Langston Whitfield (Samuel L. Jackson) is a Washington Post journalist. His editor provocatively sends him to South Africa to cover the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, in which the perpetrators of murder and torture on both sides during Apartheid are invited to come forward and confront their victims. By telling the unvarnished truth and expressing contrition, they may be granted amnesty. Can the deep wounds of Apartheid be healed through reconciliation? Langston is deeply skeptical. He tracks down Col. De Jager, the most notorious torturer in the SA Police and tries to penetrate the mind of a monster, an experience that obliges him to confront his own demons. Anna Malan (Juliette Binoche), is an Afrikaans poet who is covering the hearings for radio. As a white South African she is shattered by the accounts of the cruelty and depravity committed by her fellow countrymen. Anna and Langston must both question their sense of identity. Where do they each belong? How responsible are they for what is done in the name of their respective countries? The moving testimony of the victims affects them deeply. In different ways they are both estranged from their families, and their shared experience draws them ever closer to each other. It is a story charting the unfathomable depths of human cruelty and the redeeming power of forgiveness and love.
When a single mother (Juliette Binoche) and her six-year-old daughter move to rural France and open a chocolate shop--with Sunday hours--across the street from the local church, they are met with some skepticism. But as soon as they coax the townspeople into enjoying their delicious products, they are warmly welcomed.
Set in North Africa and Italy during the late 1930's and early '40's, The English Patient is an epic drama of two haunting love stories that unfolds against a background of international upheaval. Through the prism of war, and of love and friendship, various themes of fidelity, adultery, nationality and betrayals are dramatized and explored. The story, based on Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel, is told elliptically, through the histories of four characters who find themselves in a ruined monastery in Italy at the end of World War II. Slowly they reveal themselves and, in the process, the true identity of the English patient, the unknown survivor of a plane shot down over the Sahara who lies dying in the monastery is made clear. Passion fires these stories, whether it is the raw passion between lovers, or the compulsive passion which drives men to explore remote and inhospitable regions, or to pursue across time and countries those they think! have wronged them.
