The Multiple Mr. Ripleys

Cold criminal vs. lovesick sadboy vs. stylish schemer vs. whatever that Netflix version was

I’ve been doing a re-reading/re-watching of The Talented Mr. Ripley family¹ (please don’t make me say “franchise”), taking my vicarious Italian summer from Venice² to Mongibello and Rome. Italy’s never been that high on my travel list, but this early NYC heatwave is making me want to pretend that the sweltering sidewalk humidity is actually from the golden Neapolitan sun, Piero Piccioni’s soundtrack for C’era Una Volta playing in the background. I even first wrote this piece on my typewriter, pretending I’m Tom or Dickie on theirs (Olivettis in the movies, an Hermes in the novel).

Reading the Patricia Highsmith novel and also watching The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Purple Noon is a fascinating endeavour because the movies are both significantly different interpretations of their source material. Yet all three works to come together to form one multi-facted whole. Like many, my favourite is the Anthony Minghella version from 1999, which admittedly changes Ripley into essentially a new character. In the novel, he’s a veteran con man who’s used to having to constantly look over his shoulder; the story begins with him convinced that he’s finally going to get busted for his many fraudulent schemes, only to discover that his follower is actually Mr. Greenleaf, father of Dickie, a young man he vaguely knows of through his own NYC friends. But in the 1999 movie, Tom is more of a gig worker: piano player, bathroom attendant, and probably some other unseen lowly paid jobs. His initial run-in with Mr. Greenleaf doesn’t happen in a bar, but at a penthouse recital, where Tom is accompanying his opera singer friend on the piano. Innocently, he’s borrowed a jacket with the Princeton crest on it, which leads Mr. Greenleaf to believe Tom is a college friend of Dickie’s. Tom plays along and soon, he finds himself in Mongibello on a Saving Playboy Dickie mission.

There’s one scene in the 1999 movie that stuck with me on my recent rewatch, a scene that I’d forgotten about. It’s when Tom first steps foot in Italy and has a random encounter with Meredith Logue (Cate Blanchett). At this point, he’s still good-boy Tom, yet he introduces himself to her as Dickie Greenleaf. This proves to be a most fatal mistake, because unbeknownst to him, Meredith is an heiress and runs in the same elite social circle as Dickie. Thus, Tom is trapped into being Dickie to her forever, at least so long as one of them is still alive. Had he not done this, the fact that he runs into her again on the ferry to Greece, when he’s almost gotten away with it all, wouldn’t have mattered that much.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999): When Tom met Meredith

I’ve thought about whether this is a contrived plot point (especially since Meredith is not in the novel), of which the movie admittedly has a few For instance, I understand the past was primitive, but did none of Dickie’s friends and family care to show the police a detailed photo of him so that no matter how Tom dressed or did his hair like Dickie, nobody could possibly mix up the two of them? But Tom’s slip-up makes sense in context when you consider that he is experiencing the thrill of leaving behind Tom-in-America for the first time, a self he’s loathed for so long. So when a beautiful stranger (and wow, is Cate Blanchett beautiful in this movie) approaches him, of course his instinct is to pass himself off as someone else, especially when he thinks there’ll be no consequences. If that is not his reflexive move, then the movie would end with him returning to NYC right after Dickie moves on from him, with Tom resigned to having had an extravagantly fun but ultimately bittersweet vacation in Italy.

It's not entirely fair to compare the 1999 movie to the novel since they are so different, but I do prefer the movie’s take on the story. The characters are brought to life more, especially someone like Marge. In the novel, she’s a dour figure who instantly competes with Tom for Dickie’s attention. She, like Tom, is an outsider, with Tom noting her Midwestern roots. Marge even resentfully accuses Tom of thinking she’s a “hick” (she’d probably be more offended that he thinks she has a “gourd-like” figure). She also tries to turn Dickie against Tom by suggesting Tom is gay, something that is hinted at but never stated outright; Tom becomes very disappointed in himself when he plays along with homophobia, he is also repulsed by Marge’s laundry displays of her lingerie, and he breaks down in tears at what might’ve been had he not murdered Dickie and they’d been able to spend their lives together (though as lovers or “brothers,” it’s unclear).

In contrast, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Marge is a warm figure, operating as the conscience of the movie. She is welcoming to Tom, apparently finding some sweetness in his awkwardness and obvious lower-classness. In her most compassionate scene, she notices how sullen Tom has become ever since Freddie Miles (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) has shown up, and she opens up to Tom about how this is just the way it is with Dickie, including herself: “The thing with Dickie... it's like the sun shines on you, and it's glorious. And then he forgets you and it's very, very cold.” It’s an extremely generous gesture since she could’ve been smug (and delusional) in acting as if Dickie never does to her what he’s doing to Tom. Some get a sadistic pleasure in knowing that there’s at least one person who’s worse off than they are.

All this makes her ending all the more tragic. Her final scene is of her wailing with anger and helplessness as nobody will believe what she knows but cannot prove, that Tom murdered Dickie. As the audience, we fear that she will soon descend into madness as a result, though once Meredith inevitably tells everyone that she miraculously saw Dickie on a ferry to Greece, maybe more people will re-evaluate Marge’s theory of the case.

Still, is this Marge a blue-blooded saint? Why did Marge invite Tom to lunch in the first place after Tom’s first fake-spontaneous encounter with them on the beach? Was it to make Dickie jealous, since she knows of the other women he’s seeing on the side? It’s not accurate to call her a Daisy Buchanan figure since the movie makes it very clear that Tom has no interest in women romantically. But it’s also possible that, like Dickie, Marge was also using Tom for his temporary usefulness and while she may have kept him around longer than Dickie does, she too would eventually shoo him away to go back to where he belongs.

But as excellent as Marge is as a character, the movie lives and dies by its portrayal of the Tom-Dickie relationship. In retrospect, some may see the movie’s emphasis on Tom’s unrequited love for Dickie as an overly simplistic tragic-homosexual narrative. The part where Tom is snuggling with Dickie’s corpse in the motorboat did make me wonder whether parts of the movie veered a bit into camp. But Jude Law’s magnetic portrayal of Dickie and the world he inhabits is so critical to understanding why Tom and the audience would be so drawn to all that, even murderously so.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999): Tom, Dickie, and Marge

Even from a platonic angle, Tom’s obsession with Dickie is tantalizing. In contemporary literature, the subject of intense female friendships, especially from the perspective of the less charismatic one, has become in vogue. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and Marlena by Julie Buntin are two examples that come to mind. But the same thing happens with guys too. Think of George Costanza and his infatuation with Tony.³

I recently listened to the Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast⁴ where they discussed how in youth sports, girls are more likely to enforce equal treatment of all players (for the sake of social cohesion) whereas boys are more likely to defer to the stars (for the sake of maximizing victories). If this is true, then a Tom catering to a Dickie makes sense and would be a common occurrence.

If the 1999 movie Tom is a lovesick boy, then the novel Tom is a cynical man with a diabolical and withering inner monologue at times. In that movie, Tom comes to hate Freddie because of Freddie’s undisguised condescension towards him. Tom is not at their level and Freddie makes sure Tom is reminded at every turn. We sympathize with Tom because we’ve all had our own personal Freddies. But novel Tom is more of the aggressor against Freddie, whom he instantly dislikes because of much shallower reasons (novel Freddie is more of a nuisance than tormentor):               

The American’s name was Freddie Miles. Tom thought he was hideous. Tom hated red hair, especially this kind of carrot-red hair with white skin and freckles. Freddie had large red-brown eyes that seemed to wobble in his head as if he were cockeyed, or perhaps he was only one of those people who never looked at anyone they were talking to. He was also overweight.

Towards the end of the novel, Tom blithely evaluates the value of Marge’s life:

Marge was an asset rather than a liability. It was really a very good thing that he had put down his shoe that night that she had found the rings.

That “shoe” is in reference to the would-be murder weapon he would’ve used to kill her had she questioned him too closely on why he had Dickie’s rings. But she interpreted this as evidence Dickie intended and has committed suicide, which helps to persuade Mr. Greenleaf that Dickie is dead. ‘What a net benefit for me that I didn’t bash her skull in,’ thinks Tom.

There’s been a trend of trying to humanize villains, often clumsily done by uploading some trauma backstory that inevitably makes the villains far less interesting and cool. If the 1999 movie were made today, would many of us accuse it of turning Tom the cold criminal into the boy who just needed love? There’s a scene in that movie where Tom is celebrating Christmas in Rome by himself. He is finally able to buy all the luxury goods he’s yearned for. But it’s a terribly sad scene and we feel no glee emanating from Tom as he sips expensive champagne by the fireplace. We see him both missing and resenting Dickie whose final words to him were those of disgust and hatred. Tom will never be able to forget that.

However, in the book, right when Tom believes the Italian police are finally going to stop questioning him about Dickie’s disappearance:

Tonight, he was going to have a dinner. And look out at the moonlight on the Grand Canal. And watch the gondolas drifting as lazily as they ever drifted for any honeymooner, with the gondoliers and their oars silhouetted against the moonlit water. He was suddenly ravenous. He was going to have something luscious and expensive to eat—whatever the Grand Hotel’s specialty was, breast of pheasant or petto di pollo, and perhaps cannelloni to begin with, creamy sauce over delicate pasta and a good valpolicella to sip while he dreamed about his future and planned where he went from here.

If you want that kind of Tom, then Purple Noon is a better bet than the 1999 movie. Years ago, I must’ve watched Purple Noon before reading Highsmith’s novel because I remember being surprised at how Tom’s attitude towards Dickie (renamed to Philippe in Purple Noon) was less “Why can’t you love me?” and more “Nice clothes. Maybe I’ll kill you for them.” Gone is Matt Damon’s wallflowery everyman and enter Alain Delon’s stylish schemer who’s more like the sophisticated rogues of mid-century Western cinema (e.g. Peter O’Toole’s Simon Dermott in How To Steal a Million or David Niven’s Sir Charles Lytton in The Pink Panther), but with a smaller conscience.

In the 1999 movie, we are drawn to Dickie, but in Purple Noon, there is no way Philippe outshines Tom in the eyes of the audience. They are also portrayed more as social equals, as evident in the fact that Tom is even more bronzed than Philippe. In both the novel and the 1999 movie, Tom’s embarrassing paleness is highlighted. Philippe and Tom even reminisce over childhood memories, though Philippe does say to Marge that Tom has made all that up (but if so, why does Philippe play along?).

Purple Noon’s Tom is primarily motivated by material desires, with the seeds of his actions becoming planted when Philippe reneges on (pretending to) return to America, consequently denying Tom his $5000 reward from Philippe’s father. Tom’s crowning moment of happiness in Purple Noon is not when he believes he’s finally found his soulmate to whom he can give his figurative keys to his basement, but when he believes he’s inherited Dickie’s estate via Marge, whom he seduces. As alluring as Marie Laforêt’s Marge is, we never believe Tom actually cares much for her except as a means to his financial end.

Purple Noon: Tom and Marge

For a more faithful adaptation, the recent Netflix limited series Ripley offers that option. But among its many faults, it’s too textually glued to its source. The first episode spends too much time going through Tom’s fraudulent routines that don’t add anything to the story. Some have praised the show for its slow burn, but in this era of streaming bloat and lack of edit discipline, that’s just a nice way of saying the show is boring and energy-free: You’ll love Ripley. It’s got such a nice personality!

I really did try to go in with an open mind, knowing that its famous predecessors had their own idiosyncratic takes on the novel and that I shouldn’t let them prejudice me. I could even appreciate the move to black-and-white, which was likely a self-conscious 180-degree turn from the sunny visuals of those aforementioned famous predecessors. But I couldn’t last more than 1.5 episodes. In addition to the terrible pacing, the casting and chemistry were all off. The fact that Andrew Scott is almost 50 yet playing Tom might’ve been less of a factor if he and Johnny Flynn’s Dickie had any spark to their relationship. But watching Dickie talk to Tom was like watching someone trying to talk to a future school shooter. Yes, we know Tom is supposed to be insane, but we also need to believe he’s capable of ingratiating himself into strangers’ inner circles and talk his way out of police investigations.

The vastly different endings of the novel, the 1999 movie, and Purple Noon are also noteworthy. In both of the movies, Tom gets caught; or rather, in Purple Noon, he definitely does, while in the 1999 movie, he almost certainly does. In contrast, the novel has him getting away with it, albeit with an unshakeable sense of eternal paranoia. In her review of Ripley, Constance Grady of Vox called it the epitome of “striver gothic,” defined as “the stories of pretenders striving to make it among the careless and idle wealthy, even if they have to kill to do so” (the piece cites other examples like the movie Saltburn and Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History).⁵ The public may love striver gothic, but only if most of the time, the rulebreakers ultimately fail in the end, lest their success make a mockery out of all of us conventional strivers: it’s cute and fun to watch Leonardo DiCaprio’s Frank Abagnale con his way to the top, but the morality tale dictates that he must inevitably team up with Tom Hanks and turn into an FBI asset.

That’s why I find the 1999 movie’s ending to be hauntingly ideal because it’s not that bound to the idea of whether Tom gets away with everything or not. As I said, it’s quite likely he doesn’t, either because the police discover he’s murdered Peter Smith-Kingsley on the ferry, or Meredith blabs to everyone that she’s seen the supposedly suicided Dickie in real life, thus leading Tom’s lies to quickly unravel. Or maybe he does, even in cartoonishly unrealistic fashion, end up evading justice once again. In that final shot, though, all we know and care about is that Tom has murdered someone he loved and who loved him.

1. I should also check out Ripley’s Game (2002) and The American Friend (1977), not to mention the other novels in the series, but that’s for another day

2. An Anti-Summer Guy’s Pro-Summer Turn

3. George & Kramer Go Climbing With Tony | The Stall | Seinfeld

4.

Louise Perry

’s Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast ep. 73 (Mean Girls ft. Tracy Vaillancourt)

5. The Talented Mr. Ripley is a perfect striver gothic. The Netflix adaptation is lifeless. | Vox