In a sequence from Netflix’s Ripley, the eponymous character brings an Italian man into the house of a friend. This man, he assumes, is a man of art. He is told or rather smashed with the news that the stranger is instead a man of the Italian mafia. This revelation, however, isn’t painted as a genius sub-plot but as an earnest lapse of judgement on the part of a protagonist who though central, reflects a peculiar under-confidence. This Ripley is neither talented, nor charismatic. He is in fact, nervy, unremarkable and even a tad pitiable in the way he goes about his plans. Unlike the movie-length adaptation The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) in which Matt Damon essayed the titular role, Netflix’s Ripley adds mood, broody nihilism and a welcome steadiness. It’s slow but spectacularly seductive.
Andrew Scott plays Tom Ripley, a small-time conman, who seems to neither be ambitious nor particularly exceptional at conning. He lives in New York City out of a dank apartment where assorted breads could be stored for delivery. When he is summoned by shipping magnate Herbert to track his son Dickie (Johnny Flynn), somewhere along Italy’s Amalfi coast, Tom subtly leaps at the opportunity. His arrival in Europe is a decoloured sojourn punctuated by desaturated shadows, ancient but rigid architecture and some breathtaking scenery deliberately robbed of its many shades of colour. When the heart is dark, can any stretch of the green earth beam with light?
Shot entirely in black and white, this Netflix series stretches Patricia Highsmith’s popular literary creation into eight episodes. The plot proceeds as expected, but it is paced with the patience of a man graduating, as opposed to sprinting across the field of crime. Tom’s descent therefore begins with fascination, before going up the curb of envy and quietly unrolling into the gloom of secretive self-loathing. That last part though is the trickiest, because though Tom’s fantasies of a life he has never had, are easy to build, his unnoticeable shift towards sociopathy feels greyer and emotionally complex. The iconic murder scene on the boat therefore is given a lengthier encore, a sort of comic pinnacle to add to Tom’s several strokes of ineptitude.
Directed by Steven Zaillian, this particular revision of the popular character doesn’t afford him the animated rage of Damon’s portrayal. Scott is far more subdued and unsure of his choices and actions. Even his moments of rage are underlined by this sense of uncertainty. He never quite wins outright, with the threat of Marge played by the terrific Dakota Fanning and the investigative officers out to solve the mystery of Dickie’s life always looming. Scott’s performance is almost antithetical to Damon’s youthful, angst-ridden suburban climber. Instead, the former is far more restrained, a bit of a cultural washout, as a man in his mid-thirties who's neither good at anything nor willing enough to stay the course. This is at once, an essay-length analysis of a drifter who can’t secure a life but can’t help but be seduced by it either. Everything, even failure has to be achieved with all-consuming effort. In one scene he fires a house help, without even attempting to thwart suspicion. It’s fascinatingly clumsy.
This adaptation of Ripley might not be everyone’s cup of tea, because of its broody, laidback pace and its desaturated texture. It revels in the blankness of the Italian coast; a version of the country we simply aren’t used to watching. Much like Caravaggio’s unsettling realism (often mentioned in the show) this is a gothic, murderous reimagination of a blissful place. The lust for entitlement and bourgeois provisions isn’t merely a peephole into Tom Ripley’s fantasies, but his route to a place where he isn’t spoken down to or intimidated by the very conception of a future. This man, you can tell, doesn’t have vivid dreams. Even his own art reeks of insecurity. All he can really build is everything he can also instantly demolish.
The anti-hero isn’t a new quantity in cinema, but in terms of literary possibilities, he offers far more depth and meaning to the viewer. Scott, so accessibly desirable in roles that demand a peculiar gentleness gives, Ripley the middle-age calmness that we haven’t seen the character embody before. Not the kind of elocution that is built on prudence, but the kind that is grown on shifty shoulders unused by worldly commitments. When all of your life’s a lie, you either shout about its fraudulent extremes or dive unnoticeably deep into the shallowness as your, sort of, happy place. To which effect this version of Ripley looks the most comfortable when he maybe actually isn’t. A chameleon whose tongue is coyly, but also comfortably, hanging down the insides of his own throat.
Ripley is now streaming on Netflix.
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