USA TODAY - The talented Mr. Minghella: Late director crafted ambitious epics

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By Mike Clark, USA TODAY

Sandwiched between modest projects that became only cult items at best, Anthony Minghella crafted three of the most ambitious and keenly bankrolled movies of the past dozen years. As a result, he had a surprising career, as surprising as his death at age 54 Tuesday.

Minghella's publicist, Jonathan Rutter, said the filmmaker died at London's Charing Cross Hospital of a hemorrhage following surgery. Minghella was operated on last week for a growth in his neck, "and the operation seemed to have gone well. At 5 a.m. today he had a fatal hemorrhage," Rutter said.

The British writer/director found success when 1996's The English Patient won nine Oscars. He followed with The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain.

All were movies of a dying breed: big, grown-up subjects, dreamy budgets, easy-on-the-eye production values, long running times and the kind of performances that spark "for your consideration" trade ads. Juliette Binoche and Renee Zellweger won Oscars under Minghella's direction with additional nominations going to Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas and Jude Law (twice).

He also was a theatrical and TV director who staged Puccini's Madama Butterfly at the English National Opera in London.

Minghella first attracted international attention with his first big-screen effort, a 1990 telepic that springboarded into theaters. The ghostly romance Truly Madly Deeply, with Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson, picked up a small loyal following that eluded his next effort, which he did not write. Mr. Wonderful (1993) did not have a premise to portend Patient or even Minghella's future tenure as director of the British Film Institute.

In 2007, Minghella came out with the indifferently received Breaking and Entering, which reunited him with Law and Binoche while adding Robin Wright Penn.

He recently completed the TV movie The Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency for BBC and was set for an anthology film with a self-revealing title: New York, I Love You.

Ultimately, Minghella will be remembered for his Big Three, all available on DVD.

The English Patient (1996, Miramax, $20). By taking on Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize winner, Minghella and producer Saul Zaentz defied the odds by turning what some called an unfilmable novel into an aerobic workout for the tear ducts. Dual settings span the Sahara Desert and a Tuscan monastery, the latter a wartime vantage point from which a horribly disfigured ex-geographer (Ralph Fiennes) recalls his passionate, sand-swept 1938 romance with a married aristocrat (Kristin Scott Thomas). As his attending nurse, Juliette Binoche took a supporting Oscar, one of nine the film won, including best picture and director.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, Paramount, $10). Beautiful Italian coastal settings, a beautiful '50s jazz-club decade in all its Bird/Dizzy/Chet Baker splendor and, yes, beautiful people until suicide, murder, forgery and concealment enter into what never ceases to be one of '90s' cinema's most physically pretty pictures. Previously filmed as France's 1960 Alain Delon classic Purple Noon, Patricia Highsmith's novel got a slightly different screen take as Minghella emphasized different aspects of a conniver's story and added a role for Cate Blanchett. Matt Damon is the central poor-boy opportunist who only gradually becomes transparent to his victims. Co-stars: Oscar-nominated Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is stealing scenes even then.

Cold Mountain (2003, Miramax, $15). In the episodic epic of novelist Charles Frazier's acclaimed best seller, Minghella cut between two stories of equal weight to become one of the few Civil War movies giving full weight to the home front and the soldier's plight. Oscar-nominated Law is the plot-central wounded, battle-weary Confederate who escapes from a hospital and begins a long trek home to his North Carolina belle (Nicole Kidman). Oscar winner Zellweger, going rustic, headed a great supporting cast (Brendan Gleeson, Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman). And Dante Ferretti's production design is almost beyond top-of-the-line.

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