365 High-Def Days of Oscar: Day 20
Year: 1996
Oscar Wins:
Best Picture
Best Director
Best Supporting Actress
Best Original Score
Best Cinematography
Best Art Direction
Best Costume Design
Best Sound
Best Editing
Best Original Score
Oscar Nominations:
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Adapted Screenplay
THE PLOT THUS FAR
At the close of WWII, a young nurse tends to a badly-burned plane crash victim. His past is shown in flashbacks, revealing an involvement in a fateful love affair.
WHAT WE THOUGHT
Flying above the African desert, Hungarian Count Laszlo de Almasy is shot down, his biplane mistaken for an enemy aircraft. And though he survives the crash, he is severely burned. To his great good fortune, however, he is rescued by a tribe of nomads and winds up in a hospital. But existing conditions are governed by circumstances of war, and Almasy soon becomes one of many patients being transported via convoy to a different facility. Upon reaching Italy, he is too weak and ill to continue on, and a Canadian nurse, Hana, volunteers to stay behind with him at an abandoned monastery.
Hana soon discovers that her charge is something of a man of mystery, as Almasy remembers nothing of his past, and not even his own name. Thought to be English, the only clues pointing to who he is are contained in a book found in his possession after the crash, but even they are as cryptic as Hana’s patient. Slowly, however, under prompting from Hana, Almasy begins to remember bits and pieces of his life, and his story begins to unfold. And his memory is helped along even more by the appearance of a mysterious stranger named Caravaggio who suspects that Almasy is the man he’s been looking for– a man with whom he wants to settle a score. But, burned beyond recognition, Almasy may or may not be that man. Meanwhile, Almasy’s memories continue to surface; memories of a woman he loved, Katherine Clifton — as well as memories of Katherine’s husband, Geoffrey. And, crippled in mind and body as he is, those memories become the only thing left to which he can cling with any hope at all, even as his life seems to be slipping farther away with each passing moment.
The film’s core problem is that the two parties of this affair, Almasy and Katharine, are woefully unsympathetic characters, shallow and dull. They simply aren’t very nice, thus there is no one to cheer for. Almasy is cool, aloof, haughty, and eventually disgustingly possessive of another man’s wife. Katharine is likewise detached and nasty, not to mention having a deplorable lack of guilt or feeling whatsoever for her imperfect but loving husband…apart from managing one minuscule tear at the corner of her eye when he dies.
The Blu-Ray comes with a commentary, featurettes, deleted scenes and trailers ported over from the Collector’s Edition DVD. The DTS-HD 5.1 master audio track comes to life by providing a fully supported soundscape for the massive Lean style desert landscapes. All of the special features are in standard definition and some of the footage is windowboxed. However, the 1080p transfer for the feature is approaching reference quality. In the end, I’d recommend a purchase.
RELEASE DATE: 01/31/2012
