Best Picture 1996: The English Patient

1996 was hailed by most media and critics as "the year of the independent film." Just look at the nominees for Best Picture: The English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies and Shine. Movies that just about no one had heard of until they got nominated with the obvious exception of Jerry Maguire. It was back before Tom Cruise jumped on couches. I still haven't seen Shine. Apparently, Geoffrey Rush is a crazy guy who plays piano. Don't take that the wrong way, it could be good, I just don't know.

So, The English Patient is the story of Count Almasy played by Ralph Fiennes and his affair with Katharine played by Kristin Scott Thomas. If you're me, you just had to go look that up because all I could remember was that Kristin Scott Thomas is married to Colin Firth in the film and thus, she's cheating on Colin Firth and that just doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. The interesting thing is that structurally the story takes place in two time periods: the affair happens on the eve of World War II and the part in which the Count tells his nurse his story takes place in its final days.

So, if you couldn't tell the love story is lost on me. The Count seems like a possessive jerk and just stands around spouting a lot of romantic puffery with an accent and somehow gets an Oscar for this when frankly I found Maid in Manhattan so much more compelling. I guess that's because he's so consumed by love or whatever, which I'll admit he was less consumed by love in Maid in Manhattan. Katharine is you know, cheating on Colin Firth, so she must be crazy, right? But in the interests of fairness, here's some scenes that I find gross.




And don't forget the supposedly hot scene where Count and Katharine have sex while Colin Firth is playing Santa Claus. I do not joke. Anyway, the war comes, they have to stop their exploration which is okay because no one actually cared about that anyway if they cared about this movie at all. Because I know I didn't. Colin Firth has also gotten wise and in what some characterize as an insane act of revenge, I call trying to do us all a giant favor. He flies a plane into the Count's desert camp with himself and Katharine on it. I couldn't find a clip of that so here's Colin Firth dancing earlier.



So, Colin Firth dies (the character was called Geoffrey Clifton, I just don't care) and I lose all interest. Kristin Scott Thomas is badly injured and the Count takes her to the cave to protect her from the desert. He makes the journey back to Cairo to try to get help, gets thrown in jail, escapes and comes back to find out Katharine is dead.

So, I could go on about the stuff towards the end of the war with Juliette Binoche which is let's face it, more interesting, but I don't care. There's some stuff with Willem Dafoe seeking revenge, but ultimately this film just didn't hold my interest. So if you feel robbed by me, here's some Rotten Tomatoes reviews.


Meanwhile, the best part of this is the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine feels pretty much like I do about The English Patient and faces ostracism because of it, so here's how that ends up.