Special Features: |
- Audio Commentary with Screenwriter/Director Anthony Minghella. Minghella is his usual erudite, understated self, delivering a lot of background on the film, from the adaptive process to filming to casting. He gives some insight into what the actors are like in "real life" as well.
- Audio Commentary with Screenwriter/Director Anthony Minghella, Producer Saul Zaentz, and The English Patient Author Michael Ondaatje. This is a perhaps more interesting commentary, if only because it delves so deeply into how difficult it was to adapt Ondaatje's unusually structured novel to the medium of film.
- About Michael Ondaatje (SD; 21:57) in-depth overview of the author which includes copious interview segments with Ondaatje. Ondaatje and others talk about adapting the novel to the medium of film, and Ondaatje also reads from the novel.
- From Novel to Screenplay – Interviews with Cast and Crew (SD; 7:11) features comments from Minghella, Dafoe, Ondaatje, publisher Louis Dennys, Zaentz, Ellen Seligman (one of Ondaatje's editors), and others discussing the formidable challenges posed by the novel's unorthodox structure.
- The Formidable Saul Zaentz (SD; 1:59) is a profile of the film's producer.
- A Historical Look at the Real Count Almásy (SD; 8:18) features Robert Collins, History Professor at UC Santa Barbara, gives some fascinating information about the real life character who is fictionalized in the novel.
- Filmmaker Conversations includes interviews with Minghella (SD; 30:45); Zaentz (SD; 19:34); Ondaatje (SD: 6:44); and editor Walter Murch (SD: 25:51). No"Play All" button.
- The Work of Stuart Craig – Production Designer (SD; 3:57) is a look at the film's elegant production design.
- They Eyes of Phil Bray – Still Photographer (SD; 2:50) highlights one of the crew members who rarely gets any recognition, the still photographer.
- Master Class with Anthony Minghella – Deleted Scenes (SD; 19:59) offers the director discussing several deleted sequences, including an ostrich-centric segment which Minghella was especially upset couldn't be included in the final cut.
- The Documentary: Making of The English Patient (SD; 53:01) in-depth look at the film's very involved production.
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