The English Patient
October 1944, war-torn Italy. Hana, a French-Canadian nurse who works in an army mobile medical unit feels that everything in her life is over. Hana agrees to travel with the dangerous terrain and difficulty, particularly as mines are still heavily booby-trapped in the area. She will stay at the church where she can care for the semi-amnesiac victim, who has been badly burnt and is disfigured. After he passes away, she agrees that Hana will catch up with the remainder of the unit. The patient only remembers that he is English and is married. The arrival of David Caravaggio, a fellow Canadian and part of Intelligence Service (Willem Dafoe) disrupts their solitude. He is sure that the patient is a former collaborator with the Germans. Caravaggio thinks that the patient has a good memory and is trying to escape his past. He does talk about his history, including his time as a North African cartographer, but it was interrupted by war. Caravaggio is correct to believe that he may be fleeing from his job as a German spy, but that he has a memory of an affair with Katharine (Dame Kristin S Scott Thomas), his love and the promise he didn’t keep. Hana will also be testing her theories about her fates in love and death when she begins a new relationship with Kip Singh (Naveen Andreas), an Indian Sikh who has set up camp on the overgrown church lawn. They are responsible for sweeping up and dispersing mines. One such mine saved Hana’s life. –Huggo
Director: Anthony Minghella
Actors: Colin Firth, Julian Wadham, Juliette Binoche, Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Ralph Fiennes, Willem Dafoe
Country: United Kingdom, United States
