The English Patient

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

A brief summary cannot do justice to The English Patient, a stunning, multilayered, nearly flawless epic love story. As he lies in a Tuscan monastery, burned beyond recognition, Count Almasy (Fiennes), under the care of his nurse, Hana (Binoche), tries to recall in fits and starts, as if snatched from a dream, his life. Almasy drifts most often to his illicit love affair with alluring, adventurous Katharine Clifton (Scott Thomas) — an affair that bleeds from the screen with guilty passion and yearning stained with doom foretold and fulfilled. Hana herself rescues love from the death that surrounds it with a magical enchantment with Sikh mine defuser Kip (Andrews). She also tries to fend off Allied spy Caravaggio (Dafoe), who thinks he recognizes Almasy as a German spy and wants revenge. An absolute must-see and that rarest of Hollywood achievements: a transformative mixture of adult passions and childlike wonder.