'Talented Mr. Ripley' rings true in seductive take on ethical issues

http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/movies/ripq.shtml

Friday, December 24, 1999
By PAULA NECHAK
SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER


"The Talented Mr. Ripley" is a seductive, sly work from Oscar-winning
director Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient").

It throws us into a hedonistic, gorgeous world where anything goes
and then asks us to gauge what is right and wrong when things go
awry -- which they do with alarming frequency.

Novelist Patricia Highsmith created Tom Ripley, a charming,
chameleonlike sociopath, and made him the unlikely central character
of a series of crime thrillers beginning with "The Talented Mr.
Ripley" in the late 1950s.

Director Rene Clement turned the story into a brilliant, perversely
chilly 1960 classic film, "Purple Noon," which starred French film
idol Alain Delon.

Minghella's version, which invites critical comparison to Clement's
film, has its own charms. It is warmer, contains a less cut-and-dried
sense of accountability, has a powerfully ambiguous ending and is a
certifiable guilty pleasure.

There is something morbidly fascinating about the idea of a poor
young man without any sense of self or identity who is paid to bring
home the rich, perfect son of a New York shipping magnate, then goes
to any extreme to take on someone else's persona because, after all,
it's "better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody."

Minghella creates an elusive, golden, idyllic and head-spinning world
that Ripley, played with leechlike vulnerabilty and drooling desire
by Matt Damon, can barely fathom. After he's dispatched to remove
Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) from the hedonistic ways he's adopted in
a lush, ripe 1958 Italy, Tom is as much seduced by the lifestyle as
he is by the man.

Only one thing stands in the way of his taking over Dickie completely:
Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow), Dickie's equally glowing and
absolutely understanding writer/fianc嶪, who at first embraces Tom and
then repels him after she sees through his facade.

And once Dickie mysteriously disappears, Tom becomes strangely
omnipresent, warding off friends, family and police in a masquerade
that ends in a prison of his own making. It's a far different slant
than the one taken by Clement, but it rings more frightening and true
in this age of random acts of violence -- and it adheres to Highsmith's
own vision.

Better yet, Minghella has cast each of his actors -- save Law, who
should finally take on real movie star status with this show-stealing
turn as Dickie -- against type. He has allowed each, including Oscar
winners and nominees Paltrow, Damon and Cate Blanchett, to tackle
complex character roles. As a result, they bring depth and humanity to
their roles of people desperate to reinvent themselves.

"The Talented Mr. Ripley" runs the risk of being interpreted as a too
accepting view of libidinous behavior or as a gay serial-killer film.
While its ambiguity is certainly the beauty and crux of the story --
told against a backdrop of filtered, exquisite light and Italy's
crumbling, historical architecture -- the film is really about
ethical issues.

It demands people pay attention and look inward to find the private
compass that will navigate us through murky sensibilities that are
as capable of seducing us as they are Tom Ripley. And in an era when
movies tell us everything in the first 10 minutes, that's the beauty
and point of Minghella's seductive and entertaining moral barometer of
a movie.


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