Ralph Fiennes is on track to earn his third Academy Award nomination for his lead role in Conclave, which would be his first since 1996, when he was nominated for Best Actor for Anthony Minghella's romantic war drama The English Patient. Based on Michael Ondaatje's 1992 novel of the same name, The English Patient was widely praised and won a number of Academy Awards, including Best Picture. But not everyone was convinced of the film's brilliance, least of all Seinfeld's Elaine Benes (Julia Louis Dreyfus). Just eleven days before The English Patient took home nine Academy Awards, the Seinfeld episode, appropriately titled "The English Patient," aired on NBC, in which Elaine develops a burning hatred for the film that nearly ruins her life. The Season 8 episode not only gives us one of the most memorable Elaine rants but is eternally relatable for anyone who’s ever failed to understand the hype behind a universally loved new movie.
What Is 'The English Patient' About?
Taking place at the tail end of World War II, The English Patient stars Ralph Fiennes as a nameless Englishman badly burned and on the brink of death after his plane is shot down by the Germans. Hana (Juliette Binoche), a French-Canadian combat nurse, cares for him in an abandoned monastery, and through a series of flashbacks we learn his name is László Almásy, a Hungarian cartographer who worked for the Royal Geographical Society in the late 1930s, surveying a region of the Sahara Desert. There, he meets a married British couple, Geoffrey (Colin Firth) and Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas) Clifton, and soon begins a passionate love affair with Katharine. The film also follows Canadian spy David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe) seeking revenge after being tortured by German soldiers, and Lieutenant Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh combat engineer for the British Indian Army who falls for Hana.
'Seinfeld's "The English Patient" Episode Is Eternally Relatable
In Season 8, Episode 17 of Seinfeld, Elaine and her love interest Blaine (Todd Jeffries) go on a movie date. Elaine wants to see Sack Lunch – one of the show's many fake movies – but Blaine suggests The English Patient, citing the movie's Oscar buzz. To her dismay, Sack Lunch is sold out, so they see The English Patient instead, and Elaine walks out of the theater utterly vexed as to why everyone has been raving about it, and declares, "It sucked." When she returns to the theater to see Sack Lunch by herself, she bumps into her friends, accompanied by Blaine, who have just rewatched The English Patient and Blaine then breaks up with her because she doesn't like the film.
Throughout the episode, everyone she talks to, including a waitress at the coffee shop and her boss, Mr. Peterman (John O'Hurley), expresses their appreciation for The English Patient, and Peterman even insists on taking her to the movies when she lies and says she hasn't seen it. This leads to an iconic Elaine outburst in the middle of the theater – "Quit telling your stupid story about the stupid desert and just die already. DIE!" – which nearly gets her fired.
In a 2016 interview with Vanity Fair, Seinfeld writer Steve Koren shared the inspiration behind "The English Patient" episode, crediting another writer, Peter Mehlman, with the idea. The writers found humor in the idea of someone disliking a movie you love turning into a genuine source of conflict in a relationship, and The English Patient was so widely revered it became the perfect dividing line. Little did they know, the film would go on to win nine Oscars less than two weeks after the episode aired, which no doubt would have made Elaine even angrier. Whether or not you agree with her assessment of The English Patient, the episode is relatable for any movie lovers who have tuned into a new, seemingly universally loved film, only to walk away disappointed and confused by its popularity.
As it turns out, even Ralph Fiennes himself enjoyed the episode. Fiennes recently reunited with his The English Patient co-star Juliette Binoche for their 2024 film The Return, and during an interview with Jake Hamilton of Jake's Takes, they were asked about their reactions to the infamous Seinfeld episode about The English Patient. Though Binoche had never seen it, Fiennes found it funny, saying, "If you're lucky enough to be in a film that's being received well, you can have a humor about the people who are going, 'I don't get it.'"
The English Patient is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.
The English Patient
- Release Date
- December 6, 1996
- Runtime
- 162 Minutes
- Director
- Anthony Minghella
Cast
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Jaliette Binoche -
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