Trust Ripley

For the past couple months, Criterion has had a playlist featuring movies with Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith's con artist character who appeared in a series of novels. I watched 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley last night, based on the first novel from 1955, which had already been adapted as Purple Noon with Alain Delon in 1960. The primary distinction of the 1999 version is that it makes the story's subtextual homoeroticism textual. It has kind of a "straightening out the slinky" effect, rendering the story less nuanced and making the character of Tom Ripley much simpler. It does have some terrific performances.

The film basically renders Tom's compulsion to become another man as entirely a symptom of sexual attraction, which is frankly less interesting than a guy who wants to swap places with another. But Matt Damon as Ripley and Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, the man whose life Ripley infiltrates, have fascinating chemistry and there's a lot of tension in scenes where Dickie is trying to suss out Ripley's true motives while also wrestling with his own hedonistic proclivities. Ripley's compulsion rendered as simply a sexual infatuation feels a little too commonplace to be the film's centrepiece, though. I have to say Purple Noon also had better clothes and was better shot. The murder of Freddie, Dickie's friend, was far more effective in Purple Noon, though I was impressed with how gory another murder was in the 1999 movie.

What a cast. Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. This was director Anthony Minghella spending the clout he'd attained from making The English Patient, a movie I was a fan of in high school and the reason I saw his Talented Mr. Ripley and even bought the soundtrack back in 1999. But I guess the movie didn't impress me so much because I didn't watch it again until this past week, I think. I'd kind of forgotten how much I'd loved that soundtrack, though. I think it's what ignited my love for jazz with its inclusion of tracks from Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. I also totally forgot that it has a really beautiful Sinead O'Connor track called "Lullaby for Cain".

X Sonnet 1956

The animal you know is never real.
A phantom fur enshrouds the happy beast.
You see, he takes from cans the chunky meal.
But ever plots to take a better feast.
The friendly pup will watch your wobbly arm.
Your trusted friend dissects your meaty thigh.
So far from thought that Fido ponders harm.
Within his very jaws you mayn't cry.
His seeming size belies a mountain ghost.
The infiltrator damned the friendly house.
You play the gentle human, gracious host.
He eyes tomato stains upon your blouse.
No safety here in friendly furry eyes.
Your mascot suit will choke your startled cries.