We didn't get a proper theme week celebration off the ground for National Nurse's Week but it comes to an end today. Here's Andrew Kendall, who can't let the moment pass without shining a light on his favorite movie nurse. - Editor
Sure, The English Patient is really the story of the (not English), László Almásy, Hungarian explorer, but Binoche’s Hana is central to the story. She opens and closes the film, after all. After its wordless desert prelude the film really opens with her on duty towards the end of World War II.
Her first nursely duty, giving a kiss to an ill soldier, is perhaps not very auspicious. It’s a sweet moment, though...
“Would you kiss me? It would mean such a lot to me.”
Very soon she'll meet the badly burned Almásy, see her close friend (a fellow nurse) blown up by a stray bomb, and receive news that her family back home in Canada are probably dead. Things aren't going too well for Hana. And it's because of her the eponymous patient ends up at the beautiful monastery which becomes the main setting for much of the film. She has little to live for and sees the badly burned Almásy as a distraction from her troubles. For isn't that what nurses, like so many caregivers do, put their patients' needs above their own?
Early on, Almásy, with his brain addled hoarsely talks about the sad in his ears and then asks for a cigarette, which Hana refuses. “Why are you so determined to keep me alive?” he wonders.
“Because I’m a nurse.”
It's one in a series of note-perfect line-readings from Binoche in this fim. (Her I don't know anything is stil a cherished one.) But it's not just a great line-reading, its' central to so much about Hana. Because, that line, is accompanied by one of my favourite cuts in The English Patient. From Hana's surety of her purpose in life, to a shot of her playing hopscotch, isolated and alone, in the monastery.
The import is profound, and sad, without taking care of people, there’s nothing for Hana.
And because The English Patient occurs in two timelines it needs two climaxes. We get the first, romantic one, of realising just how Katherine’s death. Then comes the tragic climax of the Patient's relationship with Hana: death-by-euthanasia.
It’s not quite elegant but euthanasia hasn’t been as emotional on screen before, and the simple image of a sobbing Juliet with the syringe – in a morbid way – is really lovely.
It is, of course, almost paradoxical that this nurse’s significant moment is actually ensuring her patient dies but I always see The English Patient’s end as signalling the end of Hana’s role as a Nurse. She’s done all she ought to do, the war is over, and as she jumps into that van at the end looking at the sky, there’s a sense of change imminent. And she seems happy about it.
Nursing is a noble impression, yes. But Hana probably realises, like the greatest nurses, thatsometimes the patient that needs your utmost attention is yourself.
Nurse’s Week comes to an end today (the 6th to the 12th) and I couldn’t let it come to a close with shining a light on my favourite nurse from my favourite movie.