| 100 |
Washington Post
Awash in heart-rending emotions and gorgeous images, this is a movie to lose yourself in.
|
| 100 |
Film.com
It 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.
|
| 100 |
Los Angeles Times
Rising 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.
|
| 100 |
Washington Post
A 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.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A mesmerizing film that is the most stunning, tempestuous love story in a decade or two of movie making.
|
| 100 |
Time
To 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.
|
| 100 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
John Krewson
Heartbreakingly beautiful film, a brilliant adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's equally beautiful novel, is a sort of Casablanca for our time.
|
| 100 |
Salon.com
Gary Kamiya
Minghella, by brilliantly editing the romantic scenes down to a few jagged, archetypal moments, captures something of the sacred whirlwind.
|
| 100 |
The New York Times
A stunning feat of literary adaptation as well as a purely cinematic triumph.
|
| 100 |
Baltimore Sun
A big, fat old-fashioned gush of passion as drawn through a post-modernist prism that makes it less easily comprehensible but more beguiling.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The kind of movie you can see twice--first for the questions, the second time for the answers.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Examiner
Minghella is an artist and he has painted himself a masterpiece.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
Mary Brennan
Minghella 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.
|
| 90 |
Slate
Sarah Kerr
The 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.
|
| 90 |
Newsweek
Succeeds stunningly on its own terms.
|
| 90 |
Mr. Showbiz
Astonishingly deep and moving.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
Feels brief and dreamlike. Waking from its spell, you touch your face, and it's wet, but you're smiling anyway.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
The big story here is Kristin Scott Thomas' captivating performance.
|
| 88 |
ReelViews
This 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.
|
| 85 |
TNT RoughCut
Wendy Wilson
The 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.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
The 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.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
It's got both the sweeping spectacle and the keen, tactile sense of human intimacy.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
The look, the feel, the brood-y, brilliant cast: This is an oddly affecting movie, all right, a jellyroll of Bronte and Hemingway.
|
| 80 |
Variety
Staff (Not credited)
A respectable, intelligent but less than stirring adaptation of an imposingly dense and layered novel.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
A 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."
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Boasts 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]
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
Lusts 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.
|
| 70 |
Dallas Observer
Michael Sragow
This intelligent, affecting work is squishy at the core.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Kristin Scott Thomas is the film's revelation. She takes center stage as a smart, fearless woman who's utterly irresistible.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Reader
It's reasonably well told and well mounted but little more.
|
| 50 |
The New Republic
The English Patient is excitingly promising. Then the screenplay goes rotten, like an overripe melon. [Dec. 9, 1996]
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