Mar 27, 2008
The Reel Dad
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by MARK SCHUMANN
Father of Three
Film critics love to discuss the books that can’t, or shouldn’t, be made into movies; the properties considered so special that they should be saved for the printed page instead of converted into a screen experience. Fortunately, the late Anthony Minghella never permitted such words to influence his work. Of the six films he directed during his much-too-short career, he created a series of striking movies that most people thought could never be made.
In 1996, Minghella was a little known writer/director with just one film to his credit, a well reviewed but little seen gem, Truly Madly Deeply. Somehow, he convinced veteran producer Saul Zaentz that he, and only he, could adapt the Michael Ondaajte novel, The English Patient, to the screen. Not only was Minghella a less than obvious choice for the material, the material itself is not typical screen fare. Its hero is burned beyond recognition; its principal romance is revealed entirely in flashback; and its central character, the life of the story, is a caring nurse with no dramatic sequences of her own.
What thrives on the page as an inner dialogue of a man struggling to discover his own version of truth seems, at first, out of place with a movie industry quickly learning how to be dominated by computer-generated action sequences.
Brilliantly, creatively, movingly, Minghella is not only faithful to the original work, he uses the visual potential of film to capture the meaning of the words beyond what the words could convey. And while he demonstrates strong command of dialogue to move action, the most moving sequences of the film are dialogue-free, as Minghella the director moves into the characters so lovingly transferred from the novel. For his work, to no one’s surprise, he won the Academy Award as the year’s Best Director.
Hollywood being Hollywood, Minghella could have easily transitioned to directing sequels, franchises or big-budget action films. He chose, instead, to adapt a second literary source perhaps more elusive than The English Patient. With The Talented Mr. Ripley, arguably the best (and certainly the most re-watchable) film of 1999, he brilliantly captures the human core of a most inhuman character. Tom Ripley is, certainly, a negative man, so distrusting of humanity that he impersonates life rather than lives, pretending to be someone in order to be close to someone he wishes he were.
Rather than settle for the pop elements of Patricia Highsmith stories, Minghella explores the reasons why Ripley chooses to lie, impersonate and kill. Instead of dwelling on the character’s negative dimensions, he places the character in situations where he must confront himself, where he can’t pretend. In a brilliant sequence, Minghella puts Ripley on stage in a jazz club where, suddenly, the character is forced to perform. Rather than sing in his own voice, however, the great fake simply imitates how a real performer might sing. This brilliant film — misunderstood and under-appreciated when first released — stands as, perhaps, the most daring and ultimately the most satisfying of the Manghella canon.
The third difficult-to-adapt novel in the Minghella collection is the under-appreciated film version of Cold Mountain, from the novel by Charles Frazier. This time around, the success of the book may stand in the way of Minghella getting the full credit for his creativity. While his film faithfully follows the situations and themes of the novel, and reinvents them in brilliant cinematic terms, Minghella dares to change favorite moments of the book. Most controversial is Minghella’s choice of the very Australian Nicole Kidman and the most British Jude Law to play authentic American characters, as if foreign performers, in a film shot in Eastern Europe by a British director, undermine the North American focus of the story.
Minghella dares, in Cold Mountain, to return to the heart of a story rather than cater to audience expectations for resolution. Once again, this master of words uses powerful visuals to develop the narrative, using the meaningful glances between Kidman and Law as the fuel for a compelling tale of a man who risks everything to return to a woman he barely knows.
How tragic that this director, with so many stories yet to film, was cut short in life and creative drive. Thankfully, we can savor, with DVDs, the vision he brought to his work, and the unforgettable experiences he delivered.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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