Anthony Minghella - A Huge Loss To The World Of Entertainment

The news of Anthony Minghella's death came as a huge shock yesterday. He was a magnificent film director, whose hit-rate was almost unrivalled by his British contemporaries. Amongst these contemporaries, perhaps only Richard Curtis and Ridley Scott can lay claim to having as big an influence on the industry as Minghella did.

Considering his credits as a writer/director only stretch to 5 films, he had a remarkable career which spanned mediums, genres and collaborators. His breakthrough film Truly, Madly, Deeply displayed a rare understanding of the human psyche (particularly the female psyche), and his follow-up The English Patient needs no introduction. I studied this great adaptation at University, and considering the complexity of the source material it's a testament to his genius that Minghella was able to construct such a lucid narrative. Apparently his methodology involved reading the book several times through, putting it on a shelf and retreating into isolation to work up the screenplay from memory. This approach, to me, was ground-breaking, and proved that in order for an adaptation to be successful it must have a sense of detachment from it's source.

I never met Minghella but I did attend a seminar given by his brother Dominic quite recently. Dominic, like his brother, was warm, intelligent, funny and generous, and I hope we will see more of his work in the future. But either way, the hole left by his more famous sibling is huge, and his death is a loss to us all.