Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient (1996) after
Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (1992)
I want to sit next to Michael Ondaatjein the library of the Royal Geographical Societyin its old, redbrick buildingas he reads minutes, letters, publications,and recreates that curious world of sunburned, exhausted menseemingly not too comfortable with the etiquette of taxis.He envisions his polyglot Almásy or is he even Almásy?the man who could name an unnamed town by its skeletal shape on a mapand entangles him with the Canadian nurse,the thief reinvented as spyand the Sikh bomb expert did he know the word “sapper” before starting?and their tortured pasts in a villa with little demarcation between house and landscape.
Minghella adds to Lean’s desert not onlythe night’s red huebut also flares and frescoesand cave paintings and Italian hills.He may skip Ondaatje’s street of imported parrotsand perhaps his Kip is demoted,and Hana does not see all of Asia through the gestures of this one manas he flips his long hairand it’s just olive oil and a sweet smileshe brings.But Minghella knows,with deft brushworkmimicking the swimmers on the walland the shadow of the biplane on the sandsas he begins and ends,bringing us tobegin again.