Sweeping the sands: Geographies of desire in The English Patient

In adapting Ondaatje's novel to film, Minghella has dropped a number of subplots and turned some of the characters into "supporting roles." For instance, the character of Caravaggio is now driven by his desire for revenge against Almasy, and anyone else that can be held responsible for his torture and mutilation at the hands of a sadistic Nazi interrogator (Jurgen Prochnow). Almasy is responsible, it is revealed, because he led a German spy into British headquarters and sold maps to the Nazis in order to gain access to the desert and reclaim Katharine's body. Consequently, Caravaggio stays with Hana and the patient hoping to verify that the patient is Almasy and then kill him. But through the course of Almasy's "confession"-for Caravaggio functions as both interlocutor and priest to the patient-he gains Caravaggio's forgiveness:

Caravaggio is looking out the window, his mind racing, his resolve evaporating.

CARAVAGGIO: You get to the morning, and the poison leaks away, doesn't it? Black nights. I thought I would kill you.

ALMASY: You can't kill me. I died years ago.

CARAVAGGIO: No, I can't kill you. (Minghella 167)

The tragedy of Almasy's affair with Katharine diffuses Caravaggio's desire for revenge. He recognizes, we understand, that he and Almasy are both actors in and victims of the war. Caravaggio has spent years working as an Allied spy but is eventually caught; Almasy holds no political loyalties per se but betrays the English in order to fulfill his promise to return to Katharine. Minghella's film emphasizes this equivalency but, in so doing, elides crucial differences.

Most obviously, the construction of an affinity between Caravaggio and Almasy makes equal the Axis and Allied positions. It also makes incidental the consequences resulting from various political loyalties. At one point Caravaggio confronts Almasy with the potential repercussions of his actions. He charges, "If the British hadn't unearthed that photographer, thousands of people could have died"; Almasy answers, "Thousands of people did die, just different people" (Minghella 147). Rather than addressing the nature and the effects of political difference, the film fixates on individual or personal differences. Thus the distinction that it foregrounds is the difference between the loss of Caravaggio's thumbs and Almasy's one great love, Katharine. In supplying Caravaggio with the motivation of revenge and in granting Almasy forgiveness through Caravaggio, Minghella's film suggests that the loss of love provides ample recompense for betrayal. In fact, political betrayal hardly counts when it comes to matters of the heart. As Almasy writes on a piece of scrap paper, "Betrayals in war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace. New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything-for the heart is an organ of fire" (Minghella 89). Through a variety of mechanics Minghella's adaptation provides a complicit echo of Almasy's sentiments. As a result, the individual is freed from the issues of political and social responsibility, and questionable acts merit forgiveness if they are performed in the name of love, "for the heart is an organ of fire."