Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Yep that movie. I've been refraining from reviewing it for some time for several reasons. What may surprise you is that I haven't done so because I really do love this film for the layers and layers of story to be found inside. And also because sections of the film make me rather uncomfortable about the level of intensity and pain that is shown in the film.

It scooped up a great many Oscar awards, helped to create a screamingly funny Seinfield episode, and theatre lovers either loved or hated it, there was very little inbetween those two extremes.

Adapted from Michael Ondaatje's novel of the same name, it centers around a man that is found in the North African desert during the second world war. Badly burned, amnesiac, and dying, he is given to the Allies because he has no name and no identity. We catch a bare glimpse of him before the accident, flying over undulating sand dunes that mimic the forms and curves of a woman. Flying a british Moth, we can't see his face, and in the foreward seat there is a woman, asleep, her golden hair rippling in the wind. Then a crash and ruins in the desert, and we move farther along into the future.

A Canadian, Hana (Juliette Binoche), is serving with the British forces as a nurse, she's loving and capable and manages to hold onto her courage as they are shelled, people die around her -- but for Hana, death seems to shadow her as first her fiance, then a fellow nurse, are killed. And for Hanna that's the final straw.

She tells her commanding officer that she'll take the English patient and go to an abandoned monestary to let the man die in peace, away from the slow torture of a moving field hospital. Reluctantly, he agrees and Hanna and the patient find a haven of peace in the Italian mountains.

And slowly, through flashbacks, the patient tells the story of his past to her. We discover that he's not English, but a Hungarian, working to map the Saharan desert with other explorers. Unlike his gregarious companions, Madox(Julian Wadham -- a terrific performance there), Count László Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) is exotic and closed mouthed, living only to fly above the desert and reading his book, a copy of Herodotus. When two more explorers, an English couple, the Cliftons, Geoffrey (Colin Firth) and Katherine (Kirstin Scott Thomas) join them, the shift of power in the group changes slightly, and we see a story of passion and betrayal begin to take shape.

And in between these glimpses, we see Hana finally come out of her shell as a caring nurse into a soul that is healing. The pair in the monestary are soon joined by a pair of bomb defusers, a Sikh, Kip (Naveen Andrews) and his assistant; and David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe) a thumbless thief who's got his own agenda besides the morphine he's steadily pilfering from Hana.

One by one, the threads binding these people come together, with ties and snarls from the past to complicate things further. Anthony Minghella, the director and screenwriter, did a wonderful job of adapting the book, and the visuals and cinematography are simply breathtaking, from the Cave of the Swimmers deep in the desert echoing the darkened church that Hana and her Sikh lover share one day, both of them with decorated walls and art that speak with silent words, it's a subtle film.

You won't find action here, nor a great deal of suspense except for one sequence, it's a thinking film, like a beautifully wrapped japanese gift that you have to uncover a little bit at a time to apprieciate the meaning. Gabriel Yared's score is a wonderful conterpoint to the shots of a sundrenched desert, and we are also treated to Bach's Goldberg Aria and some great swing music by Benny Goodman and Fred Astaire.

Three of the actors got Oscar nominations, (Fiennes, Thomas and Binoche), and there was a slew of awards given for direction, screenplay and music, and the film won 9 Oscars. Alas, I feel that Fiennes deserved the Best Actor award for the role of Almásy, showing a cold man that comes to learn the meaning of love and redemption but at a terrible price. And Kirstin Scott Thomas is wonderful to watch as Katherine, the woman who knows her own heart all too well, and well, I can't tell more or else I'll ruin the film for you, and finding all the connections is what makes the film interesting. I confess, this movie makes me bawl.

This film is not for the young, as it will bore them silly, and there is one graphic torture scene that is very disturbing to watch. Morphine use. Adultery. Nudity and sex. One biplane fu. Some violence.

Best seen on DVD; DVD includes subtitling in English and Spanish; no other special features.



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older