Patch Adams — Sirippu Doctor
  • Visual poem — In the mood for love
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    I follow films and music, like a monk ! I value your comments. You can find my tamil poems here. http://roughnot.blogspot.com/ .

    The English Patient — Tales of love quotient.

    Posted by on 5/01/09 • Categorized as Film review ( English )

    Engpat
           
    Film : The Eng­lish Patient [ 1996/Drama]
    Based on a novel writ­ten in 1992/British/160 mins
    Cast : Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juli­ette Binoche
    Cin­e­matog­ra­phy : John Seale
    Edited by :Wal­ter Murch
    Screen­play & Directed by : Anthony Minghella
            
    What trav­els along with us con­sis­tently, right from our child­hood [ Shadow-nu kadichu vaikad­hinga, pls ].. It’s mem­o­ries. It could be of any kind.. sum­mer hol­i­days, friends, cin­ema, school ground, col­lege days, girls, jour­neys, tours, first salary, lit­tle sur­prises. ‘The Eng­lish Patient’ is all about dig­ging the mem­o­ries from almost a death bed. How about a knowl­edge­able, desert explorer thinks about his past. [ We hardly could dif­fer­en­ti­ate between dessert and desert :) ] This per­son had been in the most tough­est desert jour­neys, reads books, writes a book, enor­mously inter­ested in music..
                          
    This movie is nar­rated in non-linear [ mostly present and past alter­na­tively ] and I feel that adds a fab­u­lous expe­ri­ence, watch­ing this movie. Pre­sent­ing a movie in this man­ner is a tough job [ Other best movies of non-linear nar­ra­tions are 21 Grams, Amores per­ros, Memento, Flags of our fathers and almost all films of Quentin Taran­tino (except jackie brown) ]. Taran­tino movies are feast to watch [ Thani kad­hai ! ].
           
    The good­ness of a novel turn­ing into a movie script is its rich­ness of char­ac­ters and events. Char­ac­ter biog­ra­phy and events are already well set and of course the novel has to be prop­erly penned as a script. [ Acad­emy has orig­i­nal and adapted screen­play sec­tion of awards, separately ].
    [ Review aarambin­gap­paa .. ]
    Plot :
             
    The story is set in 1930s and 1944 [ shown as present and the flash­backs go to 30’s ]..
                 
    The poetic love story starts with a plane explod­ing with fire. The severely burnt pilot [ Almasy ] is treated by some Ara­bi­ans in the desert and even­tu­ally moved to a war med­ical camp. Hana is an ill fated n beau­ti­ful nurse starts nur­tur­ing him. She looses her beloved ones in the war and she thinks who­ever she feel closer would die. She keeps the burnt pilot in an aban­doned library like build­ing [ Ital­ian villa ] and takes care of.
      
    The pilot named as ‘Eng­lish patient’ thinks of his past life in series of flash­backs [ tiny flash­back scenes ] which involves a geo­log­i­cal expe­di­tion, poetic love, lust, betrayal and war related pol­i­tics. In par­al­lel, Almasy, Hana, a thief, and a sap­per find them­selves in each oth­ers com­pany in the old Ital­ian villa, close to the end of World War II. The flash­back series unfold the iden­tity of Almasy, his love and links to the other char­ac­ters in the villa.
      
    The past has it story includ­ing Mr & Mrs Clifton, where Mrs Clifton is attracted towards Almasy dur­ing their joint desert expe­di­tion. Also, the expe­di­tion car­ries a mys­te­ri­ous oper­a­tion, unknown to the mem­bers. The nar­ra­tive struc­ture mixes both present action with thoughts and con­ver­sa­tions that offer views of the past happenings.
    Do you know what is ‘supaster­nal notch’ ? :)
             
    This out­line is enough to watch the com­pli­cated film.
              
    View :
           
    - The fore­most beau­ti­ful thing in this film is trans­for­ma­tion or dis­solv­ing. The sand dunes shot dis­solve into the unevenly spread bed sheet [ remem­ber eye­ball in Titanic ]. Also, the scenes over­lap. Some­thing like this.. the next scene’s dia­log comes and fills the end­ing silence of the first scene. Also, the sound.. the foot tap­ping of Hana while play­ing hop­scotch, turns to a folk beat in the desert. A ball­room dance dis­solves in the patient’s face. .[ Idhel­laam edit­ing games ].
      
    - The main char­ac­ter Almasy is very inter­est­ing. I like the intel­li­gent hero who talks less. 4th wall can even feel his per­for­mance in his hor­ri­bly burnt face.
     
    - The moment the char­ac­ter Kather­ine comes in, you expect some­thing unusual [ Silmisham :) ] to hap­pen. The lead is given by a folk story nar­rated by Kather­ine in the camp. She is also an intel­li­gent lady with a car­ing hus­band. Still she misses some­thing in life.
      
    - The screen­play is clev­erly penned so that the hap­pen­ings don’t tra­verse in the way audi­ence expect. For exam­ple, K leaves the desert along with other team whereas the 4th wall expects her to stay back with Almasy. After a minute drama, some­thing else hap­pens. [ minor twists — usu­ally Bhag­yaraj uses this a lot ].
      
    - Also, when you think that Almasy and K develop a rela­tion, they just depart with­out even say­ing Bye [ Ada Che! ]. Then she comes back to his place in a nice white dress and the dress is sewed later. 4thwall leaves the reader to guess what happened :).
      
    - The Nurse char­ac­ter Hana is a mix of matured and child-like char­ac­ter. She loves, plays hop­scotch, sobs and laughs instantly.. just like a kid. She loves the Sikh sap­per named Kip and its’ the other love story. Actu­ally, the story is about 2 love sto­ries.. 1 in the past and 1 in the present.
      
    - When I say non-linear nar­ra­tion, it’s enor­mous effort for an edi­tor [ Wal­ter Murch won acad­emy award for this movie in both sound & edit­ing — Edi­tor of all the 3 God­fa­ther movies !]. I couldn’t stop think­ing about the effort for the film ‘Memento’ [ nar­rated in reverse chronology ]
             
    - This film is a period drama with­out mak­ing the 4th wall con­scious about that. The cos­tumes, build­ings, vehi­cles, just reflect the time flu­idly, with­out any visual gimmicks.
              
    - A good film shows the same shot twice with a dif­fer­ent mean­ing. Also, the film starts and ends with the same scenes. They call it as ellip­ti­cal struc­ture. [ Remem­ber the open­ing & clos­ing scenes of ‘A Per­fect world’ — Clint East­wood ]. Watch out for such smaller details through out the movie.
              
    - Most of the char­ac­ters and ele­ments are intro­duced within the first 15 min­utes of the film, includ­ing mor­phine [ a medicine ].
                
    - The dia­logues are catchy.. David talks to Almasy say­ing that ‘That is when I had thumbs and you had a face.. n name too’. Almasy, even as a patient cracks wits n jokes.
               
    - The music, silence, sounds are appro­pri­ately placed and it’s sooth­ing. The folk music ‘Szerelem’ is a good one.
              
    Con­clu­sion :
           
    If you are a reader, I would sug­gest you to the read the novel first. Else, if are of Toto’s cat­e­gory , just grab a DVD and enjoy the movie. I look for­ward to read the book ‘THE CONVERSATIONS: WALTER MURCH AND THE ART OF EDITING FILM’. [ ஏற்க‌ன‌வே ரொம்ப‌ அழ‌கு.. இதுல‌ எடிட்டிங் வேற‌ ப‌டிக்க‌றியா.. சுத்த‌ம்.. :)].
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