Remembering Anthony Minghella

By Matt Holmes / June 24, 2011

Not an hour after I heard the really sad news of talented British director Anthony Minghella's death yesterday, did my electricity go off - leaving me a little frustrated that I couldn't get this article up sooner to remember a guy whose name may not be mainstream but his films sure were and left an indelible mark on the industry. Minghella was an assured director, often poetic with his films. He believed heavily on performance and allowing actors to do the storytelling. He made his film debut in 1990, with Truly, Madly, Deeply the often cited "British version" of Ghost, a movie which showed great heart and emotional sadness as it explored the true feelings of suddenly losing a loved one and had magnificent performances from Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson. It's an under-rated little jem, one of his finest achievements.

His second movie Mr. Wonderful, his first attempt at a film not written by himself was less a success and despite an impressive cast of names such as Matt Dillon, William Hurt and a strangely against type Vincent D'Onofrio, the movie was stilted and oddly vacant from Minghella. It was a lightweight and instantly forgettable load of tosh in truth.

Which is not something you could say at all with his third picture, easily Minghella's finest work and the movie he will forever be remembered by. The English Patient which he adapted closely alongside it's author Michael Ondaatje was nominated for 12 Oscars and came away with 9 in 1996, a year it truly made it's own. It made over $230 million worldwide and captured the world's hearts and imaginations in the mid 90's with a classic and epic sized love story on the scale of the great Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago.

It's a true piece of art and one that Minghella really sucked you in with. It felt like a classic film of Hollywood yesteryear and totally against what anyone else in the industry was attempting (same year as Independence Day). Simply put, it's one of the best movies of the 90's... 1999 would see Minghella adapt another book, this time Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, and he would again bring his classic 50's style of film making to a really dark thriller, almost the bastard brother of Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can. And I mean that in a good way guys. We follow a young Matt Damon (in what I thought was his best role for years) as he lies his way through different persona's... enjoying the wealth it brings and also the closeness to social occasions and individuals we would not else be privy to. It's a great movie about the masks that people wear and our own notions of identity and just who we are... what defines us and what keeps us sane. Jude Law (who would become a frequent Minghella star from here), Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are all great in this hinting at some of the great performances that were yet to come from the whole cast...

Yet another novel next with the Charles Frazier yarn Cold Mountain, Minghella's attempt to cook up another epic love saga set during war time which had the all star cast of Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Renee Zellweger (who won an Oscar for a pantomime performance), Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Natalie Portman. I never liked the movie, I always felt it was like Atonement where we didn't really get enough of the relationship between the two leads before they became separated and it was a little heavy handed in it's one theme narrative. There was a good story in there somewhere but too many characters, too many sub-plots (which went no-where) and not enough of a chemistry or indeed the material to form a chemistry between Law and Kidman. The movie was a huge success though with a $179 million worldwide, cementing the three leads as movie stars and Minghella as an artful director who was able to achieve great mainstream attention. Minghella's smallest movie for well over a decade and sadly his biggest flop would be his last film Breaking and Entering just over a year ago. Again starring Jude Law, this romantic thriller was written and directed by Minghella and would revolve around a landscape architect's life, and a kind of mid-life crisis after being the unfortunate victim of a robbery. I haven't seen this one. I was told by someone whose opinion I respect that the movie was a disaster but after looking up some of the reviews right now that doesn't seem to be the full opinion from people. Juliet Binoche, Martin Freeman, Robin Wright Penn and Rafi Gavron would round out the cast of the movie that would fail to even make a $1 million in the U.S.

Inevitably with deaths of working artists, we have to look closely at what work he left unfinished. Minghella had just completed a BBC movie The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency about a Botswanan woman who starts up the country's first female-owned detective agency. It's based on a Alexander McCall Smith novel and Minghella co-wrote it with Richard Curtis - and it will air in the U.K. on Sunday. He also helmed a short part of New York, I Love You - the project that pulls several directors together for a love letter to one of the biggest cities in the world. We believe his segment was finished, but I can't say 100% for certain. Presumably if it wasn't, it would be left out or completed by someone else. His unrealized project The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, an adaptation of a Liz Denson novel showcasing the dual thoughts of a nine year old boy in a coma and his doctor, a truly emotional project which we will now never get to see from him. We lost a really talented British director today who will go down as one of the country's most talented storyteller of the last two decades. He put together a great body of work, with at least three really great (not just good) movies which will live on for years to come. Our thoughts and prayers are with Minghella's friends and family.