Wonder why I’ve this fetish for Fonts?! I usually type directly into the Post, but the blog settings’ been acting funny with me recently. So, I first do a run on my faithful, yes, sometimes a pain in the you know where, Word document, which thankfully gives me that many more Fonts to choose from. What’s happened is this - my blog settings has taken off my Font selection Icon and without that, I’m like a sheep without wool. (There, some new metaphor!) More of a Goat, some of my friends will wanna add, but let’s just get on with this post and the explanation of it’s Title, shall we?
Anthony Minghella (see his pic) is the reason for my Double Delight. Without realising it, I had picked up two DVDs by the same director, along with this new age film from Turkey, which turned out to be my single scoop!
‘UZAK’ (Distant) is a masterpiece from Turkish Writer-Director & Cinematographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan. A winner in the Cannes 2003, this film has just two actors pitted along with & against one another – with both of them winning acting honors for this film in various film festivals. A photographer-artist uncle in Istanbul is visited by his long lost cousin from his village and life turns around for him, in more ways than one. Now a line like this can induce us to imagine dramatic moments, quick over the top scenarios and cuttings, major role for women, villains, comedy…! Ceylan’s film has all of this – not as high voltage drama but as Meaningful Moments. Brilliant visuals bring Istanbul to life – the POVs are from a distance, keeping in tune with the title. Minimal use of dialogue, maximum use of visuals take the scenes to a different high. The uncle has rules that the cousin flouts, without even realising it, of course. The cousin has inner agendas which the uncle unearths, without doing much about them (All through the film, the characters ‘behave’ – like we do in any given day of our lives!). The uncle (played by a uniquely nosed & immensely talented - a la ‘Depardieu-ish’, Muzaffer Ozdemir) is a stickler for cleanliness, is a moron when it comes to women, has zero attachments and lives a fairly king-sized life. The cousin (a very under your skin performance by Mehmet Emin Toprak, who posthumously received his Best Actor award for this film along with Ozdemir) has debts to repay, his mom’s toothache he worries over, has smelly shoes and doesn’t have what it takes to find a job in the city. Now, now, do I hear a slight burst of laugh already? Right. The minutes of the film will read SLOW. The content will read as DEEP. This is a film for a rainy, lazy and chuckling over popcorn afternoon. And music by the way is Mozart, with sound effects that pass off as superb background score. Try it!
Now for the DD- read Double Delight. ‘BREAKING AND ENTERING’ was the first film I saw in the Minghella series. A fan of his ‘English Patient’, I’ve always been intrigued with how he layers his characters and scenes with MORE…be it emotions, actions, richness of production/visual values and of course the popular cast, who come out with performances that range only between Good and Excellent. Set in London, the film is about an architect, Will Francis (Jude Law) whose life gets better actually (Mended, as he himself says) when he chases the boy who burgled his office more than once. With a high power girlfriend (Robin Wright Penn) who has an autistic daughter from her earlier marriage, Francis finds meanings to his equations within his life, his missing links so to say, when he befriends Amira (Juliette Binoche), the mother of his teenage burgler. The emotional alterations apart, the scenes of sexual tension where Francis and Amira are torn between their real passion and what they really seek from each other (He-his stolen things and justice and She-freedom for her son from prison walls)…will leave one silent and heavy for hours after the film. The teenager is a skilled Jumper (some breathtaking shots of the boy jumping over building tops), living with his single mom, hails from Sarajevo. Throw in the political backdrop and we immediatley understand the ‘why’ behind the boy’s abberation. Francis, loves his girlfriend and her daughter, but the lack of attention on him from Penn, cuts him deep. The issues which parents face as caretakers of specially challenged children is narrated in such a sublime way, that it says everything without saying much. There is the British humor, the chases, the court-room climax, and Francis’s emotional weakness with Amira .vs. his coming out clean and open with Penn. Touching. Beautifully shot by Benoit Delhomme, this film is a tight, gripping tale.
The second delight is a layered chase again, a Minghella wonder! A murder mystery – a saga of deep greed and actions born out of that greed which haunts a man’s life. The first part of a sequel that came thereafter, ‘The Talented Mr.Ripley’ has Thomas Ripley (Matt Damon) taking on a rich heir Dickey Greenlife (Jude Law - a Minghella regular, maybe?). One man taking another’s place for his own avarice. One lie leading to a lifetime of lies and deceit, one murder followed by another and another…one heart break leading to yet another (both Cate Blancett’s and Gwyweth Paltrow’s)–this spin around Europe is a bio-pic in the sense that it takes you ‘inside’ Ripley’s head! Now, who else but Anthony Minghella can help us achieve this unique feat?
Ok. I also went to work, shopped, fought with friends, made up with some, ate, attended meetings, read an Agatha Christie and slept while the rains lashed on my window panes. And now…while I wait for my Pizza to arrive…I hope my blog settings don’t go back to being funny again, when I sign in to post this.
I just don’t like blogs having a mind of their own.
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