Unlike Highsmith’s Ripley, Anthony Minghella’s Ripley evokes pathos resembling a tragic hero
Adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” follows the same plot, charting the journey of a con artist turning into a criminal driven by his desires. Minghella’s film opens with the conjoining of fragmented images of a close-up shot of Ripley’s culpable face, accompanied by his utterance, “If I could just go back. If I could rub everything out, starting with myself, starting with borrowing a jacket.”
Immediately, through a jump cut, we are taken to the next scene in 1958 where Ripley is playing the piano wearing a borrowed Princeton jacket from the Class of 1956. Anthony skillfully designs his opening credits using different colours such as blue, yellow, brown, green, and red, which acted as a metaphor for the various shades embedded in Ripley’s character. This is also evident in the title of the film, which keeps jumbling between words such as lonely, passionate, confused, sensitive, musical, and finally settled on talented, which pretty much sums up Ripley’s finesse in impersonation.
Meanwhile, Ripley’s jacket catches the eye of shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf, whose estranged son Dickie Greenleaf is of the same batch. Dickie is a jazz enthusiast who settled in Italy. He is a philanderer, squandering away his father’s wealth with his American girlfriend, Marge Sherwood. Greenleaf persuades Ripley to bring his son back to the US, offering him to pay a thousand dollars for the work.
The thirsty Ripley, who is struggling to make a living in New York City, readily accepts Greenleaf’s offer and travels to Mongibello, where he successfully befriends Dickie and his girlfriend Marge. The movie then follows the same narrative as the novel; however, the significant difference lies in the boat sequence at San Remo. Highsmith’s Ripley hatches the plan of murdering Dickie when he realizes that Dickie is bored of him and wants to get rid of him. While Minghella’s Ripley kills Dickie impulsively out of a heated argument over their hidden feelings towards each other.
Both in the novel and the movie it’s never explicitly shown or stated that Dickie may be a bisexual and Ripley may be homosexual. However, it can be deduced through certain gestures and scenes such as Ripley’s aversion towards Dickie’s wealthy school friend Freddie Miles (which can be seen as an anticipation of his murder by Ripley) with whom Dickie may have been sexually involved, Dickie leaving Ripley alone to spend some quality time with Freddie in private during their short trip to Rome, the bathtub scene where both Ripley and Dickie are playing chess. In the bathtub scene, Dickie is having a bath and when Ripley insists to join him, his initial stare at Ripley followed by his negative response proves his desperate attempt to conceal something. And lastly, Ripley’s fuming jealousy on hearing that Dickie will eventually marry Marge which leads him to the vicious cycle of crime.
Soon after Dickie’s murder, Ripley takes on Dickie’s identity and starts living a double life, creating the illusion that Dickie is still alive. However, ironically, he himself lives an illusory life, forging letters to Marge, convincing her that Dickie left her and moved to Rome, changing hotels, and living a luxurious life, which he always secretly dreamt of living. This gives rise to a conflict in Ripley’s character, making us wonder if he really loved Dickie to the extent that he killed him after finding out he is planning his future with Marge like a deranged obsessive lover.
Or if he just wanted an excuse to kill Dickie so that he can impersonate him and live his life since in a previous scene we witnessed Ripley dressed in Dickie’s clothes dancing in front of the mirror, which disgusted Dickie. Thereby, we can conclude that maybe Ripley is too narcissistic to love anyone else.
Gradually, both Highsmith and Minghella’s Ripley enters into a cat-and-mouse game with the Italian police, but he manages to keep himself safe by restoring his own identity and moving to Venice, where he gets acquainted with Peter Smith-Kingsley, Marge’s friend. The narrative of both the novel and movie hereby follows the same track where Dickie’s father arrives in Italy with his private detective, Alvin McCarron, to investigate his son’s suicide, which seems unreal to him.
Upon discovering Dickie’s rings in Ripley’s apartment, though Marge is bent upon convicting Ripley guilty of Dickie’s murder, her suspicions are dismissed by Greenleaf. Rather, Greenleaf passes on a lavish sum of money from Dickie’s trust to Ripley to ensure his silence and unwavering loyalty so that his son’s past and present criminal records doesn’t taint his reputation.
The greater difference between Highsmith and Minghella’s Ripley lies in the fact that we feel nothing for Highsmith’s Ripley and rather condemn him for his unscrupulous actions, but Minghella’s Ripley evokes a sense of pathos in our hearts. Even though he is a criminal, we can understand that he is disturbed, confused, lonely, and definitely not of sound mental health. He needs help but is himself oblivious to the fact, which leads him to commit more crimes.
Minghella’s Ripley resembles a tragic hero whose hamartia lies in his vaulting desires, and those desires stem from his poverty and his hardships to earn a living. While Highsmith’s Ripley is happily rich in the end, though dogged by paranoia, Minghella’s Ripley undergoes a catharsis after murdering his friend and lover Peter, who happens to develop a suspicion for Ripley after he sees him kissing Meredith Logue (a rich heir of a textile company whom he tricked like others, making her believe that he was Dickie Greenleaf).
Ripley knows that Peter will soon unearth his deception since Peter and Meredith know each other and they are all travelling to Greece in the same liner. He therefore smothers Peter while simultaneously apologising for lying to him. This is such a delicately crafted scene that it made our hearts feel heavy. The film has a circular narrative, and in the end, we are again brought back to the close-up shot of Ripley in his cabin, alone, where he now probably has no more possible threats but is still constantly threatened by the guilt of his actions.
He has everything he ever wanted but nothing; unfortunately, he loses himself being too absorbed in his desires. He hates himself for the monster that he has become, and we therefore cannot hate but only pity him for ending up being a wealthy beggar with no one left to be there for him, to hold his hand, or to love him. To some extent, we feel it’s unfair to blame him; he is rather a victim of his circumstances, unbridled ambition, and predestination; however, he can have definitely done some things differently, exercising his free will, and that will have made all the difference.
Srilekha Mitra