Why Is The English Patient My Favourite Movie?

It's very hard to choose only one movie from so many wonderful masterpieces, but if I had to choose only one, The English Patient would definitely be it. I love this movie for all its fascinating details.

The photography is amazing, giving us the most wonderful landscapes, capturing the real personality of the desert.

All the actors are perfect.

Both Kristin Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes are so well and so truthful that it is almost as if that was actually true.

Juliette Binoche is grand. Give us one of her most generous and inspiring performances.

And the soundtrack is so powerful that it's almost like a character itself.

The book by Michael Ondaatje which inspired the movie is a masterpiece and the way Anthony Minghella developed the screenplay fits perfectly on the screen.

The first time I saw it I was too young to appreciate it, and I didn't like it. Actually I didn't really see it. I haven't paid attention. "How long is a day ine the dark?"

A few years after I saw it by chance and I fell in love with the movie as they fall in love with each other. "We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men."

The story takes place in two different moments: what it is and what it was. The memory gives life to some of the most wonderful moments on screen and the day to day reveals lovely in it's truthful.

We often forget that the biggest moments in life are born from insignificance. And it's from the unlikely that is born the intensity which transforms us. We stop being who we were and we become somebody else, without realizing that the changing is happening. The stronger and lasting ties are bron from from the improbability of those moments.

K yields; actualy K seeks for the danger. Or was it inevitable? Because after those eyes stumble on each other could it be any other way? But the danger chokes, because love is free - "in love there are no boundaries" - but the world is not.

Almasy doesn't like to be owned but he didn't know then that he belonged. And belonging is unavoidable and even desirable because "the heart is an organ of fire".

Almasy doesn't understand - and it's understandable - K's choice. He thinks, maybe, that represents the absence of feelings, the absence of what was lived.

“How can you stand there? How can you ever smile as if your life hadn’t capsized?"

"Do you think you’re the only one who feels anything? Is that what you think?”

Herodotus – the father of History – is the witness of this story, as are all the beings so absent and so present in the lives of those who love. The music is one of the greatest witnesses and Almasy can sing all the time:

“Is there a song you don’t know?”

And Yared's chords witness the visit to the church, the Christmas lunch, the route with K in he's arms or the voices of two actresses in that pure and realistic vision of the countries, fears, love, light, life and the palace of winds in that place between the sea and the sky.

"My darling: I'm waiting for you. How long is a day in the dark? Or a week? Fire is gone now, and I'm cold, horribly cold. I really want to drag myself outside but then there'd be the sun. I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings and on writing these words. We die. We die. We die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have entered and swum up like rivers. Fears we've hidden in - like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. We’re the real countries. Not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you'll come and carry me out into the Palace of Winds. That's all I've wanted: to walk in such a place with you. With friends. An earth without maps. The lamp has gone out and I'm writing in the darkness."

This movie is made of moments (aren't they all?) and the way those moments come together giving life to this wonderful masterpiece is absolutely passionate.

This wonderful masterpiece is a rediscovery each time we see it.