The 1996 movie “The English Patient” won nine Oscars and was nominated for three more. The movie won as Best Picture and Juliette Binoche won best supporting actor for Binoche. Kristin Scott Thomas lost as best actress to Frances Mcdormand and her campy portrayal of a pregnant police officer in Fargo. Ralph Fiennes were both nominated as best actor but lost to Geoffrey Rush in Shine.
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I first saw the movie when it came out and had difficulty following the plot. The difficulty for me lay in the character played by Ralph Fiennes, Count Lazlo de Almasy. We see Count Lazlo in two different representations. One as the badly burned English Patient and one as the young Count Lazlo before the war who works as a cartographer and falls in love with Kristin Scott Thomas’ character Katharine Clifton. The reason it is unclear is that for most of the movie it isn’t certain that the English Patient and Lazlo are the same since he claims not to know his own name. Once you get this straight in your head the plot makes sense.
