When this won the Oscar for Best Picture, I was with everybody else who says Fargo should have won as I thought it was the better film. But this was the easy winner for Best Director. Despite Fargo being better, The English Patient was a much harder film to create. The sheer difficulty of an amazing movie qualifies it to be a contender. And The English Patient had great difficulty that really paid off.
shareNeither were more deserving than Sack Lunch. That film got so much out of Dabney Coleman...he put on a tour de force. And the family it the sack. Were the shrunk or was it oversized? No one knows and the director is not telling. Overlooked masterpiece.
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So far, our look back at the movies of 1996 has focused primarily on the year’s blockbusters. Not surprisingly perhaps, most of the movies haven’t been that great. A lot of times, good movies aren’t popular and popular movies aren’t good. As we get down to the final matches of round one, we’re going to look at some of the smaller movies. Hopefully we’ll find a few memorable releases in that bunch.
Yesterday we had a battle of remade comedies. The Birdcage came out on top so that means the remake of a French farce will take on The Hunchback of Notre Dame in round two. That should make for an interesting write-up…
Today, we’re looking at a couple of movies that were honored by the Motion Picture Academy. There were some good movies nominated for Oscars in 1996. Although there wasn’t room to include them in the game, it’s worth mentioning that this was the year Geoffrey Rush won Best Actor for Shine and Billy Bob Thornton took home Best Adapted Screenplay for Sling Blade. Cuba Gooding Jr. won Best Supporting Actor for Jerry Maguire, but that movie appeared elsewhere in the brackets.
The big winner that night was Anthony Minghella’s romantic epic, The English Patient. The film won Best Picture and Minghella took home Best Director. Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas were both nominated in the lead acting categories and Juliette Binoche beat out the favorite (Lauren Bacall) for Best Supporting Actress. In all, The English Patient won nine statues out of twelve nominations.
Must be a great movie, right? I’m going to let our guest critic, Elaine, field this one.
“Just die already!” indeed. In spite of all the accolades, a lot of people felt like The English Patient wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Today, it is not remembered as a great Best Picture winner.
The Coen Brothers crime drama, Fargo, was nominated for a relatively paltry five Oscars. Those five nominations yielded but two wins. Best Actress for Frances McDormand and Best Original Screenplay for Joel and Ethan Coen. The writing awards tend to be a way for the Academy to acknowledge the real best picture of the year that was too edgy or quirky for Academy voters to fully endorse.
While both The English Patient and Fargo received mostly positive reviews, critics voice a preference for the Academy’s runner-up. Both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert named Fargo the best picture of 1996. Siskel ranked The English Patient in fourth place and it didn’t make Ebert’s top ten at all. In his review of Fargo, Ebert raved that it was “one of the best films I’ve ever seen” and that dude watched a lot of movies!
Twenty years ago, The English Patient eclipsed Fargo both at the box office and at the Oscars. But today, Fargo is more fondly remembered. It’s even spawned a critically acclaimed TV drama. Should you be watching the Fargo series? You betcha.