THEY looked more than a little similar, Alan Yentob and Anthony Minghella, as the former paid tribute to the latter, the director and writer whose sudden death in March came just days before the premiere of his last film for TV, The No 1 Ladies Detec
tive Agency. But Yentob was also a fitting person to eulogise his friend, having commissioned Minghella's first feature film for the BBC in 1990, Truly Madly Deeply.
The sense of an almost film-like appropriateness didn't end there, as that classic film was itself centred on a man who had died. And cutting between Juliet Stevenson as the character mourning Alan Rickman, and the actress – barely changed 18 years later – as herself mourning Minghella, was strange, but somehow seemed right.
Any televisual tribute can tend towards hagiography, especially so soon after a subject's death, but there was a note of sincerity in this Imagine as many famous faces told Yentob of their affection for Minghella, who by all accounts was a decent man as well as a talented one.
This was a celebration of his work, not probing too madly deeply, but with some nice anecdotes. Apparently if certain American studios had had their way, his first big movie, The English Patient, would have had Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott-Thomas replaced by Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer. Not quite as bad as the original casting of Ronald Reagan as Rick in Casablanca, but an idea that was wisely dumped.
Producer Harvey Weinstein told how Barbra Streisand, miffed at The English Patient receiving better reviews than her ugly duckling romcom The Mirror Has Two Faces, bitched until she ended up sitting behind Minghella and the cast at the Oscars, watching them get up to collect award after award. No doubt a more in-depth assessment of his films will be made one day but this was a respectful tribute.
Café de los Maestros was almost a sequel; it could have been called "Buena Vista Social Club II: Tango Boogaloo". The Wim Wenders film about Ry Cooder reuniting elderly Cuban musicians for a last big concert had a huge impact on what's lamely called the World Music scene. It had clearly inspired Argentine-born, Los Angeles-based musician Gustavo Santaolalla to copy the idea for his native country's tango orchestras.
Well, originality isn't everything and while the set-up was familiar, the musicians were not, being veterans of the 1940s and 50s when tango culture was revived from its turn of the century origins as a deliberate tactic by Juan Perón to boost national pride. But it later went underground, as the political situation changed, and most of the musicians featured hadn't played much for decades.
The documentary could have done with a clearer structure, giving more context to its players and explaining the background at the beginning rather than piecemeal throughout the film. At times it felt like simply eavesdropping on the set-up for the climactic concert, at Buenos Aires' beautiful Teatro Colón, as the aged musicians reminisced vaguely about their golden age in a series of disconnected interviews. And there was no sense of tango's presence in the streets and clubs of the city, or the way the music intertwines with the dance.
But the concert itself was gorgeous, needing no explanations or translations as the performers put on the show, surely, of their lives. "You can't separate tango from life," said one, Aníbal Arias, and if the film conveyed nothing else, it got their passion across.
