The Willow Glen Resident

Point of View

Carl Heintze

Just what is this movie supposed to be about?

I've tried this out at several social gatherings as an experiment. At some dull point in the conversation, I will say, "Could anyone tell me what The English Patient is all about?"

I get a surprising set of reactions. The most frequent is immediate anger: "It won the Academy Award!" The second is "It's a passionate love story." Beyond that things get muddled.

Like Elaine on the comedy series Seinfeld, I sat through the movie awhile back, and it left me puzzled. The photography was beautiful, the acting was great, but the whole thing left me wondering what it was supposed to mean.

So one tackles the question of what the movie is supposed to tell us, if, indeed, it has any message at all. This leaves me feeling even more frustrated because I'm convinced its makers had some message in mind.

In case you haven't seen the film, let me compress it, though clearly you ought to see it to make a judgment.

An archeological dig somewhere in a desert area not very well specified, but probably Egypt, is being manned by a team mostly English. But one member of the team is apparently Hungarian; he has a sort of unspecified accent.

Naturally, he becomes the English patient of the title.

When the expedition moves back to Cairo after World War II begins, the "patient" falls in love with a beautiful Englishwoman, who for reasons not plain is hanging out with her husband, a member of the archeological team.

The "patient" and the wife consummate their affection in several passionate love scenes. The husband finds out. The war comes. The husband tries to kill the "patient" in the desert by running his plane into him, but only succeeds in killing himself and badly injuring the wife.

The "patient" carries the dying wife for no very clear reason to a cave, where he leaves her to get help and she dies. Somewhere along the way he betrays the English when he is captured by the Germans,

An Englishman who knows this tries to catch up with him. He finally does, but doesn't kill him. He doesn't really explain why.

In the meantime the "patient" crashes his plane, is fatally burned but takes a long time dying and is hauled off to Italy for reasons not clear in the care of a beautiful nurse, who lodges him all by himself in an abandoned Italian monastery, where she falls in love with a Hindu who is going around digging up unexploded mines.

The Hindu's love of the nurse prompts him to haul her up in the belfry of the abandoned monastery, where she can look close up at its frescoes (don't ask me), and then, finally, the "patient" dies and those who are left ride off, presumably to where they came from.

All of what I have described above is a lot simpler than the movie, which shifts back and forth in time with bewildering frequency. I'm told the book, which I have not read, is easier to understand. It's also different.

Maybe it has some meaning. The movie just seems a bewilderment to me. But if you think otherwise, I invite your appreciation.

I put The English Patient in the same class as another movie--The Piano--which I also sat through seeking some enlightenment.

The Piano is an art film shot apparently underwater in New Zealand; it's always raining, as it is in a lot of art films. In this one, a woman who doesn't speak (although she can, we eventually learn) "talks" through her piano, marries a man she doesn't love, falls in a love with a man who's half Maori (why that is important is not explained), is involved in the usual number of sex scenes which seem necessary for this kind of movie, has her finger chopped off by her irate husband and then almost drowns when her piano gets dumped from the boat on which she and it are riding. But she doesn't drown; she marries the part-Maori, finally talks and still plays the piano.

This movie was widely touted, too, but I have yet to find anyone who can tell me what it's all about. Some women contend it is about female emancipation, but that's about as close an explanation as I have received. So if you've got theories on The Piano, send them along. I welcome them, too.

Meantime, I'll continue my puzzlement.

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