“The only reason to adapt a book set in the past is because it reverberates with the world we are in,” said writer-director Anthony Minghella, who made three such films, beginning with this rich, ambitious and romantic take on Michael Ondaatje’s dense, poetic WWII novel. With its complex patterning of flashbacks and relationships, this represented a considerable challenge, but Minghella handled it with aplomb. The film went on to sweep nine Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
During WWII, a Canadian nurse (Juliette Binoche) decides to stay in an abandoned, bombed out monastery to care for a dying, terribly burned patient (Ralph Fiennes). At first he remembers little of what brought him here, but as time passes he is swept up in painful memories of a pre-war love affair in Egypt. Minghella’s free adaptation is a moving, evocative love story played out in tiny fragments against an epic backdrop of war and history.
This screening is in our latest Film Studies series on literary Adaptations, led by Patricia Gruben, who will give a 15-minute introduction.
Patricia Gruben is a filmmaker and former associate professor of film at Simon Fraser University, as well as founder and long-time director of Praxis Centre for Screenwriters (now the Screenwriters Lab at the Whistler Film Festival.) Her films have been screened at TIFF, VIFF, Sundance and the New York Film Festival, and her writing on film has appeared in international academic and popular journals. Her latest film was Heart of Gold.
A gorgeous film that is one of the rare movies, to me, that improved upon its source material.
Roger Ebert
A stunning feat of literary adaptation as well as a purely cinematic triumph.
Janet Maslin, New York Times
Anthony Minghella
Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Kristin Scott Thomas, Colin Firth, Willem Dafoe, Lothaire Bluteau
USA/UK
1997
English
9 Academy Awards, including Best Picture
Book Tickets
Saturday February 21
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits
Screenwriter
Anthony Minghella
Cinematography
John Seale
Editor
Walter Murch
Original Music
Gabriel Yared
Production Design
Stuart Craig
Art Director
Aurelio Crugnola
Also in This Series
Film Studies: Adaptations looks at five acclaimed literary texts and the very different challenges they posed to filmmakers.
The English Patient
In the first of a new Film Studies series exploring literary adaptations, director Anthony Minghella tackles Michael Ondatje's challenging, poetic WWII novel about an enigmatic, badly burnt patient with a tragic past. Introduced by Patricia Gruben.
Nomadland
Hamnet director Chloe Zhao picked up one of three Academy Awards (along with Best Picture and Best Actress) in 2021 for this unconventional, compassionate adaptation of Jessica Bruder's nonfiction book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.
The American Friend
Wim Wenders' take on Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game is the real deal, an authentic mittel-European neo-noir, with Dennis Hopper as the original American psycho, Tom Ripley. This Film Studies screening is introduced by Patricia Gruben.
