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.

Last day on the set of The Lord of the Rings

A short video that allows us to see how it was to be on set on the last day of shooting The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And, more important than that, what that meant to the crew, especially for Peter Jackson. A very moving moment.

5 Reasons For Loving Vertigo

These are not the only 5 reasons for loving Vertigo, or the main 5. These are just 5 good reasons I picked among several possible others. Instead of speaking about Hitchcock's masterful direction or Kim Novak and James Stewart's wonderful performances, I will focus on some more detailed aspects of the picture.

1. Bernard Herrmann's score

The music composed by Bernard Herrmann ties the movie together. It gives the movie the right mood in every moment, and conquers the audience since the opening titles. Someone said that, in the battle between Vertigo and Citizen Kane for the "best movie ever" title, the decisive factor is Bernard Herrmann. And I think this is a very interesting point.

2. Ernie's and Madeleine

This picture is painted with magnificent colours. And when we, and Scottie, get to meet Madeleine for the first time, she's at Ernie's, the restaurant in San Francisco (totally rebuilt in the studio). The camera takes us through the room, dominated by the red in its walls. And then we find Madeleine in a blue and green dress. Madeleine passes in front of our eyes, the camera freezes for a moment.

3. The museum and Carlotta

The sad Carlotta. The mad Carlotta. When Madeleine is playing Carlotta Valdes and visits Carlotta's painting at the museum, Scottie is on her tail. He hides and he watches how Madeleine gives so much attention to that particular painting and how similar she is to that woman she's looking at. And, in a wonderful shot, we watch Scottie watching Madeleine.

4. San Francisco bay

Scottie continues to follow every one of Madeleine's moves. She stops the car near the river, almost below the Golden Gate bridge. Scottie does the same. We are again in Scottie's position, and get this breathtaking view of Madeleine/Carlotta freezed, thinking, preparing her next step. The sky, the river and the bridge wonderfully captured in what is maybe the best shot in the movie.

5. The opening titles

The opening titles are very beautiful and set the tone for the entire movie. The music does that, as I already said, but the mysterious graphics, created by Saul Bass, used in this opening have also an important effect. And the close up of the eye, telling us from the beginning how important the look, an obsessive look, will be throughout the whole movie.

Not very well received in 1958, the movie was fully recovered and got back to the theaters in 1984. And it has been increasingly appreciated and considered as one of the greatest movies ever made.

Vertigo

 

Vertigo was recently considered the best movie ever by the list of the british magazine Sight and Sound. It is obviously a list of consensus, more than a list of favourite movies. Vertigo was the most mentioned movie by all the voters of the list. Thanks to that (and gladly for us) the movie is now in the portuguese theaters again.

Hitchcock is a wonderful director, author of a very particular kind of movies, easily recognizable by the public. Vertigo stands from most of his movies, not for the lack of mistery, but by the approach to the mistery and the way it is solved.

It's a dark movie, with the amazing performances of James Stewart (Hitchcock's fetish actor) and Kim Novak. 

Novak has an outstanding performance, very contained, radiating the discomfort of the character in a gentle way. Stewart has a decadent heroe, diminished by his limitation and dropped by his obsession, maintains the high quality of his work.

I saw this movie many years ago and curiously I didn't remember the ending. As I saw it once again I though to myself how could that be, how come I didn't remember those last moments, since it is a final scene hard to forget. I probably erased it from my mind because of it's macabre outcome.

I recongnize the geniality of the movie. Hitchcock has here a true masterpiece. I surrender to Novak's charms and to Stewart's bitterness, but I don't intend to see it soon again. It's a movie hard to digest, although I couldn't imagine a better ending than the one the Master created which seals this vertiginous movie with a powerful closing.