The English Patient

THE ENGLISH PATIENT is an epic, sweeping adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's richly layered, WWII-era novel chronicling two periods in the life of European explorer Count Laszlo Almasy, whose torrid affair with a colleague's wife is countered by the beginning of the war, allegations of Nazi sympathies, and disfiguring injuries. The patient's stay at the ruins of an Italian monastery under the care of an emotionally injured French-Canadian nurse serves as a framing device for his intriguing story.