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The Talented Mr. Ripley
****
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Buena Vista International on February 25, 2000; certificate
15; 140 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Anthony Minghella; produced
by William Horberg, Tom Sterngerg.
Written by Anthony Minghella; based on the novel by Patricia
Highsmith.
Photographed by John Seale; edited by Walter
Murch.
CAST.....
Matt Damon..... Tom Ripley
Jude Law..... Dickie Greenleaf
Gwyneth Paltrow..... Marge Sherwood
Cate Blanchett..... Meredith Logue
Philip Seymour Hoffman..... Freddie Miles
Jack Davenport..... Peter Smith-Kingsley
James Rebhorn..... Herbert Greenleaf
Sergio Rubini..... Inspector Roverini
Philip Baker Hall..... Alvin MacCarron
Hollywood still makes films with black and white
characters, but at least heroes are more flawed these days than they were
fifty years ago, and villains no longer sit twiddling their moustaches, giggling
maniacally or stroking kittens. Anthony Minghella is one of the few filmmakers
whose work goes even further. He doesn't just throw his characters a few
ambiguous traits. He makes us respond to them in challenging
ways.
Consider his Oscar-winner "The English Patient",
which required us to sympathise with the passion and pain of a man who could
be cold, selfish and cowardly. And now "The Talented Mr.
Ripley", adapted from the first novel in a series by Patricia Highsmith,
whose hero is a deceptive psychopath we fear but feel compassion
for.
His name is Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), a bathroom
attendant who is mistakenly believed to be a graduate of Princeton University
by rich shipbuilder Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn). Tom is only happy
to play along; later, to another character, he will admit his greatest talents
to be "telling lies, forging signatures, impersonating practically
anybody."
Greenleaf thinks Tom was a classmate of his son
Dickie (Jude Law), and persuades him to take an all-expenses-paid trip to
Italy for the purpose of bringing the chap back to America. Dickie is living
in Mongibello with his girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), spending his
easy-going days lounging on the beach in pursuit of such epicurean delights
as eating, drinking, screwing, sailing and saxophone-playing.
Tom ingratiates himself without difficulty, and
has a great time living with Dickie and Marge, accompanying them on all their
adventures. He's a yes-man, always smiling, wanting to be shown things; he
makes Dickie feel important. But the rich brat gets fed up with this, and
decides to toss Tom aside. "We should spend some time apart," he says. "You
can be a leech! You bore me!"
Tom's response is to murder the man (who he had
fallen in love with), assume his identity and use it to arrange a life for
himself in Rome. He changes his appearance just enough to match Dickie's
passport photo, checks into hotels under his name, buys things with his
traveller's checks. It's better to be a fake somebody, he reckons, than a
real nobody.
I expected "The Talented Mr. Ripley" to be one
of those movies where we get some sort of dark glee out of the protagonist's
villainous actions. And it could have worked well on that level, but Minghella's
sincerity makes it something more compelling -- a torrent of conflicting
emotions, like I suggested in my opening paragraphs. We share the love and
anger Tom feels toward Dickie, because he is a selfish child who treats other
people as playthings, but does become wonderfully warm when paying attention
to someone. We agree with Dickie's eventual judgement that Tom is creepy
and phoney, and yet it seems so unfair, because we sense Tom had never had
any good fortune before meeting Dickie and Marge.
The biggest contradiction throughout the film
is the one between our revulsion and seduction. Dickie's life is a grotesquely
lazy one, and Tom living it as an impostor is downright evil, but then again,
we can sort of see the attraction. Minghella has updated the setting of the
novel by almost a decade, so the story now takes place in the late '50s,
and coincides with Italy's 'dolce vita' period. Cinematographer John Seale
captures its dreamy, boozy atmosphere with images of rich, luxurious colour,
and it is, as Tom puts it, "one big love affair".
Even the earliest moments of this, though, have
an underlying tension to them. Before meeting Dickie and Marge, Tom has
introduced himself as Dickie to a cute young woman named Meredith (Cate
Blanchett), so from the outset we know he's plotting something. Meredith
forms a fascination with Tom that acts as an ironic counterpoint to his own
obsession with Dickie, but her character is really in the movie to complicate
the plot. A lot of its second half, you see, revolves around Tom keeping
up both of his identities, and much tension is generated by this one idea,
with Tom having to carry on creating lies to keep his head above water with
different sets of people. The longer he goes without getting discovered,
the more tense things get, because it's more improbable he can stay in control
of such a labyrinthine web of deceit.
At the centre of this breathtaking thriller are
some great performances. Law and Philip Seymour Hoffman are perfect as young,
arrogant members of the idle rich, giddily staggering around with excited
eyes, ecstatic at both the beauty of their surroundings and the knowledge
they could buy them. Paltrow is uncomplicated, clear and honest as the one
normal character in the picture, who eventually realises what Tom's up to,
but can't get anyone to believe her. And then there is Damon, who struts
with force and confidence when pretending to be Dickie, but plays Tom as
someone constantly faking a nervous and plain front. That's pathetic, because
it shows he's got no confidence in his own personality, and chilling, because
he doesn't mind killing for somebody else's.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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