Trying Patient

I recently decided to check out 1996's Oscar-winning Best Picture, The English Patient.

There was a very funny episode of Seinfeld (ah, but weren't they all?) in which Elaine expressed her deep loathing for this movie. She broke up with her boyfriend over it. She found herself in constant conflict with people over her opinion. Trying to avoid an awkward situation with her boss, she claimed not to have seen it... only to have him immediately take her, forcing her to again endure its 162 tedious minutes.

I quite identify with her now.

Oscar voters often seem to have a way of reading scope as quality. If a movie is filled with sufficiently sweeping vistas, or has parallel echoing subplots, or is told out of chronological order, or is just plain long... this grandeur seems to be like catnip to Oscar voters. The English Patient has all of these things. So it's not altogether surprising that a movie like this would win the top prize.

The mystery to me is why anyone else would like it. It plods on for an eternity. The characters are all so stuffy and stilted, enchanted with words over deeds, that the film neither conveys or evokes any significant emotion. No film since Lawrence of Arabia has been so infatuated with depicting the desert that it comes off as more of a character than any of the actual people.

I can't even praise the acting in the film, though the cast boasts a number of fine people including Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews, and Colin Firth. The writing and directing force an acting style so muted and repressed than none of the actors is given much opportunity to shine.

I have long held that the most undeserving Best Picture winner I'd ever seen was Gladiator -- a movie I despised, and an opinion that set me at odds with more than a few people. But I now crown a new "champion," and I suspect I'll find far fewer people who disagree with me on this film. This waste of time -- a great deal of time -- is an unmitigated F.