The English Patient
Khoi Vinh

Review by Khoi Vinh Patron

The English Patient 1996

★★★★

Rewatched 19 Feb 2024

Almost from the start this extravagantly staged period romance has been saddled with a reputation as Oscar bait, and I’m guilty of having classified it as such in my memory. On this rewatch though, I’m a bit stunned by how well executed it is; yes, it has all the hallmarks of rote prestige fare but it’s exceedingly precise in its crafting of every dynamic among its principals, taking the time and care to set them up as fully dimensional characters. For many folks—lots of reviewers here on Letterboxd, apparently—this translates into tedium, but I ate it up. The relationship between Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas’s characters is a study in the intoxicating insularity and desperation of a love affair with a short half-life. The two leads are electric together—it helps that they burn into the screen with comparable levels of white hot beauty—and you truly feel the peaks and valleys of the doomed, stolen time they have in one another’s company. More than just a pastiche of high class signifiers, this is much, much closer to a true masterpiece.

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