Choice Brits - Script Factory

Anthony Minghella helps us launch Choice Brits!

Despite being down to the wire in finishing his eagerly anticipated Cold Mountain, Minghella joined us to give an eloquent introduction to O'Sullivan's beautiful period drama, comparing it to Wong Kar Wai's elegant In the Mood to Love. We also had a very welcome surprise visit from the film's screenwriter Lucinda Coxon.

CHIOICE BRITS: ANTHONY MINGHELLA INTRODUCES THE HEART OF ME
Friday 7 November, 2003, The Other Cinema, London W1
 
“Good evening. As I walked in I saw my name was attached to this film [on the cinema canopy] and I was rather proud that they gave me some credit for it!
 
I think it’s a great idea that filmmakers in Britain support other filmmakers in Britain, and I have several connections to this project, but the most important one is via the British Film Institute. Part of our discomfort at the bfi is that so many interesting movies are released without any kind of support in Britain, without any of the mechanisms and the push that the Hollywood industry can give them. Actually I’ve just walked out of a mix of my own film Cold Mountain, and that’s a film that will get all of the possible ballast that a studio can give it, to slap you round the face when it is released in a few week’s time.
 
Films like this one, The Heart of Me, suffer: it’s nothing to do with the quality or content of the film, it’s simply the distribution mechanisms which don’t, can’t, spend the money which films like this need. I was talking to someone yesterday who said for instance in an advert in the New York Times for somebody costs $225,000, which means that a film that is released under that mechanism needs to gross $500,000 just to pay for that advert. So you can see immediately why certain films simply slip under the radar in both this country and America.
 
It’s important because we’re always very quick to condemn the British film industry and its poverty of talent, its poverty of productions and its modesty, but these are largely industrial constraints and have nothing to do with artistic merit or the quality of the work that’s been done. The Heart of Me is distinguished by all kinds of things, but not least, by an extremely good script by one of the most interesting new writers, Lucinda Coxon, who’s working with the company I have with Sidney Pollack, Mirage, at the moment, and is a real talent. It also stars three of the most significant actors around in Britain: Olivia Williams, Helena Bonham Carter, and Paul Bettany, and it’s got the kind of peau doux that certain kinds of filmmaking have which is often mistaken for being uninflected, but is actually to do with the discretion that I think British cinema is good at. But that discretion sometimes makes it so silent that it doesn’t quite reach the audiences that it deserves.
 
It reminds me of a particular film which I really admired in recent years, a Wong Kar-Wai film called In the Mood for Love, which I think is one of the most beautiful films of recent times, and [The Heart of Me] somehow is its equivalent. It’s got the kind of intensity and glancing appetites of love that In The Mood... scrutinises.
 
The film has a very interesting director, Thaddeus O’Sullivan, whose work you are all probably familiar with. He was a cinematographer, and he has the eye of a cinematographer. What distinguishes this I think, from a movie you might see on television, is just the detail, and care and concern for the way the film looks; the way the art direction works – it’s all ‘of a piece’ and extremely coherent. These are films that are worth looking at a second time if you’ve seen them before, and for the first time if you haven’t seen them, just to study and to enjoy them.
 
The bfi wants to advocate this kind of cinema; we would love to get behind films that are kind of secrets, that shouldn’t be secrets. And one of the things we’re trying to do is push the boat out, not only in London, here in Rupert Street, but also all around the country so that good films like The Heart of Me are getting the proper attention that they deserve. So, I’m grateful for all of you who came to this evening and I hope you enjoy the film…"
 
For more about The Heart of Me click here.
For more about Anthony Minghella click here.