The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Talented Mr. Ripley is a 1955 psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith. This novel first introduced the character of Tom Ripley who returns in the novels Ripley Under Ground, Ripley’s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water. The five novels are known collectively as the Ripliad. Tom Ripley is a young man struggling to make a living in New York City by whatever means necessary, including a series of small-time confidence scams. One day, he is approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf to travel to Mongibello, Italy, to persuade Greenleaf’s errant son, Dickie, to return to the United States and join the family business. Ripley agrees, exaggerating his friendship with Dickie, a half-remembered acquaintance, in order to gain the elder Greenleaf’s trust.

My Review of The Talented Mr. Ripley



5 — The Perfect Sundae


Anthony Minghella seduces his audience as we thirst through the ambitious eyes of Tom Ripley.
—Tanja



Director: Anthony Minghella
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Matt Damon and the late, Philip Seymour Hoffman



Brief Synopsis of The Talented Mr. Ripley

Manhattan lavatory employee, Tom Ripley, borrows a Princeton jacket to play piano at a lavish garden party. When a wealthy man makes conversation with Tom, he pretends to know Dixie Greenleaf, the shipping magnate’s son, and agrees to sail to Italy, to convince the idle son, to return home. In Italy, Tom befriends Dickie and Marge, Dickie’s cultured fiancée, and utilizing his chameleon charms, pretends to love jazz, while harboring homoerotic hopes as he soaks in luxury. Besides his mendacious ways, Tom’s talents include spot-on impressions and forgery, so when the handsome and confident Dickie tires of Tom, dismissing him as a bore, Tom goes to extreme lengths to make Greenleaf’s privileges his own.

“I always thought it would be better, to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” Tom Ripley

In this particular case, the film led me to read the book and, because I had no preconceived notions about The talented Mr. Ripley, the movie did not disappoint. Indeed, I favoured the film over the book. Very much so.

The Talented Mr. Ripley was Anthony Minghella’s notable follow-up to his Oscar-winning victory The English Patient. Italy, late 1950’s, and Minghella’s timeless canvas captures the sensuousness of la dolce vita, the sweet life or the good life in Italian. This is a carefree life of prosperous, young emigrants in postwar Italy and the relaxed imagery washes right over you. You’re there, and it’s dreamy (regards to the cinematographer John Seale, who also worked on The English Patient and most recently, Prince of Persia and The Tourist). Minghella’s dexterity is not only with what you see, it’s what lurks; that unsettling sense of what is hiding beneath the sunny smiles and graciousness. Mingella is methodical with his direction, cautiously developing the fissuring of Ripley’s mind without letting the film fall into well beaten path of imitation. We know these films; the physiological thrillers that keep our interest but are easily forgotten. Over a decade later and when asking myself, what are my favorite movies? The Talented Mr. Ripley shot up from the deep sea of my mind; like the cork from a vintage wine bottle.

A fine cast, and Minghella consumes every ounce of their talents.

Dickie Greenleaf, played by Jude Law, (who, with those eyes, just exploded on camera) and Marge Sherwood played by Gwyneth Paltrow, live in a rustic Italian village, walking in the shade of cobblestones lanes; their days spent enjoying at cafés or languishing on the picturesque beaches. As Dickie pursues his dream of being a jazz musician, Marge soaks up the ambiance with plans of finishing her novel. It’s a pampered life, courtesy of Senior Greenleaf, who is appalled at his son’s slipshod lifestyle and when he runs into Tom Ripley, a friendless young man living in New York, with a hunger to be more than who is, is then hired shipping tycoon to sail to Italy and retrieve Dickie Greenleaf.

Just a taste of Dixie’s opulent routine, consisting of boating, sunny beaches and jazz and Tom becomes not only addicted to the dream, but he morphs himself right into it. Strangely, Minghella’s eye for the trivial details are so finely drawn that the film becomes one of those renaissance paintings that if you stare long enough, you can actually feel as if you’re there. Not only did your eyes drink the vision in, but so did your ears. Not a great fan of jazz, yet the soundtrack gave the gorgeous scenery an even stronger pulse. There was nothing funny about the song, My Funny Valentine. Actually, I’ll forever have the creeps when hearing that composition. It was the exact blend of vintage jazz, including music by, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and what became one of my favorite songs by Sinead O’Connor ―A Lullaby for Cain.”

That was probably why this film was unnerving. Not only did I fall in love with the surreal lifestyle, but I fell in love with the idea of Tom fitting into this canvas where he didn’t belong. It was that haunting scene in the boat where Dixie humiliates Tom and tells Tom (in his perfect American accent) that he wants him to return to America, that he can be a “leech” and “quite boring.” In the subsequent heated quarrel, Tom lashes out and strikes Dickie with an oar and cracks his skull open. It was that whack on the head that stopped time, that momentary pause, that double-blink, and all at once, Dixie’s skull fissures and the blood oozes in raging streaks across his face. That animalistic need for survival plays out against the calm blue as Dickie strikes back in retaliation, but now Tom must finish what he started and kills his ‘love’ in an anxious, tearful slaying. Silence falls; the boat sways, and water sloshes. Tom weeps and cradles Dixie’s bloodied body. Again we see the brilliance of Minghella as the aerial shot catches that final moment when Dixie’s corpse is swallowed by the Mediterranean.

With Dixie gone, it is the perfect canvas, wiped clean in an endless blue and now all Tom Ripley has to do is finish painting himself into what was once Dixie Greenleaf’s world.

“If I could just go back . . . if I could rub everything out . . . starting with myself.”
—Tom Ripley