A multi-award winning epic from 1996, which swept the boards at the Oscars, is finally streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.
The film, based on the novel of the same name by Michael Ondaatje, has been called “poetic” and “evocative” and as “circling down through layers of mystery until all of the puzzles in the story have been solved”.
Set against the backdrop of the North African and Italian campaigns of World War Two, The English Patient tells the story of four people brought together in an Italian villa, one of whom is an unrecognisably burned man (the patient) who is presumed to be English. The story centres on the revelations of the patient’s actions prior to his injuries and the effects of these revelations on the other characters.
A series of flashbacks reveals to the audience his true identity and the love affair in which he was involved before the war.
The film was directed by Anthony Minghella, who wrote the script based on Ondaatje’s novel. It was produced by Saul Zaentz and stars Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas alongside Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Colin Firth.
It cleaned up at the Oscars in the year after its release, winning nine of the 12 categories it was nominated in, putting it in an elite group of films. These included Best Picture for Zaentz and Best Director for Minghella. It also won six of 13 Bafta nominations, also including Best Film, and two Golden Globes, again including Best Film (Drama).
But it was not without its problems, with major studio 20th Century Fox pulling out just three weeks before filming was to begin in a dispute over the planned cast (Fox reportedly wanted to cast Demi Moore in the role eventually played by Kristin Scott Thomas).
This led to disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein sweeping in and acquiring worldwide rights for his Miramax studios for around $27 million. It became Miramax’s highest-grossing film, earning $232 million at the worldwide box office.
The English Patient has an 86% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. In the Financial Times, critic Nigel Andrews says it shows “cinema’s potential for magic”. Adam Mars-Jones for the Independent says it is “relentlessly beautiful”. Jeff Strickler in the Minneapolis Star Tribune says: “It took a filmmaker with Anthony Minghella’s vision to even attempt an adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. And it took a filmmaker with Minghella’s talent to pull it off.”
Viewers have also lavished praise on the film on Reddit, with one calling it “an absolutely incredible, deeply moving film” and another saying they were “blown away” by it.
However, another said they “thought the acting was decent enough but… thought there just wasn’t any depth to it”. They added: “It’s a good enough story but it constantly felt like a high-budget Hallmark TV movie with an amazing cast. It wasn’t bad but I didn’t think it was amazing, and not something I would rewatch.”
The English Patient is now available to stream for free on Amazon Prime Video with a subscription.