‘English Patient’ Outshined

Unaccountably, film critics have become besotted with the movie “The English Patient,” lauding it as an epic of history, war and romance. Only panoramically may it have achieved epic status, but in dramatic terms it is anything but.

“Doctor Zhivago” was an epic; “War and Peace” is an epic; but “The English Patient”? Give me a realistic break!

If the principal character in “The English Patient,” played by Ralph Fiennes, is a modern paradigm for a cinematic romantic lead, then the judgment of modern womanhood is seriously misdirected. He is introduced in the early sequences of the movie as an uncivil, ill-mannered, taciturn boor, and the thought that he can transmogrify after a few reels into a devoted, tender and irresistible lover is beyond belief and reality.

I cannot believe that the voters who are privileged to select the Oscar nominations and, ultimately, the statuettes themselves are so lacking in discrimination that they will reward this mediocre movie. “Shine” is so clearly superior in all aspects.

PAUL S. McCAIG

Dana Point