English Patient, The

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Awash in heart-rending emotions and gorgeous images, this is a movie to lose yourself in.

Film.com Sean Means

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.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

A mesmerizing film that is the most stunning, tempestuous love story in a decade or two of movie making.

Time Richard Corliss

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.

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.

Salon.com Gary Kamiya

Minghella, by brilliantly editing the romantic scenes down to a few jagged, archetypal moments, captures something of the sacred whirlwind.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

A stunning feat of literary adaptation as well as a purely cinematic triumph.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

A big, fat old-fashioned gush of passion as drawn through a post-modernist prism that makes it less easily comprehensible but more beguiling.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The kind of movie you can see twice--first for the questions, the second time for the answers.

San Francisco Examiner G. Allen Johnson

Minghella is an artist and he has painted himself a masterpiece.

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.

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.

Newsweek David Ansen

Succeeds stunningly on its own terms.

Mr. Showbiz F. X. Feeney

Astonishingly deep and moving.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Feels brief and dreamlike. Waking from its spell, you touch your face, and it's wet, but you're smiling anyway.

USA Today Mike Clark

The big story here is Kristin Scott Thomas' captivating performance.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

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.

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.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

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.

Film.com Robert Horton

It's got both the sweeping spectacle and the keen, tactile sense of human intimacy.

Film.com Tom Keogh

The look, the feel, the brood-y, brilliant cast: This is an oddly affecting movie, all right, a jellyroll of Bronte and Hemingway.

Variety Staff (Not credited)

A respectable, intelligent but less than stirring adaptation of an imposingly dense and layered novel.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

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."

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

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]

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

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.

Dallas Observer Michael Sragow

This intelligent, affecting work is squishy at the core.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

Kristin Scott Thomas is the film's revelation. She takes center stage as a smart, fearless woman who's utterly irresistible.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

It's reasonably well told and well mounted but little more.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The English Patient is excitingly promising. Then the screenplay goes rotten, like an overripe melon. [Dec. 9, 1996]