Oh dear, I love Anthony Minghella’s movies (well, almost all of them). I adored his screenplays. The news of his sudden death at London’s Charing Cross Hospital this morning of brain hemorrhage is utterly tragic. I honestly believed the man still had at least one great film in him.

It was exactly a month ago, right before the Oscars that I wrote this, mentioning him:

Anthony Minghella is Oscar’s lucky charm.
He executive-produced “Michael Clayton” (and reportedly helped Tony Gilroy polish the script), and had a tiny cameo at the end of “Atonement” (as Vanessa Redgrave’s TV interviewer). The “write without adjectives” line in “Atonement” is lifted from Minghella’s Oscar winner, “The English Patient”. Now both “Michael Clayton” and “Atonement” are Best Picture nominees.

Not so lucky after all, I guess.

The irony is that Sydney Pollack, who’s fighting cancer, was supposed to be the gravely ill, soon to depart, producer of “Michael Clayton”. But he’s still with us. Minghella, on the other hand, is no longer.

Even more chilling: Minghella got his first break as a screenwriter when he wrote the absolutely brilliant TV series “The Storyteller”, created and produced by Jim Henson. Henson died suddenly in a New York Hospital of pneumonia. He was 54 years old as well. Spooky coincidence.

I loved Minghella love for words and language. He’s the only screenwriter I know who made one movie about adverbs (”Truly, Madly, Deeply” and one movie about adjectives (”The English Patient”). Even his almost-bland “Mr. Wonderful” included great exchanges where the romantic leads try to analyze their love affair while searching the proper words for it. His movies traveled between different scapes of reality: memories, fantasies, stories, imagination. Most of his characters pretended to be someone they are not. Most of them used words to survive.
Minghella’s philosophy was clear: words are deceitful. And his wordsmanship, hence his deceitfulness, was exquisite.

Oh dear 2: Jeffrey Wells’ Minghella obit is absolutely heartbreaking.