Review of Talented Mr. Ripley, The

Introduction

British playwright/director Anthony Minghella seems to gravitate towards the Gods of Classic Hollywood Cinema: Lean for ‘The English Patient’ and now, in this gleefully enigmatic Hitchcockian thriller, he out-chills the master of suspense with rivers of desire, desperation, and lies ensconced within lies creating a bewildering mirage where nothing is what it seems and mixed realities create a bewildering cloud of fallacy and deception.

Video

Gorgeous. Obviously. Taking the production to post-war Italy may have been shooting Hell for Minghella and Co., but we get to reap the benefits with magnificently elegant photography and a suitably vivid transfer. Just watch how the sparkling, organic colour and golden beauty of Mongibello become a cold, desolate landscape of concealing shadows and gloomy, distorted images within the murky caverns of Venice. Its anamorphic too, so those of you with widescreen TVs are in for a treat.

Audio

Pretty indelible. The glowing jazz/classical score takes the breath away, and the inventive use of over-lapping sounds and dialogue as a means of filmic grammar is brilliantly complemented.

Features

Admirable, if unimaginative. There’s a fascinating commentary track from the always erudite Minghella whose fascination with Ripley’s ambiguity and lack of obvious motivation drives the proceedings. Thankfully, Minghella focuses on the themes and content of the film itself rather than the tedious naval gazing of less confident commentary tracks. There are three features: the first, an interview gallery featuring all the lead actors revealing their favorite scenes and insights into their characters. The second is a more traditional promotional featurette which features behind the scenes footage plus interviews. The third feature is dedicated to the painstaking creation of the film’s evocative score, with which Minghella and composer Gabriel Yared express obvious enthusiasm. There are a couple of trailers, the high-octane thrilleramics of the Yank theatrical and the far more effective, bare-knuckle bite of the teaser. There are also a couple of relatively sedate music promos, and a rather uninspired menu that seems to have bizarrely borrowed the font from ‘The Bone Collector’. The only real disappointment is the lack of any deleted scenes, since its obvious to those keeping a sharp eye on the trailer and production featurettes that the film has been severely trimmed.

Conclusion

Essentially a story of the allure of wealth and the blurring of personal-identity becoming hopelessly intertwined; Matt Damon stars are Tom Ripley, a man at a loss with himself. A chance meeting with a billionaire industrialist, Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn) who, thanks to a borrowed Princeton University blazer, assumes Damon is an acquaintance of his laconic, playboy son Dickie (Jude Law) who lives a life of exuberant, hedonistic indulgence in a quaint Italian paradise with his homely trophy fiancé Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). So, in an attempt to lure his wayward son back on track, Greenleaf sends Tom on a diplomatic mission to convince Dickie to see sense. However, as soon as Tom’s newfound pleasure develops into an unpleasant obsession with this erotic, mysterious landscape, nothing will stand in his way.

The plot is too complex and delicious to spoil in another one of my tedious synopses, so I won’t. Lest to say that it grows, exponentially in its ferocious, playful force and queasy, even moving moral tenacity. So, peerless plotting: every breath of optimism is savagely met with a complementary smack-down in the next breath, lending the film a palpable karmic menace. Sensual cinematography: post-war Italy has never looked so potently ambivalent: glistening, shadowy, itself mimicking and contrasting the anomalous, subjective tone. Take notice of Minghella’s use of set as a thematic tool: Ripley watches a haunting production of ‘Onegin’; the production design is decked out with baroque, mutilated statues (echoing Ripley’s willful evisceration of self.) However, Minghella knows savage humor when he sees it (Ripley even dispatches one victim with a marble bust of Hadrian), and Sergio Rubini appears in a small role as a slyly Clouseau-esque Venetian investigator.

As Ripley, Damon gives what may be the performance of his life: subtle, layered, menacing, sympathetic, churlish, unsettling. If anything he’s only bettered by Minghella, whose shrewd, accomplished direction has never been more playful, rife with sharp wit and gut-wrenching suspense. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow also impress as amorous, pithy gigolo and his shivery, clandestine ‘50s house-bride respectively. From an incredibly eclectic cast, best support comes from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s giddy, flamboyantly manipulative Freddie Miles and Cate Blanchett’s fickle, romantic ‘dear-diary’ bourgeois self-loather Meredith Logue. A brilliant, compulsive and engrossing film, with an utterly spine-chilling ending that will make your blood curdle. Almost faultless.