The dearly departed movie critic Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun Times that he wanted to watch The English Patient twice, once to formulate his questions and another to figure out the answers. I did watch The English Patient for the second time a couple of weeks ago and decided that I need to see it a third time to feel confident in the answers I came up with. Why, you might ask, would I be willing to submit myself to yet another viewing of a film lasting over two and a half hours just for the sake of tying up a few puzzling loose ends? You might call it a labor of love.
Having "said" that, I still must admit I grappled with the question of whether the film deserves an A- or an A. Immediately after my second viewing I made a mental note that this was an A- movie, certainly one of the best I expect to see this year. But as the following days went by I could not get the movie out of my head, notwithstanding the fact that I watched a couple of other movies in the interim. Such is a characteristic of an A movie. So many scenes made a lasting imprint, with credit going to the leading players (identified below) under the direction of Anthony Minghella, who also wrote the screenplay, plus the breathtaking cinematography of John Seale.
The most surprisingly effective element of The English Patient is the use of flashbacks. I've written before, in fact as recently as January 29, that I am not typically fond of temporal scene shifting or flashbacks, especially if they appear to be a choice used by the director for nothing more than artistic reasons. The 1992 novel by Michael Ondaatje and the adapted screenplay by Minghella contain such a plethora of flashbacks that the film's editor, the brilliant Walter Murch, admitted he dreaded the project. That may have been false modesty by Murch, as he was the man called upon to edit The Godfather Trilogy. Indeed, Murch might be the MVP of The English Patient's production.
Ever since watching my all-time favorite film, 1942's Casablanca, I have become a self-declared sucker for cinema romance, especially those like Casablanca and The Winds Of War (a 1983 television miniseries) against the backdrop of war. In the sub-genre of wartime romance, The English Patient belongs in the upper tier.
****
Here are the movies I watched at The Quentin Estates in this year's first quarter.
1. Bombshell (2019 biodrama; Charlize Theron/Megan Kelly, a prime time Fox News anchor, considers whether to step forward in support of Nicole Kidman/Gretchen Carlson’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox CEO John Lithgow/Roger Ailes.) B-
2. Death On The Nile (1978 mystery; Peter Ustinov, as the internationally famous sleuth Hercule Poirot, joins forces with David Niven, a former division head for the British government's spy agency, to solve a murder on a Nile River cruise steamer on which almost every passenger is a suspect.). A-
3. The Doors (1991 biodrama; Val Kilmer/Jim Morrison, a poet turned accidental rock god, destroys his career and life with drugs and booze.) C+
4. The English Patient (1996 drama; at the end of World War II Ralph Fiennes, a critically injured Hungarian count, is cared for in a bombed out Italian monastery by Canadian nurse Juliette Binoche, to whom he recounts the story of his love affair with Kristin Scott Thomas.) A
5. Red Sparrow (2018 spy drama; Jennifer Lawrence is a manipulated Russian agent who is assigned to develop a relationship with CIA agent Joel Edgerton for the purpose of identifying the Americans’ mole in the Kremlin.) C+
6. Richard Jewell (2019 biodrama; Paul Walter Hauser plays Richard Jewell, a security guard and cop wanna be, who is unethically named as a suspect by Atlanta journalist Olivia Wilde based on an unsubstantiated tip from FBI inspector John Hamm.) B-
7. Shakespeare In Love (1998 dramedy; Joseph Fiennes as young Will Shakespeare falls in love with beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow, who becomes his muse and co-star in the production of his play, originally titled Romeo & Ethel, The Pirate’s Daughter.) B+
8. Valentine’s Day (2010 rom-com; Astin Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Fox and Jessica Beale are some of the LA residents whose love lives undergo changes on Valentine’s Day.) B-
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