Session 018 - The English Patient
Who saw it and what are your thoughts on it?
Monday, May 12, 2008
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6 comments:
It's been a while since I've seen this but from what I can remember it was sweeping, and epic and freakin LONG.
Seriously though, it was some pretty in depth story telling don't you think? I remember liking it but thinking it should have been a lot shorter. Perhaps if other people chime in it'll spark some memories...til then, this is all I can add. Sorry!
I promise you Mulligan that I will watch this and hopefully Ordinary People within a week. Whatever free time I have usually goes to GTA and Friday Night Lights, but I haven't forgotten thiese Screening Room sessions. In fact I got a good copy of Last Emperor already to watch once I'm done with the other two.
Okay I saw it and too my surprise...I still thought it was really boring. I had to split this thing up I was so bored with it.
It's certainly beautiful and I think it has a really poetic and lyrical story to tell, but I just don't find the chemistry between the lovers to be all that believable. Say what you will about Titanic (i think it is a great film) but at least the leads had real passion between them. Here Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas do things like caressing a neck cavity or adoring naked cave swimmers. Its all kind of pretentious.
I also think the story structure is unnecessarily convoluted. Chronology is never really certain with dates only given a few times. And the climax was rather anti-climatic since we know she was going to die. It was too long, ill paced, and too emotionally detached for me to find it to be the worthy Oscar winner it was.
I did like Juliette Binoche though.
Well you beat me to it Ty… and beat me to a bunch of the points I wanted to make as well.
So many people had warned me for so long that it wasn’t necessary to see this film that I had secretly hoped that I would find much to like in The English Patient. Maybe it’s just my contrary nature but I like to have differing opinions on films and after all, it did win Best Picture.
Alas, now having seen it, it’s probably the worst Best Picture winner of the 90’s… and worse, we had either Jerry Maguire or Fargo as Best Picture nominees that got edged out.
But hey, at least Shine didn’t win!
I’ll agree with you on a number of things starting with the fact that I never bought into the relationship between Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas. Ralph Fiennes is so uncharismatic in this film that I actually began to doubt whether he had the ability to act (and, yes, I’ve seen his masterful Schindler’s List performance). Here he’s just a scumbag (typecast much?), devoid of charm and personally I have absolutely no idea how we’re supposed to buy (or care about) this blossoming love affair when the leads are so painfully dull. Kristin Scott Thomas is pretty flat herself, apparently trying to bore the story along and relying too heavily on her looks to conjure up the emotion and desire she needs to express. The whole thing is akin to watching a corpse fall in love with a photograph.
Which, ironically, isn’t too far from where the story is headed…
Faring much, much better is Juliette Binoche (who won an Oscar for the role), Naveen Andrews and, especially, Willem Dafoe as Caravaggio (who should have). Dafoe’s eccentric and intriguing character invigorates the film when it otherwise mopes around, like its characters, content to live in the past. Only when he’s on screen does there seem to be any reason for the story to continue moving along. His need to know what happens actually makes it more interesting for us as well.
Unfortunately the film is also over-reliant on flashbacks. Because the story is all told verbally, and they are trying to balance the story with another one taking place in the present, it goes back and forth constantly which gets irritating at times… and the film’s length does it no favors. Stretching this story out to damn near 3 hours is criminal. It’s not an epic story of love, as much as it wants you to think it is. It’s just one that takes place during wartime and has a unique background, the desert. A much tighter cut story could have actually worked wonders for this thing and might have helped cover up or remove much of the passionless scenes.
As I said, I much preferred the “present day” story, where Fiennes (draped under so much makeup it’s impossible to tell if he’s acting well or not) is horribly burned, having been pulled from the wreckage of a plane crash. He’s telling his story back to both his nurse (the habitually unlucky Binoche, who’s caring for Fiennes and desperately trying to keep him alive because it seems every other person she gets close to dies) and Caravaggio (Dafoe), a mysterious, admitted thief who comes out to the abandoned house and whose motives remain concealed well into the storyline.
What Caravaggio’s reason for being there and what he intends to do becomes far more interesting than Fienne’s and Thomas’ adulterous love story. It’s no secret I’m not a fan of “cheating” films as a whole, but at least make the passion appear true. Poor Colin Firth has to pal around as a happy-go-lucky jerkoff for much of the film (again, typecasting?) and there doesn’t even appear to be a reason for it.
Besides, Binoche and Andrews have a much more appealing relationship unfolding in the “present,” where this film should have spent more of its time.
OMG I didn't realize Fargo lost this. That makes the experience all the worse.
Definitly looking forward to your selections for the upcoming screening room sessions. Haven't seen any of them and I think I'll like all of them on some level. Looking forward to it. Now we got to watch another 3 hour long epic in the Last Emperor. But at least Criterion gave this a great release. I trust they wouldn't choose a cruddy film to do such a great DVD on. Don't think English Patient will get quite the same attention ever with its anniversary sets.
See, that's why it was a good idea for you to fill out those "List of Bests." I just go over to that site and find a bunch of classics that we both haven't seen and throw them up for the next sessions. I'm looking forward to them all as well, probably Nashville most of all actually.
Kind of wish I had spaced out The Last Emperor a little better as well myself, but I'll manage. I just got the Criterion DVD of it too, so I'll watch that later on this week.
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