1996 Oscar: one scene in The English Patient

I watch few movies now, and I can't for the life of me list the nominees for Sunday night's Oscars show the way I once did, let alone say I've seen them all. I know there's Pitt and Winslet, a Slumdog and a Wrestler.

So I'll do what aging people do when they start losing touch with the changes around them: I'll reminisce. About a 1996 film about WWII, too famous and parodied for you to be ignorant of it. But even so, it gets me thinking about how sorry we all are for this fractured world, and sorry for ourselves too.

So, in the movie, there is brutal war among the world's powerful governments trying to shape boundaries and mindsets in the decades to come. Human beings and Nature together have grown soft and muddy with grief, hatred and killing.

For Hana war is not just a story in the news. She has watched her best friend explode in a jeep that hit a mine. Then in the hospital tent under mortar attack she has discovered that her lover, an officer in another regiment, has been killed. As a war nurse, her ears are deafened with bomb blasts and agonized whimpers of broken men. She holds their torn flesh and bones like crushed fruit.

So when Kip the mine sweeper carries her on his scooter into town for an escape and a surprise, Hana's whole body lights up with childish anticipation. They enter an empty church where frescoed murals adorn the walls up high. Too high, and invisible in an unlighted church. Kip harnesses her on a hanging rope with himself as counter-weight on the other end, hands her a flare after lighting it, and hoists her to the level of the paintings. He operates the rope deftly as if he has practiced this every night for a week, causing her to sway gently in a hanging dance that he controls so she can examine the painted faces up close while she twists and dangles.

Kip knew Hana could not extricate herself from the plodding pain engulfing her, just as he himself had struggled to block out the strain of his mine sweeping job. As love surprised them, he shared a secret window of art and joy with her. I appreciate the grace of the scene for showing two people crushed with war fatigue determined to absorb available beauty, for each others sake as much as for their own.