The Talented Mr. Ripley

To be young and carefree amid the blue waters and idyllic landscape of sun-drenched Italy in the late 1950s; that's la dolce vita Tom Ripley craves - and Dickie Greenleaf leads. When Dickie's father, a wealthy ship builder, asks Tom to bring his errant playboy son back home to America, Dickie and his beautiful expatriate girlfriend, Marge Sherwood, never suspect the dangerous extremes to which Ripley will go to make their lifestyle his own. After all, it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.

One of the most underrated Oscar nominated flicks from Anthony Minghella. A star-studded flick in the peak of re-visualized vintage glamour in the nobly decayed crime dimensions of writer Patricia Highsmith's. A story about one of the most capitivating homocidal killers in cinema or suspense novel history: Tom Ripley, who adores the rich handsome Dickie Greenleaf who is a man born with a silver spoon, a man who owns nearly everything he longs for. Then chameleon Ripley transforms into a leech who dries out Dickie's life, also a vulture who devours Dickie's left-over, horridly a crab-alike parasite who deprives Dickie's identify....he's pathologically complicated with all the smolderingly torments beneath his boyish somehow bookish spectackles: repressed sexuality which comes across as intrusive lust for Dickie Greenleaf, the obliteration of struggled low self-esteem, the merciless detachment to slice out his human pathos just to pull off the scheme of self-protection.....eventually he needs to latch all the demons inside the basement of his dim inner corner, and its key tends to be lost for good without the thrusted trust to anyone as the last scene in the movie refers....

"it's better to be a fake somebody instead of a real nobody"....all the symbolism seems to be obvious such as Ripley smothers his intimate pal to death that is to smit the last sense of his remained humanity. and the beat trend jazz dickie is so enamour of stands for his frivolous lifestyle....all the essential classic songs selected in the soundtrack that is a bit too catchy...generally the whole movie is catchy such as its theme, its good-looking cast, its plot hints, its blatantly voyeuristic sensuality (such as Ripley peeps Dickie's nude in the bathtub) ... etc. nothing too mystically hideous, considering its comtemporariness.

It was also Jude Law's crucial chance to contribute to his overnight success as the main sex subject in this movie. There's something worth tackling about his Dickie Greenleaf who is a man of whimsical playfulness, a well-to-do self-dubbed beat bohemian who is enslaved by the ecstaticly tumultous jazz, suffering from the eternal fued of lacking any significant paternal recognition that makes him waywardly linger over his elongated adolescence with an undercurent maternal fixation (which reflects on his choice of women ... always someone tolerantly appreciates his boyish naivete) but clansdetinely traumatized with such un-retrieved loss of identification, also a man assumingly sheltered from his social status and enormous wealth that prevents him from fledging into maturity, but who wants to grow anyway? Growing up takes grim hardship, naturally Dickie becomes the envious center for everyone since he has wealth, looks, youth and he's damned popular with ladies.

Gwyneth Paltrow is adequate as Dickie's demure love interest but Cate Blanchet's loverstrick beguiled socialette is more sympatheticly riveting as Ripley's attempted prey of seduction. Philip Seymour gives amusingly tricky performance as the sleazy friend of Dickie's who intuitively detects Ripley's orientation.

The talented Mr. Ripley might be even more engrossing without those straight-down-toward-the-arrow catchiness, but in a way, it's subtly made evaluated in its time. the photographic sceneries are idyllically cozy, the blistening sun scatters everywhere, tastefully shot as minghella's works usually are.


The Talented Mr. Ripley is a must see film! It's a cinematic genius and a total perfection! Anthony Minghella was one of best directors and film makers of our time!
Tom Ripley wants to reveal his darkest secrets to Peter, the men share a loving bond, but he just can't afford to reveal anything, he is completely stuck in his darkness alone. The dialogue is a brilliant metaphor. The piano piece is from Antonio Vivaldi's "Stabat Mater".
.