Hit Me With Your Best Shot: The Talented Mr. Ripley (spoilers)

How fitting that a week after we watched David Lean traipse through Venice for Nat Rogers' HMWYBS series, we watch one of his biggest fans, Anthony Minghella (Lawrence of Arabia was a huge influence on The English Patient) take his own journey in Italy (which includes Venice) with The Talented Mr. Ripley.  The last time I saw Ripley was when it first hit the cinema.  I was SO excited, as this was Minghella's followup to Patient.  The major Oscar-winner had suffered a backlash, but I was still absolutely swept away by the epic romance; and the thriller genre is my jam.  I anticipated what the maestro was going to accomplish with this remake of the superb Purple Noon.  Unfortunately, I was left pretty unfulfilled by the script.  The production values, including Gabriel Yared's mesmerizing score, were top notch, though the crown jewel of the venture had to be Jude Law's scrumptiously lean and tan body--a thing of beauty, really.  His torso also epitomized the motivations for the highly deranged Thomas Ripley (pasty white Matt Damon).  Richard "Dickie" Greenleaf (Law) was a young man who had it all: looks, physique, money, the jet set lifestyle, a cultured girlfriend, a mistress on the DL, and a thirst for living that he knew how to quench.  Poor, bewildered Ripley didn't know if he wanted to replace Dickie or fuck him.  But, he eventually figures it out on a small boat off the Campian coast.  I started writing this post about my favorite shot of the Ripley I wanted to see, but decided in the end to choose the best shot of the one Minghella actually made.

After watching the film again, I can't say that I was far off from my initial reaction.  Minghella created a picture-perfect little romp through the good life.  The taste here is incredibly sophisticated and desirable.  Everything is gorgeous, thanks in part to John Seale's cinematography and Ann Roth's costumes.  It was all more fitting that the female leads were played by future lifestyle guru and GOOP extraordinaire Gwyneth Paltrow, as well as chic fashion icon and future cinema goddess Cate Blanchett (they had just been Oscar rivals the year previously in a race that would share similar parallels in the competition fourteen years later).  But, underneath the lavender shadow of Noon, Minghella's decent film seems so meandering and, to quote Dickie, somewhat "boring."  Which brings me to the most exciting scene (Law's last two line deliveries of "boring" are genius, by the way), the pivotal aforementioned nautical moment where Ripley decides to go for broke and play full out, and we get something visceral and fleshy for a change.

This shot makes me wish the rest of the film was so alive

Set asea where only seagulls can hear you scream--a distance sufficient for a little tension--the two male leads show their true colors in the open waters of the Mediterranean.  Ripley's wounded sociopath turns psycho, but Minghella does everything possible to explain his actions.  The smack of the oar up against Law's bronzen, angelically devilish face is a passionate outburst from being slapped around and mocked by Dickie.  Here, the grotesqueness of Greenleaf--only hinted at previously--emerges from underneath his enviable skin in his final moments of his bruised ego asserting its power.  Law is no longer the delicious piece of meat you want to lick up and down, but this vile creature that looks as if he emerged from the watery grave Ripley is about to bury him in.  The hair and makeup are flawlessly executed; no lock is left out of place on Law's head even in his moment of rage.  But the crack in his pretty veneer spilling blood in creepily thick, crimson streams is unmistakably full of self-entitled shock and ire.  Ripley immediately expresses concern, which is met with Dickie's understandably violent wish to strangle him to death.  The moral ambiguity between these two comes to a head.  Now, Ripley battles for his life, and in their scuffle, it is Greenleaf who perishes (who lost perhaps because he didn't have to toil as hard as Ripley--who wants his life perhaps more than he does--has in the world), leaving the mournful murderer tenderly embracing the corpse for a spell before he begins executing the footwork for Plan B.

Minghella, who adapted the Patricia Highsmith novel himself, wanted to level the playing field as much as he could, making Ripley as sympathetic and Greenleaf as cruel as possible, in the context of a convincing relationship, in an attempt to give Ripley more ... dimension; spelling out all his many layers (troubled/confused/gifted/intelligent/beautiful/sensitive/haunted/etc.) in that sequence title designer Deborah Ross created during the opening credits, which, together as a whole, make him so talented.  Damon's Ripley is an interloping American fish out of water foreign to a less regimented culture, all the while unassuming, overly polite.  Surely, he's resourceful, ambitious, and quick as he is duplicitous, self-serving, and, well, homicidal, but he also benefits from some incredibly convenient plot developments, as well as subconsciously laying out groundwork for later use (his first meeting with Meredith, anyone?).  The kid accrues the kind of luck in a matter of weeks that Dickie's father may have not even enjoyed his entire years to bestow his ungrateful son with his privileged life.  These coincidences and improbabilities begin to stack up to a point where fortune smiled upon him way too many times.  If we can't believe Ripley could get away with murder, impersonation, and his bevy of imaginative lies, then who cares about his psychology?  Damon's simpering Ripley is so milquetoast.  Opportunities fall in his lap, but there is no pleasure in how craftily he takes full advantage of them, and learns to perfect his skills of manipulation.  He's all youthful self-loathing, without any amusing aspects of a villain.  He's the boy next door you might mistakenly trust, but not exactly one you'd want to invite--expenses paid--on your extended Italian vacation, unless you're Dickie, who amuses himself with little playthings like a dog with chew toys.

Part of the reason I loved Noon was because as evil and deranged as Ripley was, he had such a sexual appeal, that I mindlessly wanted to see just how far into trouble he could take himself and then get out like a magician.  I was kind of rooting for the bad guy.  Here, I just wanted to smack the bad guy upside the head with an oar (Ripley in this instance) and tell him to go back to America for being too "boring."  The Noon scene involving Alain Delon practically seducing himself in a mirror (James Franco has nothing on the Frenchman here) was one of the sexiest things I had ever seen at that time.  Blame it on Martin Scorsese for restoring the original and getting it rereleased in 1996.  Or perhaps the double-edged sword is that he brought it to Minghella's attention (or reminded him of it) and it inspired this production.  Ryan Phillipe (or Ewan MacGregor even) would have worked much better in an update, but that wasn't the version Minghella was making here.

He was producing a sophisticated film about a complicated lunatic who coveted everything he saw which stood in grander scale to his meaningless life.  There is plenty of play between mirrors and reflections exploring Tom's fascination with Dickie.

Does he want to replace him? 

Or fuck him?

Or both?

My Favorite Shot:


But, after further thought, my favorite shot, ironically enough, was a visual twin of one of Noon's most memorable (not the exact one, but later on).  Instead of Delon making love to his own image in the mirror, we have Ripley, having let his guard down, gaying it up, trying on Dickie's clothes while lip-syncing to Bing Crosby's "May I?"  Caught in the act of his unhealthy obsession, this moment provided a satisfying payoff and the movie's biggest laugh.  It's not René Clément, but it works here.  And, with further thought, it's technically brilliant.  Ripley's clinically insane narcissism is exposed, and it ends with him looking away from the mirror rather than towards, captured with his literal and figurative pants down, hand firmly on hip, slightly bent over in admiration.  So foolishly Fabulous!  The two are framed within the image of the mirror, before he hides behind it.  It's Tom at his most emotionally vulnerable, and he will never allow it to happen again.  And you have to love the Grecian bust in the background.  This scene is also significant as it's when Dickie finally decides that Tom has overstayed his welcome and it's time he sent him packing.  The days of this "love affair" are numbered.  And, once it's fully over, what we get is a pale imitation of Law's Dickie, who was the most interesting performance/character in the film.

Thank you to Nat Rogers for yet another interesting selection!

Early (or late chronologically) in the Oscar Revisionism series, back when we still had a healthy group of participants, they overwhelmingly chose Ripley as a likely Best Picture contender in a Field of Ten, putting it in seventh position behind Being John Malkovich, along with Magnolia and The Matrix.  What say you?  Topsy-Turvy?  The Hurricane?  Check it out here.

Was this generic poster a harbinger?

Previous HMWYBS:
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Summertime
Double Indemnity
A Star Is Born (1954)
Pink Narcissus
Road to Perdition
Picnic
The Story of Adele H.

Possessed

Edward Scissorhands

The Exorcist

Pariah
Raise the Red Lantern

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

The Circus