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100A mesmerizing film that is the most stunning, tempestuous love story in a decade or two of movie making.
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100The kind of movie you can see twice--first for the questions, the second time for the answers.
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100Minghella is an artist and he has painted himself a masterpiece.
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100A big, fat old-fashioned gush of passion as drawn through a post-modernist prism that makes it less easily comprehensible but more beguiling.
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100Minghella, by brilliantly editing the romantic scenes down to a few jagged, archetypal moments, captures something of the sacred whirlwind.
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100Heartbreakingly beautiful film, a brilliant adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's equally beautiful novel, is a sort of Casablanca for our time.
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100It feels like a dream that a movie could have this kind of poetic grace and epic sweep, or could be so faithful to its source and still work so perfectly as a film.
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100Rising to crescendos of emotion usually reached only by tenors and sopranos, these characters are the beneficiaries of the luminous writing of the novel and screenplay as well as the expert performances of the actors, especially Scott Thomas.
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100A stunning feat of literary adaptation as well as a purely cinematic triumph.
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100To transport picturegoers to a unique place in the glare of the earth, in the darkness of the heart--this, you realize with a gasp of joy, is what movies can do.
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100Awash in heart-rending emotions and gorgeous images, this is a movie to lose yourself in.
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100A tour de force so haunting that other films can't exorcise the memory of its radiant cast, exquisite craftsmanship or complex system of metaphors. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a movie.
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90Astonishingly deep and moving.
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90Minghella shapes Ondaatje's sprawling story into something miraculously cohesive, and at the movie's center is one of the most compelling love stories in recent memory.
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90Succeeds stunningly on its own terms.
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90The acting of this central trio is brilliant, in part because the crisscrossing of these and other stories and the gorgeous backdrops take some of the weight off: The characters are free to be flawed without losing our interest.
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89Feels brief and dreamlike. Waking from its spell, you touch your face, and it's wet, but you're smiling anyway.
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88The big story here is Kristin Scott Thomas' captivating performance.
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88This is one of the year's most unabashed and powerful love stories, using flawless performances, intelligent dialogue, crisp camera work, and loaded glances to attain a level of eroticism and emotional connection that many similar films miss.
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85The power of the Fiennes/Scott Thomas affair burns through the clutter (imagine "Casablanca" meets "Map of the Human Heart") making The English Patient a theatrical must-see.
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80The two films bursting out of The English Patient (a chamber piece and a David Lean dune epic) require a juggling of tone, pace and scale that might easily defeat a director more seasoned than Minghella.
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80The look, the feel, the brood-y, brilliant cast: This is an oddly affecting movie, all right, a jellyroll of Bronte and Hemingway.
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80It's got both the sweeping spectacle and the keen, tactile sense of human intimacy.
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80A respectable, intelligent but less than stirring adaptation of an imposingly dense and layered novel.
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75Boasts the elements of something greater than a love story. Too bad it devotes them to something less than a great love story. [22 November 1996, Friday, p.A]
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75A smashing success on its own terms, though as a transcendent love story it lacks the firm foundation in human reality that characterizes Lars Von Trier's superior "Breaking the Waves."
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75Lusts for catharsis yet never quite gets there, because, for all of its bitter romantic anguish, it ultimately coalesces in your head rather than your heart.
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This intelligent, affecting work is squishy at the core.
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60Kristin Scott Thomas is the film's revelation. She takes center stage as a smart, fearless woman who's utterly irresistible.
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50The English Patient is excitingly promising. Then the screenplay goes rotten, like an overripe melon. [Dec. 9, 1996]
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50It's reasonably well told and well mounted but little more.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 21 out of 33
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Mixed: 1 out of 33
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Negative: 11 out of 33
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10Great film! Real emotions, real life! Heroes were on the top! Music brilliantly selected!
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Amaya10
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