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When turning a book into a film, concessions and choices have to be made. After all, there are certain things you can do in a book, which cannot as easily or as casually be done in a film, and vice versa. This essay will look at the way in which Anthony Minghella "translated" the scene in The English Patient where Almásy and Katharine part. Specific attention will be paid to the differences between the book and the film scenes and which concessions were done and what choices were made.

The scene which will be used here is the one that can be found on pages 156-158 of the book, and pages 110 to 112 of the screenplay (approximately from 1:08 to 1:12 in the film), concerning the breaking up by Katharine of the relationship between her and Almásy.

When casually comparing the scene in the book and the one on screen there seems little difference between the two; the general tone of the narration and the shape of the dialogue in the film are almost identical to the book. However, there are a number of remarkable changes, some concerning cinematographic possibilities (such as the position of the camera) which are not possible in a book, and some concerning cinematographic difficulties (such as reading the protagonist�s mind) which are more easily done in a book. Naturally, in real terms, it would be possible for a director to give a direct insight into the protagonist�s mind, for example through the use of a voice over, but a mode of style like that could give a film an unwanted degree of self-consciousness which can more easily be accepted in prose fiction. For example, the scene in the book has the following passage:

She sits, enclosed within herself, in the armour of her terrible conscience. He is unable to reach through it. Only his body is close to her.

(The English Patient, p.157)

In film, it is not possible to let the audience know this as exactly without the film becoming more self-conscious, for example if Almásy, or some narrator, would tell the audience this, and this means that the viewer has to get this information via some other way. In itself, it would have been possible to have Almásy disclose this information to the audience without adding substantially to the film�s self-consciousness, namely by telling Hana this when he is lying burnt in the monastery. This, however, would mean breaking with the style of the film, since Almásy, when in the monastery, does not visibly talk about these memories, they are complete flashbacks, giving it the ambiguity between whether he is only remembering it for himself or whether he is talking about it to the others in the monastery.

The screenplay already gives some clues as to how Minghella has tried to solve this problem by having the following description of the scene:

Alone among the necking couples - mostly soldiers with their Egyptian girlfriends - sits Katharine. She�s waiting for Almásy. Katharine is wretched. She sits, head down, hardly watching the screen, marooned in her despair about duplicity, sordid assignations.

(Minghella (1997), p.111)

Naturally, a description such as this is still too much like one from a book, and not one for a film, but certain visual clues have already been inserted concerning the mise-en-scene. For example, Katharine is sitting alone amongst a number of couples, looking very unhappy. This comprises the first six shots of the scene in the film, where a sharp contrast is being built between Katharine�s state of mind and the rest of what can be seen and heard; the necking couples, the cheerful music and the optimistic voice of the news reader. It is also in sharp contrast to Almásy�s initial state of mind when he arrives on the scene - he enters the open-air cinema with a hop, and only realises after having sat down for a few seconds that Katharine is not feeling happy at all. This is an indication of the separate �world� which Katharine inhibits at that particular moment. She is enclosed within herself and out of place within the rest of the scenery. So the viewer is not being told, but is being shown how Katharine feels, and how Almásy cannot get close to her through the use of contrasts between her and the rest of the scene.

A similar problem occurs again during the same scene when in the book it says:

Her head sweeps away from him and hits the side of the gatepost. He sees it hurt her, notices the wince. But they have separated already into themselves now, the wall up at her insistence.

(The English Patient, p.158)

One solution to the problem of conveying this could be to have Almásy not respond at all to Katharine banging her head, to have him look some other way, or look uncaring. However, this was not done and the reasons for this will be made clear later on. To see how this problem was solved we need to go back in the film to a scene at approximately 0:36; Int. Cave of Swimmers. Day. Within the Cave of Swimmers, there is Kamal who bangs his head and Bermann comes over to him to make sure he is all right. It is this pre-'echo' which makes a sharp contrast with Katharine banging her head and no-one there to see if she is all right, and through that conveying the thoughts the book could simply put in words. Another way in which Minghella is showing this is through the use of camera positions. When Almásy is shown, the camera is in close-up, but when the camera looks at Katharine, it is in Plan Americain, at a distance from the camera.

The scene in the book also covers a passage of time when it says: "An hour later they walk into a dry night." (p.157) This idea is also conveyed in the film by shots 13, 14 and 15. The end of shot 13 contains the singing heard during the rest of the scene and the images seen in shot 14 clarify that the music still belongs to the open-air cinema. These are already indications that time has elapsed between the showing of the newsreel and the main feature, but the passage of time becomes most clear in shot 15; the camera cranes downwards from where Almásy and Katharine were sitting to where they are now, in the space under the seats.

It is after these shots that the film starts to deviate from the book in a number of ways. First of all the book has the following dialogue:

"We will never love each other again. We can never see each other again."
"I know," he says.
[...]
"Never again. Whatever happens."
"Yes."

(The English Patient, pp.156-157)

In the film, however, Almásy says: "I'm not agreeing. Don't think I'm agreeing, because I'm not." This seems a clear change from the dialogue in the book, and a change that has altered the characters somewhat from their original in the book. It made them, and through them the story, less complex. This has partly to do with what Bordwell (1985) calls Narrative Comprehension. Within the light of the rest of the screen dialogue (cf. p.112 of the screenplay) it can be inferred that in the gap between scenes 13 and 14 a conversation has taken place between Almásy and Katharine about them breaking up. To be able to keep comprehending what is happening Almásy cannot agree and he cannot keep silent since the viewer needs to know the "why" of them breaking up, which is at first not revealed because of the gap.

What is interesting still, however, is that both the characters are changed in the transformation from the book to the film. The book has the following passage:

Now there is no kiss. Just one embrace. He untugs himself from her and walk away, then turns.

(The English Patient, p.157/158)

While shots 20 to 25 show not Almásy, but Katharine untugging herself and walking away. This change has to do with the ways the characters are built up in the book and in the film. A book can allow for very complex characters which in film would be very difficult to explain or show without leaving the viewer too puzzled. In the case of Almásy, the book has a passage on page 150 in which says: "For him all relationships fell into patterns. You fell into propinquity or distance." Something like this is not easily shown in film, and Minghella replaced this with a reluctance to talk. Since Almásy untugging himself and walking away is a clear example of the aforementioned dichotomy between propinquity and distance, showing that if Katharine could not be close by, she had to be distant from him, and he from her, it would make the character of Almásy unnecessarily more complex had he done the same in the film, since there would have been no clear reasoning behind his actions like there was in the book. Because of this, it would make more sense to have Katharine walk away, as the viewer can understand her reasons for doing this, especially since, in the same scene, she gives them once again. For the same reasons, it would have been impossible to have Almásy show a total lack of care when Katharine bangs her head.

Another element that is in the film, but not in the book is that of Almásy being late. One reason for inserting this element into the scene has of course to do with the necessity in the scene of Katharine being on her own, isolated, at first, but as with the scene in the Cave of Swimmers with Kamal and Bermann, it also serves as an echo; Almásy will also be too late to save Katharine when she lies injured in the cave of Swimmers near the end of the film.

Furthermore, the scene in the film takes place entirely in an open-air cinema, which is an interesting choice since in the book it takes place in and around Groppi park, where "they can hear the gramophone songs in the distance from the Music for All cinema, its windows open for the heat." (p.157) In both cases, the connotations with the fun and entertainment of the cinema are in sharp contrast with the state of mind of Katharine and Almásy. Since film is a predominantly visual medium, it would have been a lost opportunity for Minghella had he not done something with that visual aspect, something which is much harder, if not impossible, to do in a book. Therefore the very opening shot of the scene serves as a prelude to events to come as the camera is focused on the screen of the open-air cinema which says: "Is it peace - or war?" It refers, of course, to the state of the relationship between Katharine and Almásy for the rest of the film.

Also, the visual aspect of film enables the viewer to see the expression on the faces of the characters, expressing subtleties which are impossible to do in a book, and indeed, the scene in the book has no mention of expressions except one:

His face awful to her, trying to smile.

(The English Patient, p.158)

This expression has been taken over in the film, but the film has a whole lot of expressions that give some indication to the state of mind of the characters. One that is particularly revealing is the one of Almásy in shot 11 when he sits down next to Katharine and all of a sudden his expression changes from happy to a mix between confusion, surprise and worry when he notices that she is crying.

The changes between the book and the film mostly have to do with the difference between direct definition and indirect representation. Ondaatje has used a lot of direct definition which, to not make the film too self-conscious, had to be translated into indirect representation by Minghella who, even in this short scene, has used many of the ways of indirect representation which Rimmon-Kenan (1983) defines. There is the action of the characters, like Almásy grabbing Katharine's hand, which is a one-time act of commission, or him being late, which could be seen as a habitual action, or him doing nothing when Katharine bangs her head, which is an act of omission. And although the character's speech in the film is not outspokenly individualised or distinguished, Almásy�s reluctance to talk is characteristic of him, like his love of the desert.

By using seemingly the simplest of means, Minghella manages to capture the scene in largely the same way as the book describes it, with just the subtlest of directorial changes, at times playing on the viewer's subconsciousness, in order to clarify or uncomplicate certain actions by the characters which in the film just do not have the same amount of space that they can be allowed in the book.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bordwell, D. (1985) Narration in the Fiction Film, Routledge, London, UK.

Kamiya, G. (1996) An Interview with Michael Ondaatje, at: http://www.salon1999.com/nov96/ondaatje961118.html

Minghella, A. (1997) The English Patient, a screenplay, Methuen Drama, London, UK.

Ondaatje, M. (1992) The English Patient, Vintage Books, London, UK.

Rimmon-Kenan, S. (1983) Narrative Fiction, Contemporary Poetics, Routledge, London, UK.