A year after Anthony Minghella's death, we are all mourning his loss and counting the many lessons he taught us. Some of these lessons for me are good, some I am happy to know but they have not been easy to learn. But there has not been a single day in the last year, when I have not thought about him, and his far reaching effect on me. I am grateful. I perceive him to be, in the African sense, one of my "ancestors." Yes, Anthony and Sydney Pollack (who died two months later in May, 2008) are certainly my ancestors, our ancestors on the No. 1 Ladies project, and our ancestors in life.Above are photos taken of Anthony about a six months before we started filming our No. 1 movie, (premiering, coincidentally, tonight in New York City) when I had taken him on his third research trip to Botswana, the trip when he finished a working draft of the screenplay. At 6 in the morning, the sun already up, the women having brought the water to the village, I snapped these photos (top: Unity Dow and Anthony; lower: Anthony sitting with the village men). We had gone to Unity Dow's "labola" ceremony. This is the ceremony when the village decides "bride price," -- the men and the women are separated, as are the couple, to decide how many cows a bride is worth, and to get the acceptance of the marriage from the village. The groom pays the bride's family, and then the bride becomes a member of the groom's family. The interesting thing was, this was Unity's third marriage, she's a radical, the first and only High Court (supreme court) female judge in Botswana, she's fought for the rights of women and children, she's changed the Botswana constitution, and yet, she wanted Carl, her German husband to be, to pay for her in ... cows. I marveled at the time, and I still marvel. She accused me of accepting a diamond ring as a form of engagement - what was the difference with cows? she asked.
Anthony loved this ceremony, and of course, he was a master of understanding ritual in general, an underpinning of his great work. He loved investigating all things, and all things Botswana.(Yes, he even ate the Mopani worms, though not very often.) He wanted to learn, absorb, to know everything. One of his greatest attributes was his opinion that - to live fully, not only a director but a person, must have a brimming curiosity about life and about all things around him/her. Anthony was infinitely curious, and at the best of times, playful with his curiosity.
One of the key reasons that Anthony directed the movie was because of Unity. In her, he met a novelist, a woman, a traditionalist, a radical, a soul. And he saw and understood a darker side of Botswana. (See her novel, The Screaming of the Innocents, which on this third trip to Botswana, he would read aloud to me, as I drove our car, lost around the city of Gaborone.)
On this anniversary of his death, I pause, and I think of all the things he brought to me. The good and the bad, the informed, the marvelous, the difficult. Every thing -- living and vibrant and above all else -- everything human -- flawed and sublime -- all of those things.
May he rest in peace, and may we rest in peace about him.
