The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Talented Mr. Ripley-720P

The Talented Mr. Ripley-720P

The Talented Mr. Ripley-480P

The Talented Mr. Ripley-360P

The Talented Mr. Ripley-480P

The Talented Mr. Ripley-360P

'The Talented Mr Ripley' is a very silly film. It is a perfect example of how style can triumph over substance. From start to finish the plot is 100% nonsense. A geekish lavatory attendant (Tom Ripley/Matt Damon) stands in as an accompanist wearing a borrowed Princeton blazer. This is enough for a shipping magnate in the audience to finance him to go to Italy and bring back his playboy son (Dickie Greenleaf/Jude Law). Ripley falls in love with Dickie's life and with Dickie himself. For a while he manages to attach himself, leechlike, to the black sheep. His first advances, hinting at a game of * bathtub chess, are rebuffed. An improbable turning point occurs when the hithertho nerdish Tom slices open the side of Dickie's head with an oar during an unlikely boat trip for two and then beats him to a lifeless pulp in the biffo that follows. From this point, Ripley leads a double life, as himself and his victim. When rumbled by one of Dickie's old chums (Freddie/Philip Seymour Hoffman) he turns to murder again. The net seems to be closing in but Ripley keeps wriggling free. Writer/Director Antony Minghella uses the oldest trick in the book to distract viewers from the hollowness of the plot. Just as a skillful conjuror diverts the gaze of the audience from where the trick is really happening, so Minghella disengages our critical faculties with picturesque backdrops of Rome, Venice and even Jude Law's posterior. The cast do well enough, apart from Matt Damon who wouldn't have got a look in at a 'Queer as Folk' audition. None of the characters they play invite empathy, so the viewer scarcely cares who might live or die, and whether Ripley will get away with his literally incredible double life. Surely the hard-boiled American private detective hired by Greenleaf Senior will unravel the tissue of lies and coincidences? Nope. Fade to unreadable titles and who cares? The stars of this film are the locations and the art direction. Without them it would be the disaster the absurd and wholly unbelievable plot deserves.

I was so fascinated by Tom Ripley's character that I watched this movie again and again. There was something about him that I felt sympathetic towards on one hand and gave me the creeps on the other. Sympathetic because in more than one ways he is like you and me. He wants to be rich, he wants approval and he is may be just an opportunist. Creepy because he latches on like a leech, he can't take rejection and though he doesn't plan but once he assumes the identity of someone else he can go to any extent to keep that. Actually one can identify with the character so much that it's almost scary to look inside your dark corners. Matt Damon played this three-dimensional character so well that I almost became a huge fan of his. Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, whose identity Tom Ripley steals was very good as well. The movie is shot in Italy, moves at a leisurely speed and is very atmospheric. One of my all time favorite thrillers.

As a huge fan of Rene Clement's "Purple Noon" I came to Minghella's version of Patricia Highsmith's story with suspicion and an irrational predisposition to dismiss it. Well, I was wrong. The talented Mr. Minghella perpetrated a magic trick. The film stands on its own as an entertaining, creepy, thoughtful, beautiful to look at piece of film-making. Jude Law throw us for six, we're not suppose to feel attracted to the selfish Dickie Greenleaf, but we do. His scrumptious performance is alluring, seductive. He is a scene stealer of major proportions. In the original, Maurice Ronnet's oily Dickie Greenleaf was a perfect lamb to the slaughter. We don't mourn his death and want the murderous Ripley, as played by Alain Delon, to get away with it. Here, when Jude Law is on the screen that's what we're looking at. We're prepared to forgive him anything and everything. I did believed in Gwyneth Paltrow's qualm, totally. In the original, Marie Laforet played it as a tenuous, unclear little excuse. Gwyneth Paltrow gives us a multi dimensional character and we go through her torment every step of the way. That, presumably, is merit in great part of Minghella's superb screenplay. Other joys are Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman. On the minus side Matt Damon couldn't make me forget Alain Delon. His Ripley is a better written character than Delon's and his performance is top notch, but Delon was breathtaking on the screen. I think than Anthony Minghella was more interested in the inner workings of Ripley's mind that in the pyrotechnics of a implausible plot. Good. The semi confession of Matt Damon about a basement full of secret truths tells us about his pain about his fear. Delon's Ripley is amoral to the hilt. The murder of Dickie in the original is terrifying. It takes forever. As well as the getting rid of Freddy's body. Minghella never show us how Ripley managed to bring a dead body down the stairs. Clement spends a great deal of time with it. Making it enormously suspenseful. But, as I mentioned before we did care about Delon and, maybe, Minghella new that whether Damon got caught or not wasn't that important. All in all I liked the film very much and the biggest lesson from a film fanatic's point of view is: you don't kill your Jude Law half way through a film unless you leave us in the hands of someone who will make us forget him. Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins, remember that?