A Perfect Little Movie
MARCH 19, 2008 TAGS:
By Joyce Millman
“I miss him, I just miss him, I miss him, I miss him … I’m so angry with him, I can’t forgive him for not being here! I can’t!”
No one who saw Juliet Stevenson unleash that torrential downpour of grief in her therapist’s office in Anthony Minghella’s 1991 British art-house jewel Truly, Madly, Deeply could escape being haunted by it. Stevenson played Nina, a woman bulldozed by the sudden, freakish death of her lover, a cellist named Jamie (he died while undergoing a tonsillectomy). She goes to pieces and disengages from life, withdrawing from her co-workers and friends. And, in a neat metaphor for depression and emotional disarray, she lets her ramshackle London flat become an unkempt, rat-infested mess.
Then, one night, when she’s desolately playing half of a duet at the piano, she hears Jamie’s cello and his ghost appears. The long embrace that follows, with Jamie (a shaggily mustachioed Alan Rickman) wrapping the hysterical Nina in solid, silent, comfort, is as unforgettable as Stevenson’s earlier weep-a-thon.
Truly, Madly, Deeply may have been eclipsed by the similarly themed, tear-jerking Hollywood blockbuster Ghost, which was released around the same time, but since then it has grown in stature in DVD release, perennially making Valentine’s Day lists of “most romantic movies.” It is beloved as much for the rawness of Stevenson’s performance and the sweetness of Rickman’s, as for the humor, warmth and authenticity it brings to a subject that Hollywood often treats with goopy and manipulative sentimentality.
Truly, Madly, Deeply begins as a wish-fulfillment for the bereaved – Nina’s lover comes back from death. But then, almost before we realize it, the movie gently but firmly becomes a fable about how life belongs to the living. Jamie begins to get on Nina’s nerves. As a dead guy, he’s naturally chilly, and he turns up the heat and piles the blankets on the bed until Nina is sweltering. She has no privacy anymore, because Jamie can pop up anywhere, even while she’s in the bathtub, and when she protests, he sulks, “I know you shave your legs!” Jamie invites his dead buddies over to watch old movies into the wee hours when he knows Nina has to get up in the morning for work. And he resumes his neat-freak nagging, cleaning up the mess of Nina’s apartment, forcing her to fix the plumbing, taking up an old rug to redo the hardwood floor without her permission.
But this is all part of Jamie’s plan to help Nina let go of him. Slowly, Nina finds herself drawn back into her life (she works for a rundown translating service) and begins falling for a man who cares for developmentally disabled adults. In the lovely final scene, Nina leaves her now-tidy flat (her psyche and soul are back in working order) to go off with her new boyfriend, while Jamie, supported by his ghostly pals, watches her teary-eyed from the window. He’ll always be a part of her, but not present in her physical world.
Truly, Madly, Deeply was the first feature film written and directed by Anthony Minghella, who died in London Tuesday at age 54. Ironically, his death eerily mirrors that of Jamie’s tonsillectomy – he suffered a hemorrhage a week after surgery to remove cancerous tonsils. Minghella’s passing robs us of a consummate filmmaker; he was a writer, director and producer who, until recently, headed the British Film Institute. After Truly, Madly, Deeply, Minghella went on to direct some epic movies, including the 1996 best picture Oscar winner The English Patient and 2003’s Cold Mountain (he also executive produced last year’s Oscar nominee Michael Clayton). But it’s Truly, Madly, Deeply, small-scale in every way, that best encapsulates Minghella’s gifts and concerns.
Made for the BBC under the working title Cello, but then transferred to film, Truly, Madly, Deeply was partly shot in Stevenson’s flat in Highgate, North London. The flat, and other locations, like the Thames promenade outside the National Film Theater building, wonderfully capture the tumble of melting-pot life among middle-class intellectuals, artists and new emigres in London of the early ’90s. Nina is surrounded by displaced people, including a pregnant Spanish woman whom she befriends and a Polish handyman who is in love with her. Minghella, who was of Italian-Scots descent, was raised on the Isle of Wight, where his parents ran an ice cream business. His affinity for the ethnic experience in British society was reflected not only in Truly, Madly, Deeply, but also in his last feature film, Breaking and Entering (2006), starring Jude Law as an architect having an affair with Juliet Binoche’s Bosnian refugee, set against the clashing sensibilities of a gentrification-mad, upscale London and the tide of new immigrants in its midst.
Truly, Madly, Deeply was, beneath its unfussed exterior, about consuming passion and obsession, themes that Minghella would examine throughout his career. It’s there in The English Patient, of course, and Cold Mountain, but also in his stylish 1999 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. And it’s spectacularly displayed in his short film of Samuel Beckett’s Play, which was part of the 2000 “Beckett on Film” celebration for Britain’s Channel 4 and PBS. Play stars Stevenson, Rickman and Kristin Scott-Thomas as a romantic triangle of decaying talking heads, their bodies encased in large urns, trapped in an endless-loop recitation of the love, lust, rage, jealousy and violence of their relationship.
But for those of us who were introduced to Minghella through Truly, Madly, Deeply, he will always be cherished as the filmmaker who gave us Juliet Stevenson’s cathartic sorrow and Alan Rickman’s soulful recitation of Pablo Neruda’s “The Dead Woman” – not to mention, that long, intimate scene of Nina and Jamie tenderly and joyfully singing Joni Mitchell and the Walker Brothers to each other, while clad in their pajamas. Minghella will always be the filmmaker who made a perfect little movie that showed us that despite the pain, life was truly, madly, deeply, worth living.
Joyce Millman is a TV and pop culture critic and the co-author of The Great Snape Debate (Borders/BenBella).
COMMENTS (2) TO ADD A COMMENT, PLEASE FIRST SIGN IN OR REGISTER.
Sue England wrote on April 8, 2008 1:47pm
'A wonderful film and a brilliant director who has gone far too soon.' [Report Comment]
Claudia GA wrote on March 20, 2008 6:42am
'Thank you so much for such a wonderful piece on my all time favorite film AND director/writer. The world has lost a truly gifted and talented man.' [Report Comment]
“I miss him, I just miss him, I miss him, I miss him … I’m so angry with him, I can’t forgive him for not being here! I can’t!”
No one who saw Juliet Stevenson unleash that torrential downpour of grief in her therapist’s office in Anthony Minghella’s 1991 British art-house jewel Truly, Madly, Deeply could escape being haunted by it. Stevenson played Nina, a woman bulldozed by the sudden, freakish death of her lover, a cellist named Jamie (he died while undergoing a tonsillectomy). She goes to pieces and disengages from life, withdrawing from her co-workers and friends. And, in a neat metaphor for depression and emotional disarray, she lets her ramshackle London flat become an unkempt, rat-infested mess.
Then, one night, when she’s desolately playing half of a duet at the piano, she hears Jamie’s cello and his ghost appears. The long embrace that follows, with Jamie (a shaggily mustachioed Alan Rickman) wrapping the hysterical Nina in solid, silent, comfort, is as unforgettable as Stevenson’s earlier weep-a-thon.
Truly, Madly, Deeply may have been eclipsed by the similarly themed, tear-jerking Hollywood blockbuster Ghost, which was released around the same time, but since then it has grown in stature in DVD release, perennially making Valentine’s Day lists of “most romantic movies.” It is beloved as much for the rawness of Stevenson’s performance and the sweetness of Rickman’s, as for the humor, warmth and authenticity it brings to a subject that Hollywood often treats with goopy and manipulative sentimentality.
Truly, Madly, Deeply begins as a wish-fulfillment for the bereaved – Nina’s lover comes back from death. But then, almost before we realize it, the movie gently but firmly becomes a fable about how life belongs to the living. Jamie begins to get on Nina’s nerves. As a dead guy, he’s naturally chilly, and he turns up the heat and piles the blankets on the bed until Nina is sweltering. She has no privacy anymore, because Jamie can pop up anywhere, even while she’s in the bathtub, and when she protests, he sulks, “I know you shave your legs!” Jamie invites his dead buddies over to watch old movies into the wee hours when he knows Nina has to get up in the morning for work. And he resumes his neat-freak nagging, cleaning up the mess of Nina’s apartment, forcing her to fix the plumbing, taking up an old rug to redo the hardwood floor without her permission.
But this is all part of Jamie’s plan to help Nina let go of him. Slowly, Nina finds herself drawn back into her life (she works for a rundown translating service) and begins falling for a man who cares for developmentally disabled adults. In the lovely final scene, Nina leaves her now-tidy flat (her psyche and soul are back in working order) to go off with her new boyfriend, while Jamie, supported by his ghostly pals, watches her teary-eyed from the window. He’ll always be a part of her, but not present in her physical world.
Truly, Madly, Deeply was the first feature film written and directed by Anthony Minghella, who died in London Tuesday at age 54. Ironically, his death eerily mirrors that of Jamie’s tonsillectomy – he suffered a hemorrhage a week after surgery to remove cancerous tonsils. Minghella’s passing robs us of a consummate filmmaker; he was a writer, director and producer who, until recently, headed the British Film Institute. After Truly, Madly, Deeply, Minghella went on to direct some epic movies, including the 1996 best picture Oscar winner The English Patient and 2003’s Cold Mountain (he also executive produced last year’s Oscar nominee Michael Clayton). But it’s Truly, Madly, Deeply, small-scale in every way, that best encapsulates Minghella’s gifts and concerns.
Made for the BBC under the working title Cello, but then transferred to film, Truly, Madly, Deeply was partly shot in Stevenson’s flat in Highgate, North London. The flat, and other locations, like the Thames promenade outside the National Film Theater building, wonderfully capture the tumble of melting-pot life among middle-class intellectuals, artists and new emigres in London of the early ’90s. Nina is surrounded by displaced people, including a pregnant Spanish woman whom she befriends and a Polish handyman who is in love with her. Minghella, who was of Italian-Scots descent, was raised on the Isle of Wight, where his parents ran an ice cream business. His affinity for the ethnic experience in British society was reflected not only in Truly, Madly, Deeply, but also in his last feature film, Breaking and Entering (2006), starring Jude Law as an architect having an affair with Juliet Binoche’s Bosnian refugee, set against the clashing sensibilities of a gentrification-mad, upscale London and the tide of new immigrants in its midst.
Truly, Madly, Deeply was, beneath its unfussed exterior, about consuming passion and obsession, themes that Minghella would examine throughout his career. It’s there in The English Patient, of course, and Cold Mountain, but also in his stylish 1999 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. And it’s spectacularly displayed in his short film of Samuel Beckett’s Play, which was part of the 2000 “Beckett on Film” celebration for Britain’s Channel 4 and PBS. Play stars Stevenson, Rickman and Kristin Scott-Thomas as a romantic triangle of decaying talking heads, their bodies encased in large urns, trapped in an endless-loop recitation of the love, lust, rage, jealousy and violence of their relationship.
But for those of us who were introduced to Minghella through Truly, Madly, Deeply, he will always be cherished as the filmmaker who gave us Juliet Stevenson’s cathartic sorrow and Alan Rickman’s soulful recitation of Pablo Neruda’s “The Dead Woman” – not to mention, that long, intimate scene of Nina and Jamie tenderly and joyfully singing Joni Mitchell and the Walker Brothers to each other, while clad in their pajamas. Minghella will always be the filmmaker who made a perfect little movie that showed us that despite the pain, life was truly, madly, deeply, worth living.
Joyce Millman is a TV and pop culture critic and the co-author of The Great Snape Debate (Borders/BenBella).
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COMMENTS (2) TO ADD A COMMENT, PLEASE FIRST SIGN IN OR REGISTER.
Sue England wrote on April 8, 2008 1:47pm
'A wonderful film and a brilliant director who has gone far too soon.' [Report Comment]
Claudia GA wrote on March 20, 2008 6:42am
'Thank you so much for such a wonderful piece on my all time favorite film AND director/writer. The world has lost a truly gifted and talented man.' [Report Comment]