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Directed by Anthony Minghella
Starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett
USA, 1999
Rated R (violence, nudity, profanity)
"You better think twice / Before you let people in your life."
- TLC and Dallas Austin, "Case of the Fake People"
GLAMOUR
A man kills another and then must cover up that crime by murdering those
who suspect him. This is not a very original plot. Sadly, this is the story The Talented Mr. Ripley, Anthony
Minghella’s new acclaimed film, tells. I think that we movie lovers, or just
people in general who love great stories, have this fear that all the good
ideas will run dry and storytelling will lapse into a state of repetitious
remaking and retelling. The Talented Mr. Ripley was adapted from a
Patricia Highsmith novel which was probably seen as very original at the time of its publication. Minghella’s inconsequential interpretation of the story and the lack of newness in this film version (it has
been made before as 1960’s Purple Noon) is proof that storytellers are
having a bit of a dry spell right now. The only thing the eager and
disappointed audience can do is pray for the writers, filmmakers, artists,
and musicians of the world and hope they get well soon. That aside, this
new Minghella film is a wonderfully stylized thriller- one released by
Miramax, the now infamous Weinstein distributor that has an uncanny
savvy for publicity and is now sitting on the borderline between the Indie
World and that of Mainstream Hollywood. The Talented Mr. Ripley
boasts a cast filled with borderline Indie-Mainstream stars and it is a
glamorous tale of obsession and deception that is basically sterile in
the way of originality and almost self-important, but it doesn’t quite
offend the audience like other movies that take their viewers for idiots do.
It is a perfectly enjoyable movie; it’s easy enough to swallow and it is
not a bad film at all.
I have enjoyed the work of Minghella before- though I have not seen his critical success, Truly Madly Deeply, I have seen his hit, The English Patient, which I thoroughly enjoyed, even though it received a mixed reception upon its release. Minghella and his DP collaborator, John Seale, have a distinct visual style. The two use autumnal colors in both The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley: Patient unashamedly flaunting brown desert scenery in epic David Lean style, and Ripley utilizing beautiful European sites and landscapes to bring a classic old-fashioned feel to its atmosphere. Ripley is a giddy merging of Minghella’s knack for incorporating sweeping locations in his movies and Hitchcock’s famous formula that took big, beautiful stars and put them in glamorously dangerous positions. This movie is not unlike many of Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier work.
What keeps The Talented Mr. Ripley from being a tongue-in-cheek homage to the Master of Suspense is its theme of ugly obsession. Just like 1993 could be called the year of movies about repression, 1999 could be called the year of movies about identity. This film is one of a number of 1999 films to discuss blurring identity and wanting someone else’s identity (Being John Malkovich and Man on the Moon come to mind as similarly themed films). The screenplay and Anthony Minghella take this theme quite seriously, something Hitchcock would never dream of doing in his films. Therefore, Ripley is not too sound as a homage, and because the identity theme is so blatant throughout the film, it adds another layer of material the audience has seen before to the movie.
The performances are quite good, though. Matt Damon is riveting in his least self-conscious performance as the title character. Thomas Ripley is a simple piano player in New York who is mistaken by a wealthy family for a Princeton graduate. They send him off to Europe to bring their spendthrift and lascivious son, Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), back to New York. Tom finds no reason to turn down the offer since his life is going nowhere and there is a nice sum of money for him if he gets the playboy back. He meets Dickie with his girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), on the beach and is soon welcomed into their lives. Tom is immediately attracted to Dickie and when Dickie begins pushing him away, Tom becomes confused and angry and kills him. He rushes back to Marge, reports that Dickie plans to stay in Rome for a while, and then poses as Dickie, parading around Rome with Dickie’s passport and impersonating his voice.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law radiate as eye-candy and, while their roles don’t require too much depth, I do hope Law will become more recognized as a very good actor. I saw him first in Gattaca, and I realized that the man could really act. I hope The Talented Mr. Ripley will be his big breakthrough. Cate Blanchett is a lot of fun as a rather naïve American socialite who mistakes Tom as Dickie and falls in love with him. Her American accent is really good; she may be the next Meryl Streep. Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a carefree and drunken performance as one of Dickie’s friends who begins to suspect Tom of killing Dickie. The movie’s shimmering ensemble cast of stars and beautiful celebrity-looking people are a great benefit to it and so is Gabriel Yared’s gorgeous score. Yared also composed The English Patient’s hauntingly beautiful music (which earned him an Academy Award) and his work for The Talented Mr. Ripley is excellent. The score is a mixture of heavenly jazz and hyper classical music and it all works out in this old-fashioned film.
Tom Ripley is seen in a sympathetic light that is interesting. Matt Damon gives Ripley a good amount of charisma for the audience to hold on to, but his character is more of a psychological mess than he is a savvy killer. The film’s ending is absurd enough that it is almost destructive. All the evidence points to Ripley as the killer, yet no one really accuses him of the crime, at least not anyone who is still alive or in a rational state. I guess the movie wants to make poor Ripley suffer with his guilt by him not being found out. I thought the story was a bit overblown. The climax goes by a little hurriedly and in a state of confusion- Minghella doesn’t seem to know how to tie up all the loose ends in a suspenseful way.
The Talented Mr. Ripley does strike a chord at times. It makes us fear trusting strangers and it, for a moment, realizes our weaknesses and desperateness when faced with our obsession with other people. These moments are too few and far between for the movie to be called a powerful look at crimes of passion and identity crises and the movie loses its suspenseful zeal towards the end so it can’t really be called a completely effective thriller. I’ll call it a healthy diversion.
By Andrew Chan
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