RIP Anthony Minghella

I am saddened by the news of filmmaker Anthony Minghella's death.

He made some wonderful movies in his short 54 years, my favourite as one might guess, being unashamedly dramatic and emotionally charged The English Patient, the agonising bitter sweet sadness of which tapped straight in to my then teenage psyche, haunting me for life and I might say giving me impossible expectations of what love should be!

I fell in love with Ralph Fiennes and wanted to be Kristan Scott-Thomas. I longed to find myself embroiled in an affair as overwhelming and yet as fragile as their characters'. Everything about the film was perfect to me, the setting, chronological layering, the soundtrack, the tensions, the doomed love, the scenes of lust, the great unfairness of death and war and misunderstanding etc. etc..

Then I read the Michael Ondaatje novel on which it was based (never a great idea to read the novel after the film), watched it win all it's 9 Oscars, grew a little older, became a bit more cynical and then too embarrassed to admit I had fallen- how like a girl!-for it's epic allure.

What a pity. There aren't many films which grab me from start to finish, make me weep or laugh or want to go home and write as Minghella's film did. And then there are his Beckett studies and subsequent productions, of 'Play' for instance in the 2000 Beckett on Film project. A man after my own heart surely.