Film Review – The English Patient

The English Patient, or more accurately, The English: Patient, is a study into one nation’s love of bureaucracy and order.

Madonna stars as an anglophile American. She is trying to get to grips with English life having crossed the Atlantic. At first she struggles to come to terms with a life of endless waiting in queues, but pretty soon she accepts it and, as time goes on, she gets to love it.

Madonna’s film acting has often been criticised, but here she paints a decent portrait of an outsider finding their feet in an alien society. She infuses a good deal of vibrancy into a key scene wherein she shouts at someone pushing into a queue in front of her. This is a necessity as later in the film she is in an identical situation and must react in a more English way. This too is expressed well. She looks at the man haughtily and even goes so far as to tut.

Fittingly, the film itself is outstandingly boring. You will need to draw on their full reserves of patience to endure it in its entirety. Afterwards, you can reward yourself by saying things like: “We nearly walked out half-way through it was that dull.”