Actors - The English Patient

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	Actors - The English Patient

The English Patient is a 1996 film adaptation of the novel by Michael Ondaatje. The film, directed by Anthony Minghella, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Ondaatje worked closely with the filmmakers to preserve his artistic vision, and has stated that he is happy with the film as an adaptation.

Plot

The story deals with the gradually revealed histories of a critically burned man, his Canadian nurse, a Canadian thief, and an Indian sapper in the British Army as they live out the end of World War II in an Italian monastery.

One of the main characters, the burned man, is Count László de Almásy, a famous Austro-Hungarian researcher of the Sahara Desert, disciple of Herodotus, and discoverer of the Ain Doua prehistoric rock painting sites in the western Jebel Uweinat mountain. In the film, the character of Count de Almásy, played by Ralph Fiennes, is heavily fictionalised. A good factual overview is provided in the 2002 Saul Kelly book, The Hunt for Zerzura: The Lost Oases and the Desert War.

Themes

Nationality

Issues of nationality pervade almost every facet of the story and ensnare the movement toward fulfillment and liberation. The crushing irony of the film--namely, that Almásy is Hungarian, not English--is profoundly invested in the impossibility of transcending barriers of nationality. Although love operates as a universal and unifying force, it cannot alter the inexorable forces of nationalism that send the plot spiraling into high tragedy. When Almásy emerges from three days of walking through the desert, he blurts out to the British officers his name: Count László de Almásy. Branded a German, he is knocked unconscious and shackled, leaving Katharine to suffer a lingering death in the cave. At its core, the tragedy of Katharine's death stems from the ill-luck of his German-sounding surname.

Dying in the cave, Katharine writes, "I know someday you will carry me out into the palace of winds. That's all I've wanted, to walk in such a place with you, with friends, an earth without maps." Katharine's final thoughts linger on her aversion to the political boundaries which divide the world. Her death becomes an escape from these distinctions as she is swept into the liberating vastness of the winds, immersed in the sublime love of Almásy. The camera fades into a sweeping pan of the desert landscape, unmarred by the political boundaries constructed by man.

Ownership

The English Patient probes the nature of ownership while remaining deeply ambivalent to its implications. In the opening sequences with Almásy, he exudes a stalwart resistance to ownership within the context of inter-human relations. All of the members of The Royal Geographical Society are married except Almásy, who deems marriage a form of bondage. When Katharine asks Almásy what he hates most, he replies, "Ownership. Being owned. When you leave you should forget me." Almásy attempts to maintain his freedom even as the passsion of their love forges an interminable connection. Katharine, dismayed, shoves his head off of her and leaves him alone in the bathtub. Later, when Madox yells that owning the maps means owning the desert, Almásy scoffs that the desert cannot be owned. In a sense, Almásy is correct: The Cave of the Swimmers is a testament to the transcience of human possession over a landscape that has endured all attempts at politcal appropriation.

Neverthelss, Almásy's obsession with Katharine subverts his antipathy toward ownership. He claims Katharine's suprasternal notch as his own, and Katharine forces him to acknowledge this shift. Later, in a crazed desperation to regain his relationship with Katharine, "I want to touch you. I want the things which are mine, which belong to me." Almásy insists that his love for Katharine entitles him to ownership of her, but she denies his demands. The thematic conflict of these forces suggests that the passion of their love cannot exist independently of the thorny, pragmatic issues of ownership and control.

Fluidity of Time and Memory

The English Patient is an assemblage of methodically-crafted fragments of memory recalled by Almásy after being burnt in the plane crash of the opening sequence. These memories blend seamlessly into the contemporary events, allowing for a steady escalation of mystery and tension until the revelations of tragedy. Memories are just as palpable and emotionally-charged as the present setting, suggesting that the faculty of memory can erase the limitations of time. Almásy says he cannot bear to lay in the light of the window, but does not miss the view because vivid memories of the landscape remain ensconced in his mind.

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