At the fifty-fifth year of his life, the head of the British Film Institute, the famous film director, screenwriter and producer Anthony Minghella, died in London. Coming from a family of famous Italian ice cream factory owners (there were two other brothers in the family), Minghella began as a playwright, winning the London Drama Critics' Award for Most Promising Author in 1984, and his play Made in Bangkok was awarded in 1986. . His film career began on television, where in the early 80s Minghella wrote scripts for several films and TV series, including several episodes of the well-known Inspector Morse. Minghella made his big-screen directorial debut in 1990 with Truly, Madly, Deeply, a romantic tragicomedy about ghosts. But real success came to the director six years later, when his “The English Patient,” based on the novel by Michael Ontaaji, received nine Oscars, including a nomination for “Best Film of the Year.” It was followed by "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999), "Cold Mountain" (2003), "Breaking and Entering" (2006), a short story in the just completed anthology "New York, I Love You", which became a kind of continuation of the explanation in love for Paris by directors from different countries. Minghella's plans for this year included the film "The First Women's Detective Agency", an adaptation of the famous novel by Alexander McCall Smith, the story of the woman who opened the first private investigation office in Botswana, and Minghella's film was the first in history to be filmed in this country . Minghella's production credits include Iris (2001) by Richard Eyre, The Quiet American (2002) by Phillip Noyce, and most recently Michael Clayton (2007) by Tony Gillroy.
In principle, it is hardly possible to call Minghella a brilliant director. He belonged to that category of filmmakers who cope with the task assigned (most often by themselves - Minghella wrote most of the scripts for his films independently) absolutely impeccably, but in this impeccability they rarely live long. It is unlikely that many of Minghella's films will go down in cinema history as more than being included in the list of laureates of various awards and prizes. But to imagine the film process without such a movie, brilliant, epic, thoughtful, invariably amazingly acted (Ralph Fiennes, Jud Lowe, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Juliette Binoche, Renée Zellweger received Oscar nominations for their roles in Minghella’s films), at its core most often having thick and leisurely books - winners of prestigious literary awards, whatever one may say, is impossible. With Minghella gone, there are very few artists of this kind left with true talent.
