Truly, Madly, Deeply

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Written/Directed by Anthony Minghella Release Dates: England 1990, USA 1991

The Low: Nina (Juliet Stevenson) can't advance beyond debilitating grief for her partner Jamie (Alan Rickman), who passed suddenly.

The High: She is overjoyed when he magically returns, before re-discovering the imperfections which existed within their relationship. This clarity, coupled with the potential romance of another (living!) suitor, allows her to move on and enjoy her most precious gift: life.

I think I first viewed this film on VHS around 1993 and it took the wind out of me. It was released the same year as Ghost and was often referred to as the English version of that weeper. The circumstances are similar, but they're two totally different movies. Where Ghost is ultimately a crime drama with comic and romantic overtones...an enjoyable weepfest with broad comic turns from Whoopi Goldberg, Truly, Madly, Deeply is a romantic dramedy, with sparkling dialogue and painfully spot-on observations on the imperfections of love and lovers. Ghost's lovers are beautiful with perfect abs and a romance captured in amber. Truly, Madly, Deeply features pale, sneezing Brits who laugh a lot and bicker more, aspiring to harmony but achieving discord or an occasional truce.

Anthony Minghella is purported to have written Truly, Madly, Deeply for Juliet Stevenson, and although I admire her dramatic chops and vulnerable portrayal, I never related to her. For me, it is Alan Rickman who makes every part of this film work. In fact, his gravitas allows the very premise to succeed. The filmmakers need never explain how Jamie has re-entered Nina's world — whether through some supernatural circumstance or psychological episode — because Rickman plays the character with such humorous entitlement; he's there because he chooses to be. Any questions? Didn't think so!

And were Minghella to try any typical ghost-story stuff — should Nina push her hand though Jamie like Ghost's green-screened wraiths — it would have been an indignity to the character and scattered the fragile vapor of the film's lesson about grief; those we love deeply and lose quickly remain painfully real to us.

As in movies musical, high/low concept storytelling frequently capitalizes on suspension of logic to let songs communicate feeling. I'm thinking of "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paginini" in Groundhog Day, or "Duo" (with cello and saw) in Delicatessen. Another odd similarity between Ghost and Truly, Madly, Deeply are their effective uses of sixties' pop ballads. In this celebritory moment, musicians Nina and Jamie reunite in the flesh and in song:



Minghella mines moments both high and low in the dialogue; it is in turns heartbreakingly beautiful and refreshingly mundane. The High: a gut-wrenching monologue Rickman delivers about watching parents at a playground react to a placque dedicated to a deceased child. The Low: An ongoing competition of lover's wordplay between our main characters which provides the film's title. It also gives insight to the often combatative bickering that we learn caused friction in their relationship. What would you argue about with a ghost? Heaven and hell? No! Central heating.



In high/low concept, the problems the protagnist encounters in the magical premise reveal the importance of the mundane. Nina has come down from the high of reuniting with her lost lover, and experiences the hangover of reality; she and Jamie were a bad couple, incompatible in nearly every aspect. And Jamie was imperfect, selfish and neurotic. The film's climax in this scene is so powerful because of a shift in point of view from Nina to Jamie, in which his true motives are revealed.

The working title for Truly, Madly, Deeply was 'Cello', a reference not only to the instrument Rickman plays within the film, but also to the Italian word for heaven. And after the scene above, we recognize Jamie not as a ghost, but an angel, more akin to Damiel of Wim Wender's Wings Of Desire than Sam in Ghost.

And like many high/low concept films, we see that the magic of the premise is a MacGuffin. Neither film is about an encounter with the afterlife, they're about the importance of loving in this life. And whereas Ghost has a very American revenge sub-plot, in which the death of the new lover/antagonist provides closure, Truly, Madly, Deeply views Nina's new romance as a return to the world of the living.

Minghella passed suddenly himself in 2008 after a short but deeply impactful feature film career. Here Alan Rickman is asked about working with the filmmaker and the longevity of Truly, Madly, Deeply.