Anthony Minghella's beautifully conceptualized debut demonstrates the isolating effects of grief and the regenerative powers of romantic fulfillment as a means of transcending from within the drudgery of life's repressive routine.
In an early scene we see Nina, whose lover died an indeterminate period of time ago, sobbing inconsolably, trying to explain the bottomless grief she's feeling to her vaguely incompetent psychiatrist. Her face fills the frame, her features twisted, moisture heavy on her skin. The camera remains unwaveringly fixed on her throughout this harrowing outburst, never cutting away to offer reliefshe's physically and emotionally isolated, her grief abstracted.
Such a scene is emblematic of Minghella's strategy in these first several reels. We are provided small hints of the tragedy from concerned acquaintances, but the lack of prosaic flashbacks, of the kind of visual inserts that conventionally accord shorthand empathy, similarly isolates us from her longing, leaving us wholly dependent upon Juliet Stevenson to convey the depths of Nina's despair. In order for this conceptual risk to pay off, an inordinate trust is required between director, audience and especially performer, and Stevenson is equal to the task. It's a commanding performance in which all character-building affectation is forsaken for a series of moments in which she is starkly present, dictating the pace, making us captive to her every move. In this manner, the film ceases to be an artifact of self-fulfillment on which we write the rules, but becomes a living thing that dictates the rules to us.
From this place of disconnection arrives a providential revelation, which I will not reveal, that changes the context of our identification with Nina and extends to her the promise of fulfillment. Between these two extreme stateslonging and jubilationcan be found the heart of the story and a gloriously multi-toned narrative, a colorful gallery of nuanced eccentrics, and a perfect, heartbreaking ending.
In an early scene we see Nina, whose lover died an indeterminate period of time ago, sobbing inconsolably, trying to explain the bottomless grief she's feeling to her vaguely incompetent psychiatrist. Her face fills the frame, her features twisted, moisture heavy on her skin. The camera remains unwaveringly fixed on her throughout this harrowing outburst, never cutting away to offer reliefshe's physically and emotionally isolated, her grief abstracted.
Such a scene is emblematic of Minghella's strategy in these first several reels. We are provided small hints of the tragedy from concerned acquaintances, but the lack of prosaic flashbacks, of the kind of visual inserts that conventionally accord shorthand empathy, similarly isolates us from her longing, leaving us wholly dependent upon Juliet Stevenson to convey the depths of Nina's despair. In order for this conceptual risk to pay off, an inordinate trust is required between director, audience and especially performer, and Stevenson is equal to the task. It's a commanding performance in which all character-building affectation is forsaken for a series of moments in which she is starkly present, dictating the pace, making us captive to her every move. In this manner, the film ceases to be an artifact of self-fulfillment on which we write the rules, but becomes a living thing that dictates the rules to us.
From this place of disconnection arrives a providential revelation, which I will not reveal, that changes the context of our identification with Nina and extends to her the promise of fulfillment. Between these two extreme stateslonging and jubilationcan be found the heart of the story and a gloriously multi-toned narrative, a colorful gallery of nuanced eccentrics, and a perfect, heartbreaking ending.