Remembering Anthony Minghella

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Anthony Minghella's death. I really don't know how such a day should be commemorated. I did very much like hearing about the film festival on the Isle of Wight, hosted by Mr Minghella’s family and attended by Alan Rickman, Jude Law and Martin Freeman among others. I very much hope it will become an annual event, if only for the selfish reason that I might be able to attend it someday.

As for me, I still haven’t read Made in Bangkok, so I might read that. I have Truly, Madly, Deeply and The Wyvern Mystery, and I might watch them in that order; a deluge followed by a JD fix, which always seems to make everything better.

Michelle, My Belle, R.I.P.

Our feisty little feline, all of five months old, died today. It was around two a.m. last night that C noticed her sitting in the bathroom, and we brought her out and laid her on C’s bed. She was cold and at first we thought it was just because the bathroom floor had been wet. But as it increasingly became clear that that was not the cause of the drop in temperature, C warmed a cloth repeatedly with an iron to keep her warm. She did this every few minutes for the next seven hours, until we could take Michelle to P. P responded to C’s text message at three a.m., telling us that she would have to see Michelle in the morning. Apart from warming her with the ironed cloth, C also fed Michelle sugared water every half hour, since she could not eat or drink anything on her own.

In the morning, we took Michelle to P’s clinic. There were many dogs there, and a small cat, and the people they had come with. There were kids and grandmothers who wanted to take a peek at the sweet little grey-and-white tabby in our basket. There were two little pups, Bruno and Dexter, who had come with different people and who insisted on romping about together before parting company. On P’s noticeboard, there was a new poster about a weekly picnic/walk for Olive Ridley turtle-gazing.

P said that Michelle had probably licked some insecticide off one of the cockroaches she was so fond of bringing home to us as prizes. She gave Michelle fifty m.l. of IV solution and an antidote, and told us to bring her back for another dose in the evening. She said a hot water bottle would be helpful, so we got one from the pharmacy on the way back home from P’s. C was just heating the water to fill the bottle for the second time when Michelle had a small fit and her eyes glazed over. Her small body kept twitching gently for a long time after her eyes had stopped seeing, and her heartbeat slowed very gradually before it stopped.

We started digging a grave in a patch of ground to the right of the front door, but our spade had broken while digging our pup Jewel’s grave last May, and the going was tough. I brought out a hammer and we tried using the pointy end to dig, which was better than the handleless spade, but that was terribly slow. There were rocks in the ground that made the digging virtually impossible. So we moved to the left of the door and started afresh, this time making considerable progress before we reached a water pipe. That would be no good at all, since Michelle could not be in a spot that might be dug up in the future.

We also did not want to make it obvious that we were digging a grave, since there’s been all kinds of trouble with the landlords and we have to move out ASAP from the house where we have lived for over seventeen years now. We decided a plant would be nice, both to keep Michelle company and to disguise the true intent of our endeavour. So, while C stayed with Michelle, I went to the nursery and bought two very efficacious spades. I looked around the nursery for a bit, trying to choose the plant. It’s a beautiful little nursery, and the plants reflected the most wonderful green light all around. We’d decided against roses since they are delicate, and the plant will have to be left to fend for itself when we move. I looked at the white roses nevertheless; they were lovely. So were the dahlias and marigolds. But then, of course, it struck me that the choice was so obvious: chrysanthemums. C didn’t know the story behind the name, so I gave her a rather sketchy account of it as we resumed our work. It was still pretty tough with the rocks, and the ground was hard. C’s nearly-seventeen-year-old hands were much more efficient than my over-three-decade-old ones, but she also got more scrapes and aches than I did.

It’s not easy to type when one feels like one has a dislocated wrist, so here is the long and short of it: nearly four hours of gardening was pain-inducing, but also wildly therapeutic. Not to mention surreptitious in a way that would have made James Bond or Ethan Hunt proud, since we kept a lookout for the landlords and whispered warnings to each other in fits of silent laughter every time someone opened the front gate. We chattered about cats and dogs we have lost, and so much else that I can’t recall now. We did giggle girlie giggles quite a bit. I looked down several times at C’s silky little head as she dug, and wondered how much more we will endure together, and thought about how the bond I share with her is so completely different from what I share with anyone else.

For Michelle, then, and in memory of Muliet as well, B’s cat who died a few days ago. To Michelle and Muliet, beloved cats, members of our family and full-fledged people in their own right, in gratitude and adoration for the time they spent with us and the memories they have left us with.

Harold Pinter

It will be said that it was only to be expected, but Harold Pinter's death is an occasion for mourning no matter what is said. Having studied The Birthday Party when I was all of eighteen years old, I remember Pinter as being one of the very few writers who made an impression on me at the time. There is something to be said about a writer who can touch you when you are down. I'm reminded of something Michael Ondaatje writes about in The English Patient: 'There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace.' It's easy to critique writing when one is secure in one's pursuits, but a writer who can make sense to you when the rest of the world doesn't is someone who remains in your mind. Maybe it was because Stanley's life didn't make sense (like mine at the time) that I was drawn to the play.

Today I thought a lot about Anthony Minghella's family. The tragedy of his death is something that still leaves me reeling, nine months later. Christmas was a happy day, a happy season, but the recognition that there are others for whom there is nothing happy about this day is also a constant reality. My grandmother died ten years ago on Christmas day, and it was a long time before I could think of Christmas as Christmas. Minghella and Pinter are both writers who do not betray a reader's sensibilities. In a time when all one can seem to expect most of the time is betrayal of various kinds, it is strengthening to know the works of such generous, talented people. The world would be less bright if not for their ideas and their ability to be candles in the dark.

What is it about Bach?

I haven't mentioned The Book on this page so far, although I've been working on it for three months now. Maybe it's because I've been living the process that I haven't been able to write about it. (I don't want to think about what the implications of my finally writing about it may be.) My first contributor sent me his piece on September 12th. Actually, it was September 12th where I was and September 11th where he was. And at the time, I did feel that that was significant, because I had been thinking about anniversaries. And I did write a piece on it, but that may still go into the book so I'm not at liberty to post it here. I'm not even sure who my 'first contributor' is, anyway. Should I bestow that desperately sought-after title on the first person who agreed to contribute to The Book, or the second person to agree, since he sent in his chapter first? (Yes, such inane debates fill my mind completely from time to time.)

I wanted to tell my first contributor (submitter?) that it was utterly unfair that he should be known for his considerable talent in another profession, when he is so clearly a writer. I wanted to tell him to keep writing, but the penchant for self-deprecation that he seems to have, and which I absolutely share (with good reason, on my part, and none at all on his) kept me from doing that. In his -- well, primary -- profession, the veneer of beauty is something that is highly prized, and although no one would disagree that he has an abundance of it, it's an indescribable shame that he is not a primarily a writer by profession.


This week I got my second contribution. Again, we were on different dates, and my subject was no less than a... well, a very important person. In his field, which I suppose I have idealised for a long time. (This is rapidly turning into the vaguest and most pointless post I think I've ever made, but this is important, so I'll plod on womanfully. Er, androgynfully.) And I was touched by him. Not in an emotional sort of way, really, but in a way that made me see a glimmer of something absolutely purist in his thinking, in his honesty, and in his tenacious regard for his way of viewing the world, his world.

It was music that was common to both of them, both my contributors. Well, not mine exactly, since their stories belong to The Book, and most importantly, to the person who inspired The Book. But music, a focus that I'm increasingly thinking is going to be the most vital empirical correlative of the words on paper that I'm trying to compile; music is absolutely integral to what my -- The Book's -- first two contributors have said. (The phrase 'fire away' is also, for some strange reason, common to both of them. That probably has some abstruse significance that escapes me entirely.)

And in some ways I think it all comes down to this question: what is it about Bach? I'm discovering the St Matthew Passion bit by bit, day by day. Yesterday it was Mache dich, mein Herze, rein; today it's Konnen Tranen Meiner Wangen. I don't know what it is about Bach, and don't know if I want to know. I do know that Vivaldi has at last found a contender for whatever music makes up my heart.

‘I Want To Make A Beautiful Film’

Minghella says: 'I want to make a beautiful film.' I think: you will. And then I think: you understand what this means to these people. The world has been unkind to Africa, and here is a chance, through you, to show the positive side of the continent, its capacity for goodness and laughter and sheer human decency. -- Alexander McCall Smith

The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (2008)

Screenplay by Anthony Minghella and Richard Curtis
Based on the novel by Alexander McCall Smith
Original music by Gabriel Yared
Directed by Anthony Minghella
Starring:
Jill Scott Mma Precious Ramotswe
Anika Noni Rose Mma Grace Makutsi
Lucian Msamati Mr J.L.B. Matekoni
Desmond Dube BK
Tumisho Masha Lucky Sesana
Idris Elba Charlie Gotso


I watched The English Patient again last weekend, for the first time since Anthony Minghella’s brutally unexpected death. Fortunately, I also had something else to create a sense of equilibrium in my head after the devastating, sweeping-the-ground-from-beneath-your-feet exquisiteness of The English Patient: The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Minghella’s -- it breaks the heart into pieces to have to say it -- Anthony Minghella’s last film. I survived almost without tears until the very end, when I saw the dedication to Minghella, and then spent the next several minutes bawling away like a four-year-old on a school playground who’s just skinned her knee and knows no better than to cry, thinking that tears will make it all better. There are so many things about Agency that make it groundbreaking, not least the fact that it is the first film to be shot entirely in Botswana. Small cultural details are lovingly captured and presented in vintage Minghella style, with no mediating filters between the audience and the authenticity of the setting. As always, music plays an intrinsic role in making the contexts of the film absolutely genuine, and I won’t even try to comment on Gabriel Yared’s genius, at the wonderfully integrated rhythms that perfectly complement the energetic ventures of detective Mma Ramotswe and her friends (and foes).


Minghella reins in his penchant for heady landscapes in this one to focus on macrocosmic views of Botswana and its people, probably since the film was made for television. Nevertheless, there are some gorgeous landscape views of Mma Ramotswe driving her van all over the Botswana countryside. Like the Madonna del Mare ceremony in The Talented Mr Ripley, the funeral of Mma Ramotswe’s father at the beginning of the film is a fine example of how Minghella’s vision can show his viewers aspects of cultural life that are blatantly larger than the contexts of the stories he tells. The freshly dug grave, the songs sung by the mourners, Precious’ unashamed tears, and the sunny, dusty environs of the funeral procession all recalled with unerring accuracy my memories of my grandparents’ funerals, and I was relieved that the moment passed early enough in the film for me to be able to swallow the taste of the past in my mouth and focus on the story.

Not that one needs too much of an effort to focus on any story when Anthony Minghella is the storyteller. Mma Precious Ramotswe is so beautiful that I drooled over her all the way. The ‘traditionally built’ detective with her fondness for bush tea is a heartstealing character, and one can see Minghella’s entirely guileless gaze resting on her throughout the film, whether she is bantering with her barber friend, confronting her abusive ex-husband, seducing a philanderer to prove his infidelities, saving a young boy from a horrendous fate, or, in brilliantly rendered flashes, recalling the loss of her infant. Grammy-winning jazz singer Jill Scott auditioned for the role four times before she was cast, and Minghella once again demonstrates his flair for casting his characters with absolute perfection.


At first glance, this macrocosmic tale seems to be at the other end of the spectrum from the sweeping epic that is The English Patient. And yet, and yet… there are all those little details that firmly trademark both films as the incomparable works of Anthony Minghella. The way in which every character is given his or her due; every life depicted in a way that allows the writer/director to pay homage to the richness and scale of an individual life; every scene structured in a way that makes it redolent with details and sights and sounds and smells and frames that capture both intimate scenes and geographical panoramas with equally loving attention. The charmingly obscene flirtations of Kremlin Busang (David Oyelowo, also seen in The Last King of Scotland); the half-exasperated attentions that Mma Makutsi (Anika Noni Rose of Dreamgirls fame) divests on Mma Ramotswe; the gentle, shy elegance of Mr JLB Matekoni, the proprietor of Speedy Motors (Lucian Msamati); the joyous gayness of BK, the ritzy hairdresser with his ever-ready pair of scissors; and the truly sinister sensuality of Charlie Gotso (Idris Elba, whose role as Vaughan Rice in the BBC’s critically acclaimed vampire drama Ultraviolet very nearly stole the limelight from the spectacular Jack Davenport). Beneath the essentially optimistic exteriors of its wonderful ensemble cast lurk glimpses into cultural, religious and political beliefs that make up the fabric of contemporary Botswana. Like all of Minghella’s work, however, this is a story which is absolutely character driven, and which effortlessly transforms the country it is set in into one of its principal characters. The little neighbourhood outside the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, with BK’s colourful stall and the little sweet shop, becomes achingly familiar by the end of the film, and one hates to leave it.

The film premiered on the BBC on Easter Sunday, 23 March 2008, five days after Anthony Minghella’s death.

Later, Minghella draws me into Mma Ramotswe's office, now transformed by the addition of furniture. He produces a small computer on which are stored some of the sequences already filmed.
'I want to show you the scene where the teacher is reunited with his lost son,' he says. 'We did that the other day.'
Suddenly on the screen there is a group of schoolchildren singing.
Their singing falters and the teacher sees his kidnapped son, rescued by Mma Ramotswe, running across a dusty playground to embrace him. It is so beautifully filmed that I find myself struggling with emotion. I give in.
Minghella puts a hand on my shoulder. 'That's exactly what it did to me,' he says; the kindest thing for one man to say to another when one man is overcome.

--Alexander McCall Smith


[All McCall Smith quotes from the article ‘The day the No1 Ladies' Detective Agency came to life’ at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-476218/The-day-No1-Ladies-Detective-Agency-came-life.html]

True Heroes: The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant

The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant (2005)
Screenplay by Peter Berry
Directed by Peter Andrikidis
Music by Iva Davies
Cinematography by Joseph Pickering
Starring:
Romola Garai Mary Bryant
Jack Davenport Lieutenant Ralph Clarke
Alex O’Loughlin Will Bryant
Sam Neill Governor Arthur Phillip


“I am no hero, and I have no ambition to be made into one. There are some in this court today who have tried to make me something that I am not. I am guilty as charged, as are the two men standing beside me. Not many of us transported can claim to be innocent - some are wicked, and deserve to be feared, but most are not. Most are men and women who risked their lives to feed themselves and their families. Guilty we may be, but worthless we are not. There are many like us in this country, and to transport us away is another country's gain, and this country's loss. Those that survive the harshness of the colonies are the true heroes.” -- Mary Bryant, The Incredible Journey of Mary Byrant



It is hard to resist being entranced by the captivating and ultimately tragic realism with which the historical Mary Bryant’s journey is detailed in this film. Taken in 1788 to the penal colony in New South Wales from her home in England for a trivial crime, Mary Bryant became an enduring icon in British history of someone who refused to admit defeat in the face of devastating odds, and Peter Andrikidis and Peter Berry do an admirable job in bringing her story to life.



Romola Garai brings an extraordinary depth to her character; she is wild; she is passionate; she is recalcitrant; she is manipulative; in short, she is never predictable or boring. Also, Garai’s Mary Bryant is supported by such a strong cast that it is difficult to see the film as being dominated by Bryant’s character. Arguably, the most interesting character in the film is Lieutenant Ralph Clarke (Jack Davenport), for the way in which he is consistently manipulated by Mary. Clarke is the most ostensible representative of the British forces, but, to the director’s and actor’s credit, never becomes the villain of the piece. In fact, the compassion that we invariably feel for the tormented Clarke, torn between his duty to his government and his feelings for Mary, inevitably serves to darken Mary’s character and illustrate the lengths that she is willing to go to to gain her freedom.

In one of the film’s earliest scenes we see Clarke on the deck of the ship on its way to New South Wales, sketching quite beautifully. Soon after, he is on the same deck overseeing the brutal whipping of a female prisoner. The extraordinary limits to which the character is pushed, jostled constantly between extremes, makes short work of poor Will Bryant (Alex O’Loughlin), who never manages to rise above his station as Mary Bryant’s sometime husband.

Garai shares far more chemistry on-screen with Davenport than she does with O’Loughlin, leading us to wonder why on earth she would want to leave Clarke to run away with Bryant. But the answer is clear enough: Mary Bryant values, above all, her freedom. Clarke, as the representative of everything she finds constricting about life in the colony, never stands a chance with her. However, his unequivocally genuine feelings for her complicate the ethics of the film, and lead to rather interesting dilemmas. The tumultuous relationship between Mary and Clarke is a fine illustration of how passion is a far stronger force than mere love: she lives in his house; sleeps in his bed; is treated by him with exquisite tenderness; spits in his face; makes passionate love to him; betrays him ruthlessly; and flees from him. Such extraordinary interactions just do not exist between her and Will; he is, after all, only the husband. Exacerbating Will’s extreme helplessness is the fact that he is forced to allow his wife to sleep with Clarke to gain their freedom, not to mention the fact that he has lied about his seafaring achievements.

Perhaps one of the finest moments between Clarke and Mary Bryant is one in which they do not interact at all; when Mary, apparently secure in her new life as Elizabeth Parker, experiences a moment of sheer terror when she opens her door and sees Lieutenant Clarke standing there, unaware of her presence. Alex O’Loughlin does the needful as Will Bryant, but somehow his character never takes off like the two protagonists do. The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant remains the story of Mary Bryant and Ralph Clarke all the way. The penultimate courtroom scene is terribly poignant, with both Mary and Clarke having lost everything that they had strived for during the course of their stories. Clarke is utterly broken and defeated, and Mary has finally won her freedom, but at terrible cost to herself and those she held most dear.

Ultimately, the incredible journey detailed here is one of discovery. Mary, Clarke and Will are part of something larger than their individual stories; the convicts are not just being taken to a penal colony, but are part of a pioneering expedition to rob the Aborigines of their lands and establish an extension of the Empire that will illustrate its might to everyone that does not subscribe to its principles. The human tendency to cannibalize on its own most valuable resources is heartbreakingly captured in the scene where multiple rapes are inflicted on the women in the camp by their own male companions. Personal stories are played out against the backdrop of critically decisive historical events, and it is to the credit of the cast and crew of this fine film that it is the personal stories that give the narrative its epic feel.


Ralph Clarke: You have no idea who I am… Wilfulness is the root of all sin. Each of us has a daily battle to rein ourselves in. And you… you were the test I failed… twice.

Will Bryant: Still thinking of your lieutenant?
Mary Bryant: There is, and always has been, only one man for me.

Governor Arthur Phillip: Nearest civilization, Timor - three or four thousand miles away. They'd have to negotiate reefs, plus twelve-hundred miles of open sea. And with the burden of carrying a woman, and children, no - even if they survive the sea, they'll never survive each other.

Will Bryant: You'd be better off here. Marry a Dutchman, God knows you've got enough of them lying around at you're feet. No witnesses, no paper... we were blessed by a fool on a beach, wasn't legal outside the colony... you're free.
Mary Bryant: I've never thought of myself as being anything other than free, ever.

Ralph Clarke: I had a choice of two ships to bring me home, I chose this passage because I had to know... I've thought of nothing but you. I've never been so happy, when you came to me with the children and asked for my help.

Mary Bryant: You'll run under blue skies along a proud cliff top with the waves crashing below. You will walk with strong, proud people, and no matter what happens to you, you will never give up. It’s in your blood.

Making the political personal: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Warner Brothers, 1988
Screenplay by Jean-Claude Carrière and Philip Kaufman
Based on the novel by Milan Kundera
Directed by Philip Kaufman
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Derek de Lint

"When Oedipus realized that he had killed his father -- unknowingly, unknowingly killed his father -- and was sleeping with his mother, and that because of his crimes plagues were ravaging his city, he couldn't bear the sight of what he'd done. He plucked out his own eyes and left. He did not feel innocent. He felt he had to punish himself. But our leaders, unlike Oedipus, they felt they were innocent. And when the atrocities of the Stalinist period became known, they cried, 'We didn't know! We weren't aware of what was going on. Our conscience is clear. ' But the important difference is... they stayed in power. And they should have plucked their eyes out. All I'm saying is that morality has changed since Oedipus." -- Tomas, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

There is a sense of beauty about Kaufman’s film that distils moments from Kundera’s work into sheer cinematic elegance, in a progression of unforgettable scenes such as the one where Teresa (Juliette Binoche) and Sabina (Lena Olin) photograph each other in the nude, and the ethereal closing moments of the film. From a lengthy and somewhat directionless sixty minutes at the beginning that do not do much but detail Tomas’ (Daniel Day-Lewis) womanizing, the film reaches into a violently political space with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, but this is not a film in which the personal becomes political. Rather, it is the political that is personalized at every step, with the director never losing track of the private and shared spaces inhabited by his characters.



The talented star cast leaves nothing to be desired, and Lena Olin stands out especially as the charismatic Sabina, who lights up the screen every time she’s on it, particularly in her scenes with Day-Lewis. Daniel Day-Lewis does an inimitable job of making the audience feel for a philandering cad. While the screenplay remains largely faithful to the book, I would have liked to see Tomas’ ‘rule of threes’ and Sabina’s thoughts about being in a grave included in the script. Derek de Lint does the needful as Franz. Stellan Skarsgård (more recently known to audiences as ‘Bootstrap’ Bill Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) has a brief but memorable role as The Engineer, whose encounter with Teresa makes her excruciatingly aware of how ‘ugly’ Prague has become after the invasion. The scene where the invasion is introduced is wonderfully evocative, as Teresa, tortured by Tomas’ infidelities, leaves the house at night only to find a tank rumbling up the street. Kaufman seems to have missed out on the canine Karenin’s sexual ambiguity (as portrayed in the book), but that is a forgivable oversight in the light of how the dog and his/her friend Mephisto the pig are showcased in the film!



Teresa’s photography and Sabina’s art are two of the most potent channels through which the film represents the signs of the times. Ironically, the magazine editor in Geneva can only see “provocative poses” in the photographs of the invasion that Teresa has taken at risk to her life, and encourages her to photograph cactuses rather than tanks. It is Teresa whose experiences reveal one way of understanding the enigmatic title, as she tires of her husband’s numerous affairs with other women and flees back to Prague from the relative safety of Switzerland: “Life is very heavy to me, and it is so light to you. I can't bear this lightness, this freedom... I'm going back to the country of the weak.”



Juliette Binoche looks terribly young and vulnerable, and has wonderful chemistry with Day-Lewis, and even more so with Olin. Binoche and Olin co-star in Chocolat (2000) as well.

Tomas: I must go.
Sabina: Don't you ever spend the night at the woman's place?
Tomas: Never.
Sabina: What about when the woman's at your place?
Tomas: I tell her I have insomnia. Anything. Besides, I have a very narrow bed.
Sabina: Are you afraid of women, Doctor?
Tomas: Of course.
Sabina: I really like you, Tomas. You are the complete opposite of kitsch. In the kingdom of kitsch, you would be a monster.