The Terrible Loneliness of The Talented Mr. Ripley

Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, John Malkovich, Andrew Scott: Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, star of her five Ripliad books, has had many faces on screen. What lies beneath that shifting surface, however, tends to be much the same—the same arrogance, venom, emptiness. Writer/director Steven Zaillian’s new limited series Ripley is almost a slow cinema interpretation of Highsmith’s first Ripley novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, but it again presents the shapeshifting con man as a manipulative and pitiless criminal, in the vein of all Ripliad adaptations.
All, that is, except for one.
In Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, which turns 25 this year, Tom Ripley goes on more or less the same journey as he does in Zaillian’s show: Hired by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf to convince his playboy son Dickie (Jude Law) to return home to New York, Tom (Matt Damon) tracks Dickie down to Italy’s Amalfi Coast and quickly becomes infatuated with his life there. Though Tom and Dickie initially enjoy a close friendship, after Dickie severs ties with the increasingly possessive Tom, Tom murders Dickie, hides the body and assumes his identity. Beginning a new life of luxurious liberty in Rome as Dickie, Tom soon finds the law—and Dickie’s girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow)—catching up.
Though the plot remains largely unchanged, where the 1999 film differs from Ripley is in the lengths it goes to to try to make this story more palatable. The late Minghella was a romantic filmmaker, who couldn’t help but make The Talented Mr. Ripley’s 1950s Italy look like the most glamorous place on earth. The director also made the choice to humanize his Ripley, having his more sociopathic behavior seem understandable, even relatable. Bringing a wide-eyed Boy Scout quality to the slippery Tom by casting the inherently pleasant Matt Damon, Minghella also subtly recalibrates Highsmith’s story in his screenplay, so it becomes not simply callousness or class envy that motivates his Ripley, but a terrible loneliness.
Where other screen Ripleys have seemed somewhat content to be loners, assured of their superiority over meager mortals, Minghella’s Ripley wants desperately to belong. And where other Ripleys have been characterized by an absence of feeling, Minghella’s Ripley almost feels too much. Any introvert who has experienced the sinking feeling of fading into the background as less inhibited types have commanded a room’s attention will feel it through Minghella’s Ripley, pushed aside whenever the force that is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s louche Freddie Miles enters the picture.
During Tom’s lone sojourn through Rome after Dickie drops him for a day of fun with Freddie, he appears insignificant amidst the beautiful, empty ruins, at one point staring blankly up from the foot of an enormous statue—a man dwarfed by giants. Meanwhile, the lonely wail of a saxophone rings out, as it does throughout the film. This is, along with Chet Baker’s achingly delicate “My Funny Valentine,” a recurring theme for Tom, a new jazz convert whose interest in the music probably doesn’t go far beyond how much it seems to make Dickie like him.
Where Highsmith’s Ripley may not have sexual urges at all—the author herself didn’t think Ripley was gay, while the character in her pages can seem interested in sex only insofar as it advances his plans—Minghella’s Ripley unambiguously wants. Though ill at ease with his sexuality (see the scene where Dickie sneeringly discovers Tom dancing flamboyantly around his apartment, ending with Tom begging Dickie not to tell anyone), Tom is an evidently queer man. He aches to be close to Dickie, holding him so tight during a scooter ride that he crushes his ribs, or asking to climb into the bath with him while they play a game of late-night chess together.