Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

War

There is no real bad guy in The English Patient. The jerk who has a nurse cut off Caravaggio's thumbs is pretty terrible, but he does it in the name of war. Geoffrey might consider Almásy an antagonist, since he's sleeping with his wife, but the movie attempts to show their affair as more complex than that.

The real antagonist is the war itself. It's the conflict between the British and the Germans that keeps Almásy from saving Katharine. It's the mines of the Axis powers that blow up Hana's loved ones. Everyone is hurt by the war.