In at number nine is Academy Award winning The English Patient , an adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's novel, directed by Anthony Minghella.Set in North Africa and Italy during the late 1930's and early '40's, "The English Patient" is an epic drama of two haunting love stories that unfolds against a background of international upheaval. Beginning near the end of the Second World War the film follows a critically burnt man, who is slowly dying, and at first he is known only as 'the English patient'.He is being looked after by Hana (Juliette Binoche), a French-Canadian nurse who lost her sweetheart in the war, in a ruined Italian villa.Her patient reveals nothing about himself claiming to have no memory of events before he was found in the wreckage of a plane in the desert, not even his name.Through a series of flashbacks the audience begin to see into his past.
He was a Hungarian geographer, Count Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), who was exploring and making a map of the Sahara Desert when war broke out.
He began an affair with Katherine Clifton (Kristen Scott Thomas), wife of a colleague, who was died as a result of her injuries she sustained from a plane crash.
A stranger arrives at the villa were Hana is treated her patient, a Canadian thief and intelligence operative, David Caraviggio.
During the war Caraviggio (Willem Dafoe), known as Moose, lost his thumbs whilst being interrogated by German Afrika Korps officers, claiming that it was the actions of the patient that led to his torture.
While held up in the villa Hana becomes involved in a romance with Kip (Naveen Andrews), an Indian sapper in the British Army. But due to past deaths, that included her sweetheart and later a colleague, Hana believes that anyone who gets close to her will die.
The English Patient was released to critical and commercial acclaim going on to be nominated for twelve Academy Awards.
On the night it picked up nine including Best Picture, Best Director for Minghella and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Juliette Binoche. Kristen Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes were nominated for Best Actress and Best Actor in a Leading role.
For fans of World War II epics, The English Patient delivers a story of love and lost during trying times and illustrates the compassion human beings display at their best.
It's beautifully acted by the stellar cast with all the characters hurting in some shape or form it's a brooding expanse of a film that intricately tangles love and tragedy and passion and anger and violence and war together.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw