The English Patient revisited

Who made The English Patient - and made it so well?

Great movies do not come out of nowhere and showing The English Patient again has prompted me to look at the team that made it.

First of all, who put this team together?   Saul Zaentz, previously a professional gambler and record producer had bought the rights to, and then produced, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadaus,  and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.    Zaentz was one of the last great independent film producers.  He used his own money, recruited his own team, and kept control of the final product in his own hands, rather than those of nervous investors or Studio heads.   He took risks, which so often paid off handsomely, not only financially, but artistically.    He said ‘It takes five years of my life to produce a film, so I don’t do it to make money, I do it because these are the films I want to see made.’     Many people follow Directors, and so do I, but most of them take what they are offered, while Producers choose the films they make, and are worth following too.  

So Zaentz chose Anthony Minghela, the script-writer and director, who had written British TV scripts for shows as diverse as Grange Hill and Morse, but had only written and directed one critical cinema hit,  Truly, Madly /Deeply.

John Seale however, the Australian director of photography, had worked on Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, Witness, Children of a Lesser God, Gorillas in the Mist, Rainman and Lorenzo’s Oil.    Seale had worked with Peter Weir of course, a director who always has something to say in his movies.   Later on he filmed Ghost’s of Mississippi,  The Perfect Storm and Cold Mountain, as well as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.  

Stuart Craig had been the Production Designer for  The Elephant Man, Gandhi, The Mission, Cry Freedom, and Dangerous Liaisons. He later worked on all the Harry Potter movies.   

Both of these key men had worked on ‘committed’ films, films with something to say rather than blockbusters or popcorn entertainment.   Zaentz has not worked with either before The English Patient, but he knew what he was looking for.

And then, as editor,  there was the multi-talented Walter Murch who has worked in various capacities on THX 1138, American Graffiti, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and The Godfather III.   Safe hands indeed, but Zaentz was a gambler, and here he surely took a risk by using Minghela, who had little film experience,  and Kristin Scott Thomas.   She had done well as Anne in Richard III, courted by Ian McKellen’s fascist usurper, but only made a popular impact in Four Weddings and a Funeral.    We had seen how well she could do ‘cool’ but could she also do passion? 

And to put her alongside the luminous Juliette Binoche was surely a risk.   Although four years younger than Scott Thomas she had already starred in the Three Colours Trilogy, Damage, The Horseman on the Roof, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being – the latter produced by Saul Saentz.  

Ralph Fiennes had come from the theatre, but had impressed in Schindler’s List and starred in Quiz Show and Colin Firth had come fresh, dripping from the pond in the  TV Pride and Prejudice.   So an interesting and talented team had been brought together,  and the film would be shot in Tuscany and the desert,  bringing their own distinctive qualities.

But of course none of this could have happened without the original novel. Michael Ondaatje's poetic and oblique 1992  Booker Prize winner. This was  a difficult book to adapt for the screen.   Ondaatje ‘wrote of the injured man sifting through his memories. This dreamlike, nonlinear tale moves in much the same way, swooping gracefully from past to present, from one set of lovers to another, from the contours of the body to the topography of the desert sands.’ (Janet Maslin, film critic of the NY Times)  and as Edmund White, the NY Times Book Critic said  ‘The most impressive feature of the book, Ondaatje's prose, can't be caught on celluloid.  Much has been said about the richness of Ondaatje's writing, the sensuousness of his physical descriptions and his poet's gift for using well-timed silences and ellipses to speak volumes.  It may come wrapped in musky perfume, but Ondaatje's prose could go a few rounds with Hemingway and probably knock out Kipling, too.’ 

One passage in the novel reads  

''She walks towards his night tent without a false step or any hesitation. The trees make a sieve of moonlight, as if she is caught within the light of a dance hall's globe. She enters his tent and puts an ear to his sleeping chest and listens to his beating heart, the way he will listen to a clock on a mine. Two A.M. Everyone is asleep but her.''             

White commented that Ondaatje does not use  ‘the poetic prose of false sentiment and highfalutin' diction, rather the true lyricism of fact, myth and tragic vision. The running narrative tone has a majestic, almost Biblical cadence to it, but one that can assimilate all the details of modern life, from air pillows to land mines.’

So 'The English Patient' film is a stunning feat of literary adaptation as well as a purely cinematic triumph.   As Janet Maslin said  ‘Mr. Minghela  manages to be astonishingly faithful to the spirit of this exotic material while giving it more shape and explicitness, virtually reinventing it from the ground up. The film has so many facets, and combines them in such fascinating and fluid style that its cumulative effect is much stronger than the sum of its parts.’

Roger Ebert, the late lamented doyen of literate film critics,  wrote   

‘Backward into memory, forward into loss and desire, ‘The English Patient’ searches for answers that will answer nothing.    This poetic, evocative film circles down through layers of mystery until all of the puzzles in the story have been solved, and only the great wound of a doomed love remains.    It is the kind of movie you can see twice - first for the questions, the second time for the answers.”

There were objections to the way the novel ended, with the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.   Caravaggio tried to explain why Kip is so upset, saying that Kip knows ‘They would never have dropped such a bomb on a white nation.’      But Kip has also spent the whole war trying to prevent explosions.   He had risked his life, time after time, to save Allied lives – and now the Allies had killed millions at a stroke.  

I regret the omission of this passage from the film, though I understand how including it could have impacted negatively on the crucial American audience. 

In the book, Kip says “if they can explain this away there is no hope for us’.    But of course we did explain it away, and our leaders still explain away more than 8000 nuclear warheads that exist today with no military justification and pose a potentially disastrous risk.   But that is another issue, as they say. 

One reason I choose to show this film is that I hope it might persuade those who se it to read the book.    It is even richer than the film, and the author’s voice is wiser than any of the characters, except maybe that of Kip.   

“Have you taken the Voigt-Kampt test yourself, Mr Deckard?”

As I am showing Blade Runner as part of my current local film season I wrote these notes for those who attended.   You might find them interesting/useful/whatever.

When Ridley Scott released Blade Runner in 1982 most film critics did not rate it highly and science fiction fans deeply resented the changes made to Dick’s novel.  It has now become a ‘classic’ the Citizen Kane of noir science-fiction movies.  Ridley Scott had invented a whole new visual vocabulary and style, with retro/futuristic designs that have inspired movie after movie in the last 30 years.     It is considered to be the first film noir science fiction film.   

Some critics and theologians have talked about it as a post-modern exploration of the distinction between the natural and the simulacra, the non-human, human and post-human.   For me the film asked a simple question.  What is life?  And it gave a simple answer.  Life is precious.      Thirty years on my affection for it has only been deepened by time and the release of the Director's Cut.   It still rings deep bells.

The ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner have been given a limited life-span, but they passionately want to go on living.      That is why they have come to find their Creator.   What is at stake is the meaning of being truly human.     In the context of the Garden of Eden myth there is the tension between our human capacity for the knowledge of good and evil – which makes us moral, and morally responsible -  and the limits of our mortality.      In Genesis Adam and Eve could not eat of the Tree of Knowledge and also of the Tree of Life, which would give them immortality.    As John Milton pointed out we cannot be fully human without being moral and mortal.   Being human means we have to know the difference between good and evil and be free to choose,  so The Fall is not a curse but a blessing.  

To understand the nature of evil we need empathy, to be able to understand what the consequences of our actions feel like for others. The presence or lack of emotional response is what the Voigt-Kampt is testing for.  In the opening scene of the film,  the replicant Leon fails the Voigt-Kampf test when questioned about his mother.    He had no mother.    He had no one to teach him empathy, no one to make him truly ‘human’. The replicants may have no parents to learn from, but the advanced Nexus 6 are beginning to develop emotions, to care for each other.     They have a sense of selfhood.

In the scene in Tyrell's bedroom Roy weeps, caresses Tyrell's head, and confesses, "I've done questionable things.”   He is judging the morality of his actions.   When he spares Deckard’s life, and then says of himself "Time to die.” he is at his most human.    Moral and mortal.  Deckard’s life has meaning to Roy, and so does his own..

Even though she is a replicant Rachael falls in love with Deckard.   She cannot trust herself, but she has learnt to trust him.     She may be a Nexus 7 but at the end of the film we do not know how long she will live.   We do not know how long Deckard will live either.  

Some things you may not know about Blade Runner.

1.  The first person outside the production team to say the script really should be filmed was Gregory Peck.
2.  Syd Mead, the film’s Future Visualist (designer), also created the interior of the Anglo-French Concord plane, and  the giant spaceship in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.     Blade Runner was made long before CGI (Computer Generated Images).   Everything and everywhere we see on screen was designed and made just for this film.   Old sets of New York streets on back lots in Los Angeles were used, overlaid with new, but trashed, exteriors. 
3.  The film needed a ‘Star’.   Dustin Hoffman was originally set to play Deckard.   The team tried to adapt the script to accommodate him, but it did not work out.    Only when Hoffman  left was Harrison Ford considered.    He had been in Star Wars, and his first ‘star role’ as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark was in post-production.    
4. Unknown faces were wanted for the replicants, so this was the first American role for the Dutchman Rutger Hauer, it was the first major role for the 19 year old Darryl Hannah and Sean Young had only two previous minor roles. 
5. The metropolitan gutterspeak, ‘Cityspeak’, used by the policeman Gaff was invented by the actor who played him, Edward James Olmos.
6. Rutger Hauer wrote Roy’s final speech.   “I have seen things you wouldn’t believe.   Attack ships on fire on the shoulder of Orion.   I watched c-beans glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.  All these …moment will be lost… in time.  Like … tears… in rain.  Time to die.” 
7. When they shot this scene the dove Roy released simply walked away.   Doves don’t fly when it is raining.  
8. The Producers did not think they could call the film Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the title of Philip K. Dick’s novel on which the film is based)  so the working title was first Android, then Dangerous Days.  The final title, Blade Runner, came from a William Burroughs novel. 
9. For the initial version the Studio bosses insisted on a voice-over to ‘help us understand the plot.’   There was also a happy ending added, as Rachael and Deckard fly off into the sunny future, using some shots from Kubrick’s film The Shining.   This was the only ‘daylight scene’ in Blade Runner.  Both the voice-over and ending were later removed from the Director’s Cut and the ‘unicorn’ sequence was inserted by Ridley in the 1995 version.  
10.   In my 1982 review of the film I used the word ‘noctilucous’ to describe the films images .         It means phosphorescent, shining at night. I have never used it since.                                                                                             Most of these facts are to be found in the British film Producer Michael Deeley's book, Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Blood Doors Off.     

Showing films to congregations and for ministerial training.

As a Parish Priest, I used mainstream films as part of my ministry for over twenty years

The first film I showed to my last congregation was ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, Al Gore’s prophetic lecture on the threat of climate change.   A few years later I showed Terrence Malik’s film ‘The Tree of Life’ because it seemed to me to be the most challenging contemporary spiritual work of art.   I also showed film seasons during Advent and Lent, to illustrate the themes of Being Human and Speaking Truth to Power.  

Why some films achieve ‘cult status’.    Of course many of them do so because they embody very popular but deplorable attitudes, promoting over-the-top or über-masculinity and casting women as victims, normalizing soft pornography or promoting the superiority of might over right.      But the film industry also knows that many of us, their public, have nobler convictions and aspirations.     We are capable of understanding more subtle explorations of what it means to be human; and isn’t that the central question of our ‘incarnational’ theology?

I rarely show explicitly ‘religious’ movies.    Most of these are made to instruct rather than to entertain.   Church people will watch them, often because they reinforce what they already believe.    I would happily show Jesus of Montreal,  a film that asks how the church of today would react to a truly Christ-like figure, or even One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – a truly challenging parallel narrative to the passion of Christ  - rather than Mel Gibson’s film The Passion.  In fact I would never show that film anywhere.  

I also used films when training Clergy, helping them see the connections between film and faith,  but all this started when I was Diocesan Youth Officer,  helping volunteer leaders see how the themes and values of some films could feed into their youth programmes, especially when they were away for a week or weekend and the youngsters wanted to watch a video in the evening.   

 The ‘teaching’ intention did not need to be stated.  As long as a film is entertaining,  its message is likely to percolate through into the hearts and minds of those who watch.   Those who have ears to hear.    I think that it is more important for young people coming under the influence of the church to internalize values consistent with our faith than it is to teach them how many disciples there were, to recite the books of the Bible, or the even the Ten Commandments.       

For example, very few twelve-year-olds I have worked with had difficulty resisting the temptation to ‘covet their neighbour’s wife’.      However, inculcating respectful attitudes to girls and womankind as early as possible is vitally important, especially in today’s culture, inundated with misogyny and pornography.   Boys need to know what it is like to be ‘honourable’ men.  Girls also need to learn respect for themselves as well as to expect it from others.      There are plenty of films that treat females with contempt – even while appearing to value them - so let’s make sure young people are exposed to more positive attitudes and roles.    The recent Hunger Games’ series does so; but Jennifer Lawrence’s previous film, Winter’s Bone, provides a much more realistic  and relevant heroine.

 When training youth leaders I would often use just a single ‘clip’ to make a point.   Early in the Peter Weir film ‘Witness’ a young boy is in a police station.  He has seen a brutal killing and is being shown mug-shots of possible suspects.  When the policeman in charge of the investigation, John Book, has to take a phone call the boy wanders off.   While he is looking in a Trophy cabinet  the boy sees a photograph of the killer.  He is a senior police officer.   John Book notices a subtle change in the boy’s physical attitude, and goes over to him.  The boy wordlessly points at the photo.      John Book quietly puts his hand over the boy’s, curling the accusing finger back.     He then gets the boy out of the Police Station as fast as he can without arousing suspicion.    This three minute scene is pivotal to the plot, and a wonderful example of the detailed attention youth leaders need to pay to the young people they work with,  their awareness of  body language, and their willingness to believe what they are told,         The whole film is also worth watching as it shows us the power of ‘witness’.  This young, vulnerable, naïve boy (he is a member of the Amish Community) bears witness to a great wrong committed by powerful, 'respectable' and utterly ruthless men.   But in the end none of their strength, position or violence can defeat the power of this witness.    There are many other less obvious but important threads running through this wonderful film, in fact a whole Lent Course worth.    Among the many films that valorize power and revenge rather than proper vulnerability and justice, such examples as Witness are to be treasured.

I am constantly encouraged by the way many films that promote and embody the virtues that St Paul extolled find an appreciative audience.    Many of them are listed, described and sometimes analyzed in this blog.  as films that engage us and in ways that are subtle or direct inform us, bearing goodly messages.  

Why show movies in church?  Because the amazing skills of scores or hundreds of people have been used – at enormous expense – to bring us great stories, told with good intent, sometimes celebrating, sometimes illuminating, sometimes challenging our Christian values.    They are only coloured shadows thrown upon a wall, but in many ways they are the stained glass windows of our time.    

Is Chaos Walking towards us? I hope so.

Chaos Walking is the title of a Patrick Ness  trilogy.   So far it has won the Carnegie Medal, The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, The Booktrust Teenage Prize and the Costa Children’s Book Award.  It may yet win an Oscar or two, because there are firm plans to film it.     

I have been reading the trilogy, and I am very impressed  by their great literary and moral qualities.   They do what all good literature does;  allowing the reader to stand in someone else’s shoes for a while, and to become more human by doing so.     Such books are empathy creators.     Chaos Walking is set on a planet colonized by Christian farmers twenty three years previously.    Todd, a thirteen year old boy, has been taught that during a war with the native Spackle species,  germs were  released by the Spackle that killed all the women, and caused every man’s thoughts to be broadcast as the Noise.   Todd discovers that this is not the whole truth.  On the run he meets Viola, another teenager, the sole survivor of a crashed scout ship sent in advance of the next colonialist’s mother ship.                              

 Todd narrates the opening chapters, but once he meets Viola their narrative voices alternate.    Herein lies the genius of the books.    Patrick Ness has found authentic voices for each of them,  as they struggle against ruthless pursuers, captors, betrayers, separation and the ways in which their trust of each other is tested.   This is a hard story, the kind young adults need to help them face adult reality, just as younger children need authentic – and therefore frightening – fairy stories to help them face and manage their own fears.   Todd and Viola are exposed to the worst aspects of human nature,  the impulses that lead us to terrorism, torture and genocide.   They also become impressive role models, especially  Viola, who is not the kind of girl to scream and run, but uses her intelligence, tenacity and courage in truly heroic ways.

 Despite the enormous differences between the settings, genre and language Ness’s books remind me of Charles Dickens’.    Dickens also created young sympathetic characters who encounter human monsters and suffer appalling deprivation and  sickening betrayal.    

I am not only impressed by these books, but by the young people who read them.  I  remember being  amazed that so many young people read and enjoyed Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy.   These are also enormously demanding books, making no compromises in terms of language (Pullman is happy to use a wide vocabulary and complex – if wonderfully constructed – sentences) or emotional and spiritual depth.   Not only can young people cope with ‘long form’ literature, they can cope with – and really enjoy books of the highest literary values.    When I attended the National Theatre’s two part adaptation of His Dark Materials  the auditorium was packed with teenage girls, many of them young teenagers, who had dragged their parents along.  The two three hour plays ran for a year. 

Now Lionsgate are planning to film Chaos Walking.  Robert Zemekis is expected to direct and Charlie Kaufmann is reportedly writing the script.     Robert Zemekis  has directed Back to the Future I, II and III, Contact,  Beowulf,  Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Castaway, Forrest Gump, and the recent Flight.    Charlie Kaufmann has scripted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,  Adaptation, and Being John Malkovitch.     Translating a narrative voice onto the screen is difficult, especially when the very personal nature of that voice is crucial.   Chaos Walking is Todd and Viola’s story; as told by Todd and Viola.   To recreate this on screen we need the ‘tell’ as well as the ‘show’.   But Kaufmann is a daringly original scriptwriter, and Zemekis has a great capacity to stretch the limits of film.  So it lookss like a good combination.  

Yet another trilogy?   Yes, but.    I know we seem to be inundated by them,  sometimes as separate novels linked by location or theme, sometimes as seemingly never ending sagas, or a soap operas, and sometimes as one story padded out to sell three books instead of one.   Many of these are of low literary quality, and seem designed to get lazy readers hooked to read book after book.   Relatively few stories justifies three volumes.   The Lord of the Rings is the classic exemption , joined by Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials,  Malorie Blackmans’s Noughts and Crosses and now The Hunger Games.   I choose to exclude The Twilight Trilogy and Fifty Shades from consideration, having neither read the books nor seen the films.   

 Many trilogies and series are aimed at teenagers and young adults (I am not sure quite when teenagers becomes a young adults).    Their popularity gives the lie to the suggestion – often quoted as a fact – that young readers cannot cope with the ‘long form’ read.  Of course, along with adults they like the familiarity provided by a series of books/films/TV shows that share the same settings and characters.    If these characters seem to ‘grow up’ alongside their audiences they can enjoy the loyalty engendered by the TV soup operas and the Harry Potter series. 

The Harry Potter series employed good story-telling skills and had an appropriately Christian ending.    But I think Chaos Walking is much better written than Harry Potter and deals with real and important issues in greater depth.   May the films have the same degree of success as the books.