(Original Review, 1995)
I remember trying to follow a DVD of Mr. Ripley
one evening many years ago. I was at the time dazed by antibiotics and kept drifting
in and out of semi-consciousness, so I managed to catch only the odd isolated
scene with the angelic-looking cast, a golden trio swanking around a sunny,
shimmering lotion. Matt Damon looked like a bespectacled, goofy nerd who had
probably began his acting career in commercials playing the Milkybar Kid. Jude
Law was, well, just Jude Law, an arrogant, petulant brat. Gwyneth Paltrow was
at a stage in her career when she was still being given parts in films that at
least had the potential to be very good, though I never understood why so much
effort and money was invested in promoting her as she always has had only
mediocre acting talent and could never hope to become an actress of Cate
Blanchett's calibre. I see her as Sandra Dee in a remake of Greece, but only in
the early parts of the film, while Jude Law should be cast as Sebastian Flyte
in “Brideshead Revisited.” I must have missed Cate Blanchett altogether, but I
do remember that Philip Hoffman was there and reminded me of Roberto Leal (a blond
Portuguese singer). Is it any wonder then that even I in my semi-conscious
state detected a distinct sense of eeriness lurking beneath the glossy images?
They were all very blonde, blue-eyed and had these wide white smiles which
brought to my mind the close-ups of Jack Nicholson in the 'Here's Johnny' scene
in the “The Shining.”
After having read the omnibus with 4 volumes, a
few ad-hoc notes:
The movie is not entirely unfaithful to the first
volume book but doesn't making Ripley choke out his gay lover; it ultimately
ease Ripley back into the comfortable moral framework that Highsmith wants to
break out of? What profits it a man if he gains the world and loses himself? Well,
Ripley gains a country estate and a sexy wife and always gets away with it.
Occasionally, he feels bad about Dickie Greenleaf, usually before killing
someone else. On the other hand, Ripley
has been portrayed by John Malkovich (in Liliana Cavani's 'Ripley's Game') and
by Dennis Hopper (in Wim Wenders' 'Der Americanische Freund'), which are much
better films. I think it's also Tom's neediness- at least initially- which is
disarming. He really only wants a life with genuine friends and a little
comfort, but no-one in his life is prepared to make the emotional commitment to
him. He's surrounded by people who either use him or barely tolerate him. Of
course, he makes himself dependent upon them as well. Ripley's sexuality is
also an interesting part of the novel, I think. He initially takes Greenleaf
for "a pervert"- i.e., a man looking to proposition him- and
throughout the book recalls a number of previous situations where he has been
considered homosexual, though he doesn't actually appear to have a preference
for either sex. Though there is initially a hint that he is attracted to Dickie,
this gets quickly subverted; it's really the image of his future self which he
is in love with, as when he tries on Dickie's clothes. So, in a sense, Marge is
correct in her intuition, though she never connects the dots in realising that
Tom has actually absorbed Dickie in a predatory sense. "Sissy" didn't
have to mean homosexual - usually it just meant that in your case homosexuality
wasn't ruled out by your appearance or behaviour. It was a shame-inducing word
and it was far better to get beat up by the bully who called you one than to
stand there and take it - take it as Tom had to with Aunt Dottie because only
sissies hit girls. Whatever sissy did or didn't mean, if a fellow male called
you one and you didn't immediately hit him, he was proven right forever.
It is an interesting exercise in “alles zu
verstehen, alles zu vergeben” as a narrative mode. It's a compelling
hypothesis: if we could just get an accurate subjective sense of the state of
mind behind genuinely infamous behaviour, the sense of infamy would dissipate
into the commonplace, sending a burst of particles off into the ionosphere. How
long, you think, before somebody calls it noir?
