The Oriental as Absence in Minghella’s The English Patient

This paper deals with the relationship between Michael Ondjaatje s novel The English Patient (title typed in italics) and the film version of it directed by Minghella. In his film version of THE ENGLISH PATIENT, Minghella changes the story radically. Indeed, the film has a different protagonist, a different denouement, and a different resolution from the novel. Far from maintaining Kip s role as protagonist of the novel, the film reduces him to a peripheral character. Moreover, the novel s major theme, namely, Kip s ability as an oriental to admire certain elements in Western culture, then review his encounter with that culture, and finally repudiate it, is hardly brought to the fore or allowed to be a significant theme in the film. Such manipulation of the content of a novel by film makers is charachteristic of the orietalists trend to reserve the role of the hero for the White Wesern Man and represent the Oriental Man as devoid of any significant or effective cultural presence.