into the game with guarantees of funding and artistic freedom.

"The English Patient" won nine Oscars for a year that was considered to be "the year of independent films". That year, only "Jerry Maguire" was a major-studio production in the Best Picture circle, and its director wasn´t even nominated. Meanwhile, movies like "Shine" and "Fargo" joined "The English Patient" in dominating the awards season. The thing is, Miramax basically stepped into the big leagues when Disney bought it, and "The English Patient" is a broad-canvas epic that has little to do with the kinds of concerns that usually dominate indie fare. In fact, not too long ago, "The English Patient" was the kind of movie that major studios made. The movie reminds one of productions like "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (both Columbia) and "Spartacus" (Universal). During the fall and winter seasons, the major studios still release prestige epics like "The Last Samurai" (Warner) and "The Missing" (Columbia again) in order to attract audiences looking for grown-up fare. Therefore, "The English Patient" is not really an indie but a major-studio movie made by a company that still pretends to be an indie house.

In "The English Patient", Hana (Juliette Binoche), a Canadian nurse, tends a man whose entire body was burnt in a horrible accident. As she cares for him, Hana discovers that the man´s name is Count Lazlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), a Hungarian who once participated in mapping expeditions in North Africa. Her talks with Almasy reveal that he had an affair with the wife (Kristin Scott-Thomas) of another expedition member (Colin Firth). Jealousies and World War II lead Almasy, his lover, and his lover´s husband to tragedy.

The movie uses a sophisticated flashback structure that ties the lives of several people into the memories of one woman--Hana. While Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott-Thomas were the ones who were nominated in the lead-acting categories, Juliette Binoche plays the real main character. After all, she is the one who knows Almasy´s story after everyone else has died or left behind the past. Hana´s also a nurse for thematic and symbolic reasons. During the war, various romantic relationships are shattered, but when the war is over, Hana represents healing--the healing of nations, the healing of the international community, the healing of interpersonal relationships, etc.

I´m not sure if I consider the movie to be one of my favorites, but I find it very rewarding to watch because it examines themes that are important to me and examines them well. For example, Almasy gets into trouble with British and German soldiers because of confused national identities and loyalties. Almasy thinks that people should not be bound arbitrarily to their birth locations, but he contradicts himself when he refers nostalgically to his childhood in (presumably) the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The irony of it all is that Almasy is a mapmaker--someone who draws lines on paper--who doesn´t want to be confined by borders. Hm...

The performances are very good across the board, though I do have a reservation about Kristin Scott-Thomas playing the woman who inspires a torrid love affair. Scott-Thomas´s eyes and nose look funny, rendering her face several notches short of what could be deemed classic Western beauty (think Grace Kelly or Ingrid Bergman). It may seem crass that I´m talking about another person´s appearance, but I´m talking about her face in the context of movie casting. Scott-Thomas really doesn´t look the part, even if she did a good job playing it. Meanwhile, this is the only time that I´ve liked Colin Firth, because I think that he really is as plain-looking and personality-less as his character. :-)

Video:
The barebones DVD had a 1.85:1 non-anamorphic widescreen transfer. The new two-disc SE has a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, but it looks to me as if the transfer was made from the same source print as the previous DVD edition. There are numerous instances of dirt, dust, and print damage. Some sequences look rather soft, even though there wasn´t extensive use of CGI (which usually looks out of focus). Colors are not as vibrant as they could be. This isn´t a bad video presentation of the movie, but it has more than an acceptable number of problems.

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