Re-Visiting The English Patient
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Brian Tubbs
- bridget1
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Brian Tubbs
- bridget1
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Brian Tubbs
- Thought you might be interested...
This is an excerpt from a March 2000 article on the Academy Awards and how Hollywood influences public culture...
LIKE SO MANY OTHER conflicts in our culture, the Oscar race comes down to an epic battle between two urgent but irreconcilable messages.
On March 26, the Academy voters will choose as best picture either a film that urges viewers to Follow Your Heart, or else they will honor another top contender that says to its audience, Do Your Duty...
...[In 1996], the success of The English Patient helped to define the fundamental conflict between the two messages, not through its competition with any other film of that year, but through its striking contrast with a previous Oscar winner: 1942's Casablanca.
Both films dramatize the early years of World War II in exotic North Africa. Both films center on a raffish, elegant, unattached free spirit (Ralph Fiennes and Humphrey Bogart) powerfully attracted to a beautiful, married woman. (Kristin Scott Thomas and Ingrid Bergman).
In The English Patient, the lovelorn lug follows his heart into red-hot sex and a plague-on-both-houses attitude toward the Nazis and Allies.
In Casablanca, on the other hand, Rick overcomes his feelings for a higher sense of duty, sacrificing the woman he loves and making a
commitment to the anti-fascist cause.
**Copied from a column of his in Jewish World Review.**
Medved concludes by saying that modern culture, as indicative of society's preference for such movies as "The English Patient" and "American Beauty," has given itself over to an "eloquent emphasis on emotion and authenticity, and [a] denigration of the bourgeois virtues of obligation, consistency, discipline and self-denial."
Again, I will refrain from personal judgments of "The English Patient" since I have admittedly not read the book or seen the film. But I do find Medved's observations compelling.
-- posted by Brian Tubbs
» bridget1 - Re: Thought you might be interested...
In response to message posted by BrianTubbs:Yes, Brian. Thank you. These are most interesting comparisons. What strikes me on an initial review is, firstly, how the critic chooses an American classic to compare with this more recent love & war story by a Canadian writer and English director. Secondly, the date 1942 with reference to obligation. The context makes Casablanca seem even more like propaganda as, in that year, most of the western world felt that the US had reneged on its obligation to assist with the war against fascism, to add its considerable weight against the invasions and conquests and terrorist bombings of cities and civilians that Europeans had been living with since 1939. Duty and sacrifice were called for, but it didn't happen until after Pearl Harbor, when it was in US self-interest.
In the novel The English Patient, I think you'll find that the Count does feel obligation. Everything he does after the plane crash is an attempt to fulfill his promise, his obligation, to his beloved. Perhaps, if you consider the parallel story of Kip and his reaction to the atomic bomb, we may even suspect that the writer is suggesting that if we were true to our personal obligations of love and peace and family, we could make the world better. This shift away from patriotic and war propaganda began with the World War I poets but it didn't stop Hitler or Hiroshima. Perhaps that's why writers and artists re-visit these times, to remind us and to challenge us to decide what is really important. Anyway, thanks for making me think so early in the morning.
-- posted by bridget1
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Brian Tubbs
- Re: Re: Thought you might be interested...
I will defer to your comments on the novel as you make some very good points.
I do disagree just a wee-little bit :-) with your implied agreement with U.S. critics in the 1930s and 40s. The U.S. could've done more certainly when Hitler began his militaristic expansion, but by the time England "stood alone" on the other side of the Channel, America was giving assistance - from "Lend-Lease" to providing safe havens for English families and children that needed to escape Hitler's brutal bombing campaigns. (I believe Canada was doing the same regarding the latter).
Political realities were such in America, however, that the U.S. wasn't prepared to go to war until after it was attacked.
As to "reneging on its obligations," I take strong exception to our country's European critics on that score. One of the reasons that Adolf Hitler was so successful in stirring up anger and support in his political rise in Germany was the fact that the European nations dealt so harshly with Germany after World War One. That is an undisputed fact of history, yet what is conveniently forgotten by America's critics is that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson tried to persuade his World War One European allies to be more prudent and less retaliatory in the post-World War One peace accords and arrangements. Europe didn't listen.
It's true that the U.S. Senate torpedoed America's entry into the League of Nations, a forerunner of the United Nations - and one of the many ideas of President Wilson. But that was partly due to the fact that Europe had disregarded all of Wilson's other ideas and many in America saw them creating their own problems and that America should not concern itself with cleaning up their mess. This is part of why many Americans saw Hitler as Europe's problem. Unfortunately, they didn't fully appreciate the scope of his evil and the danger he posed to the world overall - until millions of lives had already perished.
There's plenty of blame to go around for World War Two. America shouldn't shoulder most of it. On the contrary, if it weren't for American entry into that war, things would have turned out differently.
-- posted by Brian Tubbs
» bridget1 - Re: Re: Re: Thought you might be interested...
In response to message posted by BrianTubbs:Yes, again I agree. The blame game is counter-productive. I think perhaps I reacted to first reading the Medved quotation by feeling he was blaming or criticizing individuals and artists who choose "emotion and authenticity" over duty and self-denial. Perhaps I mis-read him.
Further to the disappointment about the lack of US assistance during the first three years, your own columns have helped me understand why this is unrealistic and unfair. Canada acted, although as an independent nation, in a knee-jerk way, based on loyalty to Britain and a shared monarch. Reading your articles about the lead-up to the War of Independence, I realize for the first time how unrealistic it is for me to assume that Americans would be loyal as their very existence as a nation was based on declaring their separateness. So this is another difference between our 2 nations.
I'm glad you mentioned Woodrow Wilson. A man of vision in a world that was more interested in retribution. I still believe that nations working in consort is the only hope for a peaceful future.
-- posted by bridget1
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