The English Patient

Director: Anthony Minghella

1996 / 162min / DCP

Received wisdom that Michael Ondaatje’s lauded 1992 novel was “unfilmable” was treated to a stern rebuff when Minghella’s visually and emotionally extravagant adaptation hit screens, starring Ralph Fiennes as the titular patient, in fact a Hungarian cartographer grievously wounded when caught in the crossfire of World War II, Binoche as the French Canadian nurse who becomes his caretaker and confidante, and Kristin Scott Thomas as the one our patient loved and lost, their affair recalled in extensive flashbacks threaded through the picture. “The triumph of the film lies not just in the force and the range of the performances—the crisp sweetness of Scott Thomas, say, versus the raw volatility of Binoche—but in Minghella’s creation of an intimate epic: vast landscapes mingle with the minute details of desire, and the combination is transfixing.” —The New Yorker

Distributor: Paramount

Part of Juliette Binoche Emotion in Motion