Matt Damon and Jude Law inThe Talented Mr. RipleyParamount Pictures / Paramount Pictures
The big turn point ofThe gifted Mr. Ripleyis a brutal deed of wildness on the piddle — the second when scheme con man Tom Ripley claims the charmed life that he wants . But that ’s not exactly how the setting play out in the 2nd and still finest adaption of Patricia Highsmith ’s 1955 bestseller . Highsmith presented Tom ’s action at law as entirely calculated , even as they seemed to occur to him rather casually , like a result to a job he had n’t recognise . But there ’s no forethought to what happens on that boat in the 1999 motion picture made fromThe gifted Mr. Ripley . Here , a colored plot becomes a crime of heat , an impulse . We ’re watching a Ripley more warm- than stale - full-blooded , but no less dangerous for it .
You could call the film a warm - bloodedRipley , too . write and directed by the late Anthony Minghella , it transformed literature ’s most devious mountebank into a tragic figure — an approach that vexed some Highsmith heads in ’ 99 . ( An earlier adaptation , the 1960Purple Noon , swan Gallic movie star Alain Delon as a much more characteristically blank Ripley . ) Today , the film might galvanise a whole new generation of viewers , those whose only picture to this iconic character is Netflix ’s recentRipley . Thatblack - and - bloodless , eight - episode circumscribe seriesplays the same Sung in a much different key . It ’s the starkly reptilian yin to the sunny , tortured yang of Minghella ’s less reverentially faithful version .
The gifted Mr. Ripley , which hit theaters 25 year ago this month , now looks like one of the with child prestige productions of its tenner — a glary suspense thriller that deepens its source textile rather than merely reduplicate it . Minghella was come off the succeeder ofThe English Patient , another literary adaptation and period piece that won a bunch of Oscars ( let in Best Picture ) but also inspired a wholeSeinfeldepisode about how tedious it was . HisRipleyis just as lush — it drinks in the luxuriousness Tom covets , the magnificent splendour of mid - century , seaside Italy — and well more spanking . It also boasts a murderers ’ course of glamorous , Miramax - era awards darlings , including Gwyneth Paltrow , Cate Blanchett , Jude Law , and a hilariously cattish Philip Seymour Hoffman .
The setup is flat out of Highsmith : Two - bit New York fraud Tom Ripley ( Matt Damon ) is hired to go overseas and bring home erstwhile playboy Dickie Greenleaf ( Law ) , whose transport - mogul founding father confuses our anti - hoagie for a prep - school confidante of his irresponsible son . But for as close as Minghella hew to the basic shape of the original story , he also tweaks it in important way , including retelling it against the backdrop of a burgeon 1950s nothingness scene and elaborate Tom ’s eventual subterfuge — his juggling of two identities — through the introduction of a socialite ( Blanchett ) who confuses him for Dickie .
The most meaningful diversion is the characterization of Ripley , who does n’t much resemble the empty watercraft Highsmith described . As played by a young Matt Damon , the quality is destitute and perhaps more disturbingly human , an eager - to - please dweeb too besotted with Dickie ( and his life of leisure time ) to realize that he ’s fast outstay his welcome and lose his fickle young comrade ’s interest group . Damon , coming off his Oscar - make twist inGood Will Hunting , weaponizes his boyishness , planting a simmering rancour — and a pitiless intelligence — behind the puppy - dog insinuation . Turning Ripley into a clingy , lovelorn misfit is a sheer gamble , but the star pulls it off .
Tom ’s sex was something of a question mark in the Ripley novels . Highsmith shrugged it off in interviews . Like everything else about the grapheme , it seemed fluid , maybe arbitrary , discardable : If he pursued valet de chambre as well as women , it was as a creature of chance , recognizing any potential fulfilment of his appetency . Minghella clarifies the matter , turning queer subtext into textual matter by making Ripley explicitly closeted and self - execration . This version of the fictional character ache not just for Dickie ’s position and wealthiness and privilege but also for Dickie himself — and how could he not , with Law in the function , at the height of his charm , smarm , and sexuality solicitation ?
The choice lendsThe Talented Mr. Ripleya devastating novel emotional proportion , even before Minghella introduces a love interest ( Jack Davenport ) that Highsmith did n’t , a opportunity at real felicity that must be sacrificed — in a very literal sensory faculty — before Tom can complete his climb up the ravel . On the page , the saga of Tom Ripley is an amoral awakening : a tale of ego - realisation through violence and identity element theft , where pulling yourself up by the bootstraps think deplume someone else down under the waves . On the screenland , it becomes something sadder , a drama about the despairing loneliness of pretending to be someone or something you ’re not — of playing straight and rich , as this Ripley does .
It ’s Damon who move over Minghella ’s soulful reworking of a classic its , well , soul . He ’s never been better , or scarier : The shot where a bathrobed Tom go up the suspicious Marge ( Paltrow ) , mask threat as cloy concern , could make a corpse ’s tegument crawl . One might say that up mobility is the throughline of the star ’s whole career ; many of his most memorable roles , from Will Hunting to the mole gangster ofThe Departed , are working - class guy circle a course of study advancement . Perhaps that resonate with Damon and his mythologized backstory as an ordinary dude from Boston who made good . As Ripley , a nobody misrepresent his way into the lifetime of a somebody , the doer append unexampled complexity to a role commonly define by little more than his stale - eyed aspiration and fraudulence .
The ’ 99Ripleywon’t fulfill any stickler for faithfulness . The Netflix version come much closer to capturing the spirit of Highsmith ’s novel , both in the inclusion of subplots only a boob tube runtime could adapt and in the icier portrayal of the deed eccentric . ( Despite being in his mid-40s , Andrew Scott really apprehend the author ’s conception of a go - getter unburden by conscience . ) But Minghella and Damon knock a richer venous blood vessel of drama in the fabric by giving us a more sympathetic Ripley , one whose hurt feelings — the enviousness and feces and cutting pining that ram him — are more relatable than a non - murderous witness might give care to confess . In that esteem , the film gets at the lawful , discomforting appeal of this taradiddle : You gaze at Tom Ripley and recognize yourself in the black hole of his homicidal machinations .
