The world was at his feet

Time and time again, he returned to the theme of the displaced struggling to find their way, foreigners in a strange land looking for a piece of home, if not simply peace of mind. Mostly, his work seemed to offer the promise that there were moments of intimate connection to be found in this world, even amid epic-scaled turmoil and confusion. His creations always proposed that there was something more for us out there.

So the news this week of the passing of director, writer and producer Anthony Minghella at age 54 was a particularly unexpected shock. A filmmaker who could bring a cool international feel to Hollywood productions, he had an uncanny ability to be both the plugged-in insider and the wary, watchful outsider.

The British-born Minghella was a filmmaker of quiet strength who seemed perhaps more closely aligned with certain directors of a previous generation -- like David Lean or Carol Reed -- than with his contemporaries.

Never a particularly hip filmmaker, with works such as “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” “The English Patient,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Cold Mountain,” Minghella was a practitioner of a mature cinematic style that seemed slightly out of step with the youth cult of contemporary Hollywood.

His seven feature films racked up an impressive 24 Academy Award nominations and came away with 10 Oscars. Minghella won the Academy Award for best director for “The English Patient” (1996), and he was also twice nominated for best adapted screenplay.

His skill in teasing out powerful performances was evidenced by the five Oscar nominations for acting stemming from films he directed. Juliette Binoche in “The English Patient” and Renee Zellweger in “Cold Mountain” each won best supporting actress under Minghella’s direction.

There was something of the Hollywood classicist in his films, which might have made them occasionally seem a touch staid, but they were nevertheless always sturdy, impeccably constructed and seamlessly engaging.

His debut feature “Truly, Madly, Deeply” was released in 1991, when Minghella was nearing 40, an age by which some filmmakers have already come on strong and lost their touch. Once he made the leap to bigger pictures with “The English Patient,” a throwback to sweeping, epic melodramas, it would be Minghella’s emotional acuity and flair for offhanded internationalism that would mark him as a director.

Though some would have it that the overwhelming Oscar success of “The English Patient” -- 12 nominations and nine wins, including best picture -- was more a credit to the awards-season savvy and bullish marketing of distributor-producer Harvey Weinstein and his dream team of campaign mechanics, it’s too easy to write off the film in this way. Audiences were genuinely swept up in, and moved by, the exotic locales and powerful emotions of the film, and that speaks entirely to the subtle skill and gentle craft of Minghella.

Showing an unexpected streak of tough-minded willfulness, Minghella followed his career-making triumph with an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999).

A twisted tale of identities mistaken and assumed, the story proved to be a surprisingly fertile ground for Minghella, who mined dazzlingly complex and resonant performances from his central cast of Jude Law (in what for now stands by far as his best performance), Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Seeming at times no less a picture-book travelogue than “The English Patient,” “Ripley” has arguably aged better than its predecessor for the exact reasons it was less of a success on its initial release. Thorny, tricky and troubling, “Ripley” is the work of a filmmaker in command of the resources of the cinema and with a keen grasp on his own talent.

“I worked with him on three films, more than with any other director, but had come to value him more as a friend than as a colleague,” Law said in a statement. “He was a brilliantly talented writer and director who wrote dialogue that was a joy to speak and then put it onto the screen in a way that always looked effortless. He made work feel like fun.”

Minghella went on to direct Law and Binoche again in “Breaking and Entering” (2006). Working as a producer with Sydney Pollack, he also helped to shepherd such films as “The Quiet American,” “The Interpreter” and “Michael Clayton.” As further proof of his deep commitment to the arts, he served from 2003 until recently as chairman of the British Film Institute and also directed a production of the opera “Madame Butterfly.”

As for his upcoming projects, Minghella recently directed and co-wrote with Richard Curtis the adaptation for “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency,” for the BBC, which HBO plans to air next year.

Production recently wrapped on director Stephen Daldry’s “The Reader,” on which Minghella served as producer (The movie is scheduled for release this year).

He was also attached to adapt and direct “The Ninth Life of Louis Drax,” and he was planning to contribute to the omnibus film “New York, I Love You,” the follow-up to “Paris, Je t’aime,” a series of romantic vignettes set in the city.

No small part of what set him apart as a filmmaker may be simply that he lived a life before stepping behind the camera, an increasingly rare trait in directors. He pursued a career in academia and as a playwright before going to work as a writer on a number of BBC productions.

In “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film” in 2002, critic David Thomson wrote, “My guess is that Minghella, for all his great skills, is a slow and even a shy developer. I doubt we have yet seen the best or even the darkest from him.”

Beyond the sorrow that goes with any death and the sense of mourning for family, friends and colleagues, it is exactly that anticipation, and now the sense of loss of things to come, which puts a particular sting in his passing.