I’ve been wanting a free moment in my work week to write a bit about Anthony Minghella, and I’m glad I got a few minutes here while the office is quiet. This week, we lost one of the top-rank major-studio filmmakers when Anthony Minghella died suddenly and unexpectedly. From what I’ve scrounged together, he was going in for a routine neck operation (as routine as neck operations get), and, apparently, he suffered a brain hemorrhage and died. It’s a hospital nightmare story that Minghella himself could’ve directed — the man was no shabby director of thrillers as his “Talented Mr. Ripley” proved. It was a saddening and shocking bit of news when it broke on Tuesday.

Most of us — me included — were introduced to Minghella’s artistry and talent with “The English Patient.” I adored that movie, I have no idea if it’s stood up over time, but there are images in that movie that will stay with me forever. It was a literate, old-fashioned, full-hearted epic, the kind Hollywood stopped making long ago, and Minghella revived it in 1996 in a major way — it won tons of Oscars included Best Picture and Best Director for Minghella.

What I loved about Minghella’s films was the meticulous, even sensuous ways they evoked their story-worlds. I’m not the biggest fan of “Cold Mountain” (though both Jude and Nicole were fantastic in it). It was a tad slow, but so atmospheric that you felt Civil War America come to living-breathing life before your eyes. Something else Minghella did amazingly well in “Cold Mountain” — the palpable sense of violence and savagery lurking in the American wilderness. No one in this movie was safe or exempt from it — I felt for the safety of the women in the movie, especially, because Minghella depicts the bandits (the leader is played with memorable viciousness by the great Ray Winstone) and society’s fallen and degraded without pulling any punches. I think the movie left me so creeped out, I’ve distanced myself from it since.

But my favorite Minghella work — a movie I go back to time and again — is “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” based on Patricia Highsmith’s book. It’s got that very evocative beauty that “Cold Mountain” has — this time, it’s ’50s Europe and New York. Minghella shoots the Italian coast in “Mr. Ripley” with such vivid authenticity, I swear, the Italian tourism people should use it to promote their country (then, again, “Ripley” is a thriller about a scheming psychopath so maybe it’s not the best choice!). Again, great performances from Jude Law (he was in 3 Minghella films), and from Matt Damon (both Oscar nominated for this). But “Ripley” belongs just as well to Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays this irritating rich kid who’s too nosy for his own good.

Minghella wrote his own scripts too, and his gifts as a writer were also justly recognized. He was sort of a Renaissance Man, adept in television and film as well as literature and opera. He was well-regarded in his native England and one of Hollywood’s true modern-day prestige directors. So perhaps the silver lining here is that Minghella’s talents had a chance to shine, and we had the good luck to share in the pleasures of his work. His movies had a combination of edginess and intelligence rare in today’s major-studio fare. We will miss him.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Hollywood News, Bloggers, News, Filmmakers!, Look! New!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.