Won: Nine Oscars, including Best Picture, 1996 It gets some stick for beating out Fargo to Best Picture success, but it remains that Anthony Minghella's The English Patient is a great film in its own right; a formalist masterpiece (or at least near-masterpiece) if not Fargo's equal, then at least worthy of mention in the same breath. The film, based on Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, swept the 1996 Academy Awards, winning, amongst other things, Best Director (Minghella), Best Cinematography (John Seale) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Juliette Binoche), to go with its big triumph as Best Picture. A stunning achievement on every conceivable technical level, The English Patient too deserves credit for being an epic (in the proper sense of that word), sweeping love story, and while it's true that at points it slips into sentimentality, it's nevertheless a heartbreaking, poignant affair, bolstered immeasurably by leads Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas (both nominated for their work here), whose relationship dances and crackles and crushes on screen.
