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The persistence of memory and the emotions we use to color what we recall makes up much of our life through experience. “The English Patient” focuses on an obsessive love affair as well as the memory of the past and its impact on the present. Count Almasy has been burned beyond recognition as a result of being shot down by the Nazi’s in Africa during World War II. Cared for by an Allied nurse named Hana (Binoche), he reflects on the romance that consumed his life and, ultimately, helped destroy him. His observations about his own romance and tale color Hana’s own romance with a bomb removal specialist. This emotionally complex, beautifully realized film touches the heart but also makes for a compelling adventure story. This is the type of film that Hollywood rarely attempts and when it does, it usually fails miserably. ***

Winner of 9 Academy Awards, Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s complex novel touches simplifies Ondaatje’s complex narrative into a compelling, powerful film beautifully photographed and realized by Minghella and his cast. ---

Combining extras from the original Criterion 1997 laserdisc release along with a number of new featurettes. Unfortunately, this isn’t the ultimate edition of the film. There’s a number of terrific documentaries and extras not included here that would have made this the ideal version of the film (my guess is that a special 3 disc edition will be in the offing in the immediate future). Bravo did a terrific documentary on the transition from novel to screen as well as the making of the film and that’s not included here. ***

While we do get to see many of the deleted scenes, they aren’t included separately but part of a featurette originally available on the laserdisc. That’s too bad as the first cut of the film that Minghella did was well over four hours. It would have been a great feature to have a seamless branching version with both the deleted scenes as well as the option to watch the original theatrical cut. We also get a number of featurettes on Minghella, producer Zaentz, Ondaatje as well as featurettes on the production design, a look at the real Count Almasy. The stunning CBC documentary “From Black and White to Colour” focuses on the difficulty in translating the novel to the screen, the challenges that Minghella faced in compressing and rearranging such a complex story and attempting to capture the poetic use of language visually during the production of the film. ---