Villain as victim

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By Lawrence Toppman
The Charlotte Observer
Published: December 24, 1999


I don't mind terribly that "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is full of
unnecessary incidents and awkward coincidences, that it's ploddingly
directed, indifferently acted and insufficiently frightening.

I do mind that it's dishonest. Writer-director Anthony Minghella
supposedly wanted to adapt an unsettling novel that he (and I) esteem,
one that had been filmed with an altered, phony ending 40 years ago as
"Purple Noon." Then he betrayed it himself.

The title character of Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley"
is talented in all the wrong ways: cruel, calculating, committing
petty crimes for his own amusement. He lies about everything, then
graduates to wholesale villainy by plotting the murder of a man whose
death will give him access to the good life Fate has denied him. We
can admire his brilliant deviousness while being horrified by his
amorality.

That would never do for a Hollywood movie starring clean-cut Matt
Damon. So Tom Ripley becomes a victim himself: unable to admit his own
homosexual impulses, pitiable in his pursuit of material things,
killing out of fear of abandonment and humiliation.

He commits the first murder almost literally in self-defense, and a
hotel clerk inadvertently suggests the idea of impersonating the dead
man. Minghella asks us to pity Tom, a dramatic mistake, and reaches an
ambiguous ending only slightly more satisfying than the one in "Purple
Noon."

The outlines of Minghella's story are the same as Highsmith's. A
shipbuilder named Greenleaf asks Tom (Damon) to go to Europe and
convince his wayward son to come home and join the family business.
(Even this episode springs from an honest mistake: Tom wore a friend's
Princeton blazer to play piano at a party, and Greenleaf assumed Tom
and his son were university mates.)

Tom goes to the Italian town where Dickie Greenleaf is spending his
lavish allowance. Dickie (arrogantly attractive Jude Law) claims to
be in love with Marge Sherwood (bland Gwyneth Paltrow), a would-be
novelist. Tom worms his way into their confidence and into Dickie's
house, where he develops a crush on his host. He foresees a future
of la dolce vita, but Dickie eventually tires of Tom's mooching and
subdued romantic advances.

Tom can't bear the thought of being sent back to poverty in New York,
but he can't make up his mind what to do until Dickie vents all his
bile and disgust on a sailing expedition. Tom strikes back -
literally, to his own surprise - and must find a way to cover his
tracks and assume Dickie's identity.

Some performances are spot-on: Jack Davenport is ideal as a tender
British composer who represents Tom's likeliest chance for love, and
Australian actress Cate Blanchett manages not only an American accent
but the indifference to money that only very rich people display.
(Both characters were invented for the film and help drag it out to
145 minutes.) Fey Philip Seymour Hoffman is laughably miscast as
Freddie, an allegedly butch friend of Dickie's.

Damon seems occasionally right, occasionally wrong. He tries to
convey the desperate longing of an outsider just by staring fixedly
at the objects of his desires, and he delivers some of Tom's lies too
clumsily. On the other hand, his boyishness helps him get away with a
lot; he has the goodwill of the audience, who can hardly believe this
earnest fellow would commit such felonies.

Minghella doesn't help his actors enough by tightening the screws of
tension. The movie ambles along at a relaxed pace, taking time for
trivialities. I wonder whether this picture or "The English Patient,"
which won him a deserved directing Oscar, represents the real
filmmaker. Either way, be warned: If you thought "English" was
overlong, you'll really need patience for this one.