Crime stirs up creativity

Award recipient developed plot as result of burglary

Bob Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 4, 2006 at midnight

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Some people get robbed and sulk. Director Anthony Minghella, victimized by burglaries at production offices in Romania and later at his home, turned adversity into a springboard for creativity.

Although not every critic has applauded every movie made by Minghella, no one ever has accused him of lacking taste or intelligence. He's probably best known for his adaptation of The English Patient, a movie that won 9 Academy Awards, including best director.

The gala showing of Breaking & Entering, which opens Thursday's Starz Denver Film Festival, marks the director's first original screenplay since his 1991 breakthrough, Truly, Madly Deeply. Before the movie, the 52-year-old will receive the 2006 Mayor's Career Achievement Award.

"I'm hoping that I have a bit more career in front of me," Minghella said in a recent phone interview from London. "Inside my head, I'm a beginner. The pessimist in me wonders if it all will stop before I make any more messes. But I'm very honored, and it reminds me that there's a good audience for me out there."

Oddly, Breaking & Entering, which deals with the current fractious environment in London, had its origins in Romania, where Minghella's Cold Mountain was shot.

"It was a very lonely and intense experience. Transylvania was very different than anything I'd experienced before, and I was there for 11 months. I decided to return to London and tell a story from my own doorstep.

"I thought it would be a simple story. But that story wound up being more research-based than anything I'd done. I talked to architects. I went to Sarajevo. I had to learn about the development of Kings Cross. There was no part of this movie I could write without help."

In the film, Jude Law plays a landscape architect with an office in the transitional Kings Cross neighborhood of North London. As the result of a break-in at his office, Law's character involves himself in the life of a Bosnian refugee (Juliette Binoche). This affair doesn't do much for the health of his live-in relationship with a woman from Sweden (Robin Wright Penn.)

But about those break-ins. The Romanian burglaries involved a newly refurbished space that quickly became an object of curiosity for locals, some of whom walked away with the production's computers. "The burglaries seemed a fascinating provocation about what happens when areas change," said Minghella.

The Kings Cross we see in the movie sometimes pits affluent, design-crazed yuppies against struggling immigrants. "London is in an exuberant period of renovation and change," said Minghella. "North London around Kings Cross probably is the biggest construction site in Europe now. It was an an area of vice, decay and depression, and it probably will become the equivalent of Soho in Manhattan.

"One of the consequences is that some of the people whose community it was will not be able to live there. Something is lost every time something is gained. That's the nature of being a dramatist: You're condemned to see most sides of any argument."

Minghella seems to be suggesting that London might be viewed as one of the most complex characters in his movie. "There's no simple city anymore and no simple way of describing a city anymore. If you throw a stone in London, it will pass through many lifestyles, disappointments and successes within a couple of blocks.

"I think that's something to celebrate," said Minghella. "In Britain, we need other cultures to make our society work. I just finished work on a house, and no one who was working on it spoke English. I celebrated that. I'm an immigrant, too, and my wife is an immigrant from China." (Minghella's parents were born in Italy; his wife Carolyn Choa is an internationally known choreographer.)

Even though Breaking & Entering deals with hot-button issues, it remains a film that values civility and finds decency in its characters.

"I think of fiction as a way to remind us of the good in people, not the bad . . . If I have anything to say as a filmmaker, it's to value compassion and tolerance and to be able to laugh at oneself."

Minghella and his wife recently collaborated on a production of Madame Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. (Oh, and by the way, the day after the production opened, their London home was burglarized.)

"You probably can see from the films that I've made that I'm intoxicated by music . . . My wife has spent a great deal of her career as a choreographer in opera houses. When the idea of doing Madame Butterfly came up, it seemed such a natural for us."

Minghella is a first-time visitor to Denver, but he should feel at home at the film festival. He's chairman of the British Film Institute, which puts on the London Film Festival, an event that just celebrated its 50th anniversary.

"As chairman, I'm always asked about British film. But the festival exists for films around the world, not just British film. The festival still carries the good news of world cinema."

Being chairman of a large and important cultural event can be a burden, especially for someone with a flourishing creative life.

"If I'd known what I was taking on . . . says Minghella, pausing for effect. "I was a fool to do it. It's been a huge chunk of my time. Really, though, I've enjoyed the adventure of it, and I've only got another 12 months left. Then I'm on parole for good behavior."

Minghella on film

• The Ninth Life of Louis Drax (2008)

• Breaking and Entering (2006)

• Cold Mountain (2003)

• Play (2000)

• The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

• The English Patient (1996)

• Mr. Wonderful (1993)

• Truly Madly Deeply (1991)

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