The world at Minghella's feet
AN APPRECIATION
The British-born filmmaker was especially adept at bringing an international feel to Hollywood films.
Time and time again, he returned to the theme of the displaced struggling to find their way, foreigners in a strange land looking for a piece of home, if not simply peace of mind. Mostly, his work seemed to offer the promise that there were moments of intimate connection to be found in this world, even amid epic-scaled turmoil and confusion. His creations always proposed that there was something more for us out there.
So the news this week of the passing of director, writer and producer Anthony Minghella at age 54 was a particularly unexpected shock. A filmmaker who could bring a cool international feel to Hollywood productions, he had an uncanny ability to be both the plugged-in insider and the wary, watchful outsider.
The British-born Minghella was a filmmaker of quiet strength who seemed perhaps more closely aligned with certain directors of a previous generation -- like David Lean or Carol Reed -- than with his contemporaries.
Never a particularly hip filmmaker, with works such as "Truly, Madly, Deeply," "The English Patient," "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold Mountain," Minghella was a practitioner of a mature cinematic style that seemed slightly out of step with the youth cult of contemporary Hollywood.
His seven feature films racked up an impressive 24 Academy Award nominations and came away with 10 Oscars. Minghella won the Academy Award for best director for "The English Patient" (1996), and he was also twice nominated for best adapted screenplay.
His skill in teasing out powerful performances was evidenced by the five Oscar nominations for acting stemming from films he directed. Juliette Binoche in "The English Patient" and Renée Zellweger in "Cold Mountain" each won best supporting actress under Minghella's direction.
There was something of the Hollywood classicist in his films, which might have made them occasionally seem a touch staid, but they were nevertheless always sturdy, impeccably constructed and seamlessly engaging.
His debut feature "Truly, Madly, Deeply" was released in 1991, when Minghella was nearing 40, an age by which some filmmakers have already come on strong and lost their touch. Once he made the leap to bigger pictures with "The English Patient," a throwback to sweeping, epic melodramas, it would be Minghella's emotional acuity and flair for offhanded internationalism that would mark him as a director.
