Anthony Minghella, 1954 - 2008.

Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella, who turned such literary works as The English Patient, The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain into acclaimed movies, has died. He was 54.... Minghella was recently in Botswana filming an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It is due to air on British television this week.... "He wasn't just a writer, or a writer-director, he was someone who was very well-known and very well-loved within the film community," [producer David] Puttnam told the BBC. "Frankly he was far too young to have gone."

Jill Lawless, AP.

See also: British Film Directors, Variety and Wikipedia; the Telegraph's David Gritten recently reported from the set of Detective Agency.

Updated through 3/24.

Updates: "He was one of those rare people who, though extremely powerful in the industry, was not well known to the public," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "Yet in person he had as much vibrant physical presence as any star.... I first became aware of him with his first movie, a film I liked and continue to like, though it has become much sneered at for supposed emotional luvviness: Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990), starring Juliet Stevenson as the woman whose husband (Alan Rickman) has died suddenly and almost inexplicably - that fact alone gives me pause now - and then comes back as a benign phantom to watch over her.... With his passing, cultural life in this country has descended one or two IQ points."

And Andrew Pulver introduces a series of clips.

"Anthony Minghella became best-known as a director, but he was first and foremost a writer." In the Huffington Post, Robert J Elisberg looks back on a 1999 interview for the WGA. Via Movie City News.

The BBC rounds up quotes from many he worked with.

"At a time when many British directors were making introspective chamber pieces, Minghella was tackling large subjects," writes Geoffrey Macnab in the Independent. The English Patient "had a famously troubled production history, eventually being 'rescued' by Miramax. This only seemed to add to its mythic status. Minghella proved that he was a craftsman, capable of staging big set-pieces and working with small armies of extras, but he was also adept at capturing emotion in scenes between just two actors. He made an international star out of Ralph Fiennes and also elicited one of the very best performances that Kristin Scott Thomas has ever given."

"Though he directed only six feature films - and Jude Law starred in three of them - he wrote and produced several others, and made an indelible mark on British and international cinema," writes the London Times.

"[H]e was far more than the sum of his credits," writes the Telegraph's David Gritten. "Minghella cared deeply about Britain's film heritage, and helped re-position the BFI, stressing his commitment to its library and archives. On his watch, the BFI's National Film Theatre on London's South Bank received a long-overdue facelift."

Updates, 3/19: "Minghella, whose ample figure and cheery countenance exuded a love of life, seemed to be Harold Pinter, Orson Welles, David Lean and Richard Attenborough all rolled into one," writes Ronald Bergan in the Guardian. "[H]e was also a mixture of English restraint and Italian exuberance. Some critics stressed the adjectives in the titles of The English Patient and Cold Mountain to describe his work, while others saw his films as truly, deeply romantic. His background might explain this dichotomy."

FilmInFocus presents excerpts from Mingella on Mingella.

"[H]is best film by far was his adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, which remains criminally underrated almost a decade after its release," writes Ross Douthat for the Atlantic. "With its literary pedigree, pretty-person cast and gorgeous Italy-in-the-50s setting, Ripley tends to be lumped in with the same group with The English Patient and Cold Mountain, Minghella's middling Civil War epic. But Ripley was a richer, darker, less romantic and more psychologically subtle film than either of the late director's other big-budget efforts."

"Ripley's the kind of glossy prestige movie that gives the word 'middlebrow' a good name, the kind that should make such classifications null," writes Reverse Shot's robbiefreeling. "Take another look, and notice the talent we've lost today."

"Because he died with decades of work still ahead of him, we'll never know whether Minghella would have made another movie with the lasting power of his first one, Truly, Madly, Deeply, a 1990 made-for-television comedy that was successful enough to gain a big-screen release and a BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay," writes Slate's Dana Stevens, who's put the film "on my semisecret list of all-time favorite movies. Semisecret because I don't know that I could entirely defend the choice: It's not as if the film is formally innovative or visually impressive or thematically original. It's just so damn wonderful."

"[I]t's tough not to feel in part the passing of a unique creative force that connected audiences to another era," writes Mark Olsen in the Los Angeles Times. "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."

In the New York Times, David Carr quotes, among others, Sydney Pollack: "He was interested in the magic. Not fake magic, like hiding the ball under the cup, but real magic, the kind that occurs between people. Nowadays, everybody making movies wants to get the clothes off fast and the guns out quick, he was just the opposite. He was interested in the poetry, lavishing the viewer with story, and scope and richness."

"In a sense, it's apt that his last film be shown on TV, the medium in which he started his career," writes Jumana Farouky for Time. "In a time when Jason Bourne and James Bond are worshipped like cinema kings, when quick cuts and chase scenes are box office gold, Minghella's films seem to come from a bygone era. The lingering shots; the scenes that measure out in minutes, not seconds; the dialogue where silence says as much as words — his motto could have been 'Just Because Nothing Happens Doesn't Mean Nothing is Happening.'"

"He saw himself first and foremost as a storyteller, and had few artistic pretensions," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "Unlike so many people in his trade, Minghella was universally well liked on both sides of the Atlantic."

"Mr Minghella was not an old family friend. I never worked on one of his films. At best, I shared light conversation with him on various mornings and afternoons while working at the front desk of The Mercer Hotel, in Manhattan. He was my favorite guest." Andi Teran for Vanity Fair.

Online listening tip. NPR.

Online viewing tip. Matthew Clayfield.

"Minghella walked a delicate line between discretion and spectacle, class and its trappings, obsession and romance," writes Boston Globe's Wesley Morris. Ty Burr: "The director's later work was nothing if not tasteful and gradually, I'd argue, that became a liability."

Online viewing tip. Phil Nugent at ScreenGrab: "One of Minghella's smallest and least-known projects is his two-part, 15-minute version of Samuel Beckett's Play (2000), Mighella's contribution to the multi-director, comprehensive Beckett on Film project."

Update, 3/20: "This is absolutely ghastly," writes Juliet Stevenson in the London Times. "As soon as I heard the news I fell apart and ever since I've been staggering about trying to take it all in.... None of the obituaries, or lists of achievements, has mentioned his delicious sense of humour. It infused everything, his work and family. He adored taking the piss out of himself and me."

Updates, 3/24: "Anthony - or as he was to all of us lucky to be near and dear to him, just simply 'Ant' - had the rare gift of making everyone who came into his orbit feel special," writes producer Colin Vaines in the Guardian.

For the Telegraph, James Rampton talks with Jill Scott about working with Mingella on Detective Agency.

Online listening tip. The IFC's Matt Singer and Alison Willmore.

Posted by dwhudson at March 18, 2008 7:59 AM