Anthony Minghella performed a near miracle by turning the novel The English Patient into an Oscar-winning film. Despite the presence of Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow in starring roles, he's not doing anything easier with his new film, The Talented Mr. Ripley.
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Anthony Minghella was born on the Isle of Wight off the coast of England to Italian parents famed (as they are still) for their ice cream factory. After attending university in Yorkshire and working briefly as a university instructor, Minghella began writing music, and at rhe same time found himself encouraged by friends to write plays. It was playwriting rather than music that brought him success. He won a London Theatre Critics Award in 1984 for Most Promising Playwright and another one in 1986 for Best Play for his Made in Bangkok. That acclaim led to TV work, which itself led to writing assignments for Jim Henson's television series The Storyteller. Henson was so impressed by Minghella that his company produced his directorial debut, a short film called Living With Dinosaurs. That same year, 1991, Minghella wrote and directed his much -admired first feature, Truly Madly Deeply, which he followed a couple of years later with the amiable shambles Mr. Wonderful Then, in 1996, Minghella turned novelist Michael Ondaatje's scaringly literary The English Patient into a nine-time Oscar-winning movie of David Lean-size aspirations and mystery, and suddenly became Hollywood's most prestigious miracle worker. People who still harbor hope for the possibility of ambitious, important films that succeed with a broad audience couldn't wait to see what Minghella would do next. The answer was a corker: an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's creepily elegant, resolutely literary novel The Talented Mr. Ripley.
The daunting Ripley, which is about an amoral sociopath who decides to take over the lush life of a rich, aimless expatriate, had been made into the influential, eyebrow-raising art-house film Plein Soleil (or Purple Noon) back in 1960. Directed by René Clément and starring Alain Delon, Plein Soleil made understandable compromises with Highsmith's tale. Minghella, word had it, would be more faithful to rhe original. A stunning young cast--Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gate Blanchett and Jude Law--was soon assembled, and, with many of the same first-tier technical talents from The English Patient aboard again (including cinematographer John Seale, costume designer Ann Roth, composer Gabriel Yared and editor Walter Murch), Minghella's Ripley quickly became one of those films movie lovers await with doubt-ridden suspense and crossed fingers.
STEPHEN REBELLO: How did you react to the often repeated remark that one had to be both English and patient to enjoy The English Patient.
ANTHONY MINGHELLA: [Laughs] I was trained as an academic, but my instincts as a writer are unintellectual. There's nothing "from, the head" when I go to make movies. I'm interested in emotional journeys rather than theoretical ones. The Talented Mr. Ripley, for instance, is very influenced by Italian filmmakers like Fellini, De Sica, the Taviani brothers and Rossellini, whose movies have an enormous spirit of humanity that doesn't judge, doesn't simplify. I love that, and I think that like them, Ripley has an operatic edge to it-- it's naked, raw and emotional.
Q: How did you first encounter Patricia Highsmith's work?
A: The first notice I got on the first play I ever wrote said, "The tone or this play reminds me of the tone of Patricia Highsmith." I had no idea who she was, so I went out and bought her work.
Q: So, flashing forward, how did the film come about?
A: When I first came to America about four years ago, Sydney Pollack, who was a great supporter of Truly Madly Deeply, had invited me several times to his house to talk about film, and his company had offered me various projects. When there was a long, artistically and financially problematic stall on The English Patient, Sydney, who, with producer Tom Stern, had wrested the rights to The Talented Mr. Ripley from a German company that had been controlling them for many years, said, "I know you're not going to be shooting The English Patient for at least another six months. Would you think about adapting this book?" Within a week of beginning to work on it, I found myself in the curious position of feeling like I didn't want to let go of the material. I wanted to direct it, and I asked Paramount if they would wait for me. Ultimately Sydney was able to persuade them to wait.
Q: Did you revisit any earlier screen versions of Highsmith's novels?
A: I knew Plein Soleil I knew Wim Wenders's The American Friend, which is based on another Ripley novel, and I've loved Strangers on a Train for as long as I can remember. What was interesting to me about the movies that have been made from Ripley books is the extent to which they've departed from the source material. They're rather like jazz versions of the originals. While I feel this movie is a much closer adaptation, it's also wildly different in its tonalities. It's sadder and more emotional as a film than a novel, because I feel very sad about what happens to Ripley. Also, the novel proceeds on the basis that nobody else warrants attention but Ripley, yet it seems to me that in order to make the film work, you have to create a whole world of people who are hurt by what Ripley does. The film has to hurt more than the book allows the audience to feel. You have to keep reminding yourself that there's a consequence for every one of our volitions.
Q: How did you go about casting, or, since you're a composer, bring in the "orchestra" and "soloists" once you'd composed the music?
A: Casting is the most painful part of filmmaking. It's where you either win or lose. As you put it, if you've written a violin concerto and you don't get a violin, you're in big trouble. If you get a violin, it has to be one with the power, the range and the voice. One vow I made to the producers is that if I couldn't find a Ripley, I wouldn't make the film. We actually talked to about 100 actors. It's like making a suit and imagining how someone's going to fill it, wear it, walk with it. You find yourself envisioning all sorts of different wearers.
Q: Was the suit too big or too small for Leonardo DiCaprio, who was known to be a top choice?
A: I was very interested in Leo, We talked. And talked. I think that the casting process is mysterious. I would have been very intrigued to see what he would have done with the role, but you're looking for someone who has the same passion, the same yearning as you do. Matt Damon was the right person. It was a role he couldn't get out of his system. He wanted it desperately. I was very happy to have found him.
Q: How did that happen?
A: At one point, I was going to have a cameo as one of the analysts in Good Will Hunting, but even though it turned out I liked the script very much, I was too busy. When I saw a rough cut of the movie, I was very excited by Matt in every respect, but it didn't tell me whether there was a Ripley in him. So I sat with him for a half a day in New York, working and reading, and that meeting told me he was the person I wanted. He was so insightful and sympathetic to the material and to what the film was in my head. He is the single most important thing to me about the film.
Q: That's quite an endorsement.
A: I felt like I had another filmmaker working with me. He was such a compass. He had no fear of the material. He reinvented himself for the role. Matt is a sturdy, very male, very contemporary figure. He conjured this character. It's the most nuanced and delicate performance from a young actor that I can remember in a very long time.
Q: Did you have any concerns about the emotional well from which he draws?
A: He's such an interesting choice because he doesn't have a dark recess, so far as I can tell, and there's nothing calculating about his character. Matt's essential emotional temperature is a warm one and that makes Ripley's fell all the more painful.
Q: How did you come to understand Tom Ripley?
A: Everybody is Tom Ripley. The reason why that character has held a 50-year fascination for people is that Highsmith managed to identify or create in that character many of the secret preoccupations of most individuals. We all feel alienated, locked out of a world we'd like to belong to, phony, dispossessed. Ripley is such an outsider character.
Q: Listening to and looking at you, these things seem very close to you.
A: All of these things strike a very big chord in me. I came from an immigrant family, was raised on a small island off the coast of England-- there are so many membranes between me and what seems to be the place where clever and successful people belong. In England, particularly, where those striations of class are so keenly observed and marked, I felt like I was tattooed with all of the wrong identifying marks. That seemed to me a great key into Ripley, not the elements of him which are in some ways pathological and sociopathic. From the get-go, I was trying to investigate what the moral rhythm could be without disturbing the intention of the novel. It seemed to me that what was implicit in the morality of Ripley's story was that if you have in some ways annihilated yourself to get where you need to be, there is no reward. It's a very empty world. American film is preoccupied with public morality, with being "seen" to he punished when, actually, the important moral rhythms in life are spiritual, internal.
Q: So you're not comfortable thinking of Ripley as merely a gay or bisexual psycho killer?
A: No more than I was when reading a press release or something that called Ripley "the Hannibal Lecter of the '90s." It's all so reductive.
Q: How do you treat Ripley's sexuality in the film?
A: I'm very disturbed by the reductiveness of how films are described these days. The very first interview I did about the movie awhile ago, I was asked about "this gay psychopath" and I thought, if that's where we are, we're lost. It's neither about a gay man nor a psychopathic man. It's about that time in your life when teams are being picked in high school and the team captains go, "I'll take Freddie, I'll take John" and you're just standing there hurt at not being picked. I've neither dodged nor become preoccupied with the issue of Ripley's sexuality. He's looking for love wherever he can find it. He's intoxicated by other people, always looked up to somebody, male or female. In many ways, he's a virginal character. He hasn't had a relationship with anyone and so he's just obsessed by everything Dickie is because he represents all the things Ripley wishes he was. He wants to possess Dickie in every possible way and, in his mind, that means he's in love with him. It's actually the reverse of what love is.
Q: What sold you on Jude Law to play Dickie Greenleaf, the friend Ripley kills?
A: It was a process not unlike what Redford went through on Quiz Show, trying to find an actor who could essay the class issue. Redford chose Ralph Fiennes. Similarly, I'd met any number of really wonderful young American actors for Dickie, but I kept coming back to Jude, When I know who I want, I get obsessive and there's very little that will distract me. Jude will speak so loudly for himself in the film that the film is, rightly, delivered a terrible sideswipe when he leaves it. He makes such an indelible impression that he continues to be an object of speculation and nostalgia right up to the late frame.
Q: Was Gwyneth Paltrow your first choice to play Dickie's girlfriend?
A: Peculiarly, I felt I knew who "Marge Sherwood" was from the beginning. If Gwyneth had said no, I don't know what I would have done. As I was writing, I kept hearing her voice. I kept seeing her. The great thing is that there are some fantastic young American actors right now, but they're very contemporary actors. Because there's very little stage tradition here, they're not so used to the journeys actors make inside the clothes of another world, another time. Gwyneth seems to be able to evoke period so effortlessly, to take on not only the externals--the accents of other people, of other places--but also the characteristics. Her accent and carriage in Sliding Doors are a more extraordinary achievement than people realize. She also has a bearing of class and of privilege. She's such a "kissed" girl, you know? If I had to tell you one thing about the film, it is that it's about class. This is Gwyneth very much demonstrating that she's a character actor. It's not an ingenue part, not a romantic lead.
Q: What about Cate Blanchett as Ripley's friend?
A: Ralph Fiennes had called me from Australia to tell me how good she was in Oscar and Lucinda. I thought she'd been terrific in Paradise Road, We're with the same agency and I was saying to them, "I'd love somebody like Cate Blanchett in the part, so help me start thinking of people," when her agent said, "Why don't you ask her?" I couldn't imagine she'd play this part, but they told me she was a huge fan of Truly Madly Deeply. When I met her in London, I was so absolutely convinced that she was there under false pretenses that I didn't know how to broach the subject. I said, "I don't know if you know who else is in the movie," and she said, "Well, I know Gwyneth is playing Marge." I went back to the material and now Cate's is a very significant role in the movie. Cate is a musical instrument with absolutely boundless possibilities. She's like having an entire orchestra in from of you with all the instruments in one.
Q: With four attention-getting, award-winning thoroughbreds in the lead roles, did you have your hands full?
A: It's always a happy thing when the director feels that at the end of a long haul of the job, there are none of his passengers he'd like to throw overboard. That caucus of Jude, Matt, Gwyneth and Care is an auspicious one for me. I feel, "How did I get them all for this movie at this time?"
Q: Do you have any notions about chemistry, of blending the right casting elements and creating magic?
A: Executives are concerned with chemistry, Filmmakers arc concerned with honoring the idea of the part. If you cast carefully, the film sort of takes care of itself in terms of those various alchemies that need to happen.
Q: This is a bigger film than one might have imagined, with extraordinary locales.
A: Roy Walker and I started looking together for locations in January and we didn't start shooting until August. We scouted from the very top of Italy to the toe to try and find the village of "Mongebello" in the book. We shot in Tuscany, Venice, Rome, Naples, Ischia, Palermo. We shot Naples for Rome, Rome for Naples, Rome for Venice, Venice for Rome. During the shooting on the island Ischia, one of my fillings dropped out and I had to have an emergency appointment with a dentist. The very nice dentist knew who I was and said, "You know, 50 years ago, Alain Delon sat in this chair to have a filling replaced when he was making Plein Soleil." I said, "Why here?" And he said, "They shot here." I said, "No, I don't think so." But I looked at the movie again and, sure enough, although you can barely see it, they used a corner of Ischia to make their "Mongebello." So, having searched throughout Italy, we ended up using exactly the same location as they did.
Q: Why have you reset the book in the late '50s?
A: Because it's the era known as "Il Bourn" in Italy, a time when Italy was changing, surfacing from the war. That period in Italian culture has a patina of elegance and style, with a very pagan underbelly. That's what the film is about in some ways. Also, I wanted all of us to be shooting this picture as if, if we just walked around a corner, Fellini would be there shooting La Dolce Vita with Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg. A lot of American photographers were working there at the time. On my wall while I was writing, I put the Ruth Orkin photograph called American Girl in Italy. I later showed it to Gwyneth and Cate and Matt to try and show them how American the Americans were and how European the Europeans were. The whole way the girl is walking, the way the men are sitting, I kept trying to get mat earthiness into the film.
Q: How else have you found ways to make the novel more cinematic?
A: People were making themselves up in the '50s in Europe, including writers like Highsmith, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal--just as, before them, Edith Wharton and Henry James had done. Ripley is in some ways an updating of Henry James's The Ambassadors, almost a commentary on it in that it walks into the whole tradition of "the American in Europe," of people going off to cast away the ties that bind them. It occurred to me early on that one way to dramatize the combat between Dickie and Ripley was through jazz, the great noise of freedom of mat period. In the film, Dickie has taken his alto sax to Europe and aspires to be a John Coltrane or Charlie Parker, an improviser who could, literally, make himself up in the moment. Dickie can articulate all the concerns of the Beat generation, of being on the road. Ripley is a classically trained pianist who, as far as hipper-than-thou Dickie can see, is straight, conventional, conservative. What the film tries to say is that one of Ripley's great talents is to extemporize. While Charlie Parker is a great musician, he's in the tradition of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, The musical joke of the movie all the way through is that Dickie thinks jazz is the hip, free sound of personality, but go back and listen to Bach. I've tried to sit the entire film on a kind of musical architecture.
Q: One hears that in the past few years, you might have done any number of projects, including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sliding Doors and Shakespeare in Love. Have you found yourself surprised, delighted, bemused by what projects were offered you?
A: No, because I knew what I was going to do next. I'm not really in the marketplace for the kind of opportunities which accrue to directors who have some success. I'm not for hire. There's nobody and nothing in The English Patient I didn't want in it, and it was made entirely the way I wanted. If it didn't work, it was my problem. I feel entirely the same about Ripley. I'll stand passionately by the result.
Q: Are you optimistic about Ripley's chances to find an audience and to find success?
A: I have no sense of it. My little notebook records my anxieties about The English Patient just as we were coming to its release, with such things as "Nobody in the world is going to want to see this film," "It doesn't work," "It's too ambitious." I feel the same way about this film. There isn't a place on the shelf in the video store where I can picture it very easily. And that's what it ought to be like. Films should want to jump out of categories. They shouldn't want to be one thing. Audiences are capable of laughing and crying at the same movie, of being frightened and entertained at the same thing.
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Stephen Rebello interviewed Christina Ricci for the November issue of Movieline.