NOVEL'S POWER CAPTURED IN `THE ENGLISH PATIENT'.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Critic

It's hard to imagine how the searing lyric prose of the Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje could be captured onscreen, but in ``The English Patient,'' writer-director Anthony Minghella has come up with something that has very close to the same effect.

Adapting Ondaatje's almost unbearably romantic novel of the wartime passion between a mapmaker on expedition in the Sahara Desert (Ralph Fiennes) and the beautiful, fearless wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) of a colleague, Minghella creates passages of unforgettable cinema that burst joyously to the surface of a narrative that is languid and overlong, but ultimately haunting.

At the outset, a pilot and his golden-haired passenger are shot down over the sensual sandhills of the Sahara, circa 1942. The survivor, his face burned away like his memory, convalesces in the care of a sensitive army nurse (Juliette Binoche), shell-shocked by the war, who determines that this mysterious ``English patient'' will live out his last days with dignity.

The nurse, Hana, breaks off from her regiment to retreat with the patient to a ruined Italian monastery that they pass along the way, and as she reads to him from a history book he carries with him, his own history, or a story that he's not sure is his own, comes flooding back to him in screen flashbacks.

Before long, these two refugees are also visited by a rogue soldier, Carravaggio (Willem Dafoe) who is searching for a man to whom he is tragically linked, and a brave but tender turban-wearing Sikh bomb expert, Kip (Naveen Andrews) with whom the nurse falls in love.

Minghella, a British playwright and filmmaker (``Truly, Madly, Deeply'') clearly besotted with Ondaatje's material, ambitiously gives us more of the novel, in a movie two hours and 39 minutes long, than we really need (along with far more close-ups of the skinless burn victim than we require), and the effect can be exasperating.

But in among it all there are images of such artistry, exotic contrast and extraordinary beauty - the kind of life experiences that one can imagine occurring only amid the absurdity and ruin of war - that one can only be thrilled and grateful that the filmmaker has pulled it off.

Stars Ralph Fiennes (``Quiz Show,'' ``Schindler's List'') and Kristin Scott Thomas (``Angels and Insects'') are both exceptional at bringing complex inner lives to the screen, and the camera lingers long on their tawny good looks against the golden light of sun-baked Egyptian landscapes.

This is not the kind of movie experience from which you can demand a quick spoon-feeding or a tidy structure, though the skeleton that does emerge is surprisingly sturdy, given the challenge of Ondaatje's interior writing style.

It is a movie into which you escape, a movie that swallows you up in the ache of war and winds, loss and destiny.

``We are the real countries, not the borders drawn on maps,'' writes Katharine (Scott Thomas) to her lover.

Aided by the exceptional work of cinematographer John Seale, Minghella, in his third film, gives the material a visual treatment that is as distinct, evocative and shaping as a novelist's voice.

It's a vision of life during wartime that stains the mind, not only with blood and loss, but with poetry.

THE FACTS

The film: ``The English Patient'' (R; sexual situations).

The stars: Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Anthony Minghella. Screenplay by Anthony Minghella, based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje.

Running time: Two hours, 39 minutes.

Playing: AMC Century 14, Century City; Avco Cinema, Westwood; GCC Beverly Connection, West L.A.; Cineplex Odeon, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Four Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas in director Anthony Minghella's ``The English Patient,'' based on Michael Ondaatje's novel.