When She Believes

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March 21, 2006

Weekend

My funny valentine
Sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
Yet you're my favorite work of art


Is your figure less than greek
Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak, are you smart


But don't change you hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little valentine stay
Each day is valentine's
Each day is valentine's day


Everyone who has never seen the Talented Mr. Ripley should go out and get the DVD NOW! Anyways this sorta explains the song I have posted up. Mr. Ripley played by Matt Damon sings My Funny Valentine in the movie, and I think he does a great job, it sounds great. He sounds amateurish, but in a good way. K enough about the song. More about the movie.


So being that I worked for the most part of my Spring Break, I decided to just crash at home last weekend. The weekend before school officially started for me. I just moved so I have no cable and worst yet not internet connection, so what was there for me to do? It was definitely too cold to go out, so I stayed in bed and watched Talented Mr. Ripley for like the hundredth time. It is one of my all time favorite movies, everything about the movie is just amazing in my opinion. From the story itself, to the cast, to the beautiful italian scenes.


"If I could just go back, I'd rub everything out, beginning with myself."
On first hearing this voice-over at the beginning of Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley, you might think you're going to see a film about regret or guilt, or perhaps a refined kind of melancholy. But it's not long before you realize that for the speaker, Tom Ripley, such emotion — any emotion — is a performance. An ambitious sociopath, Ripley improvises his perpetual alienation against a stunning series of Italian backdrops, looking like the '50s, all splashed out and sun-blasted, in big-hearted technicolor (courtesy John Seale's ravishing cinematography): Venice, Rome, San Remo, Sicily. Unable to nail down a self, Tom instead plies his various talents, which he describes as "forging signatures, telling lies, imitating people."


The film makes clear at every possible point that the boy lacks any experience and comprehension of emotion, and yet, at the same time, it wants you to like him. It doesn't ask you to identify with Tom, he's too monstrous and, really, too frosty and removed for that. But the movie does want you to feel some vague empathy for him, because he's such a damaged and fascinating fellow.
And really, the project itself is intriguing, to enlist your feelings for the feeling-less Tom in the interest of narrative, to make you want to follow him even though he lacks — outright — all that conventional stuff that allows you to feel easy about your investment, allegiance or desire. It's not a novel project (perhaps you've struggled with your sympathies for Alec in Clockwork Orange or, with Clarice running interference, Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs), but it's not one that comes up very often. The problem is that The Talented Mr. Ripley hedges its bet, not quite trusting you to deal with the dilemma yourself.


Part child, part psycho, complete chameleon, Damon's Tom is at times rather ordinary in his Clark Kent glasses and mousy-brown hair, at others devastatingly beautiful, as when he takes a smoky jazz club stage to sing "My Funny Valentine" in a dead-on imitation of Chet Baker at his prettiest, and at still others, too damn creepy for words.
Mr. Ripley is a richly textured and enticingly nasty work about a man who takes matters into his own hands when he feels passed over by fortune, and it’s the best Alfred Hitchcock movie made since Alfred Hitchcock died.


A washroom attendant and a tickler of piano keys at other people’s social affairs, Tom Ripley (Damon) is locked out of the American Dream when we meet him. He’s smart enough, God knows (give him a second and he can think his way out of anything), but he lacks polish and any real standing. He can see and smell what he’s missing – he’s surrounded by it, he’s steeped in it – but he can’t quite get his hands on it. That is, not until he’s hired by a wealthy sailboat manufacturer to retrieve the man’s dropout son from Europe. When he catches up to Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) in a seaside Italian village, he’s dazzled to find a satyr-like golden boy whom God has blessed with good looks, money, and an obscene sense of self-assurance. Dickie is Tom’s dream version of himself, a playboy in exile who spends his days carrying on with his American girlfriend, Marge (Paltrow), and his nights drinking in the jazz clubs of Naples and Rome. 


Tom wheedles his way into Dickie’s trust – the insidious impression he performs of the elder Greenleaf subtly poisons the son against his father – and he soon moves into Dickie’s house, thinking that he’s found a friend, a home, and a life. But to Dickie he’s only a stopgap amusement, almost a pet. Dickie’s loyalties are much more aligned with Freddie Miles (Philip Seymour Hoffman), another expatriate whose droll sense of privilege causes him to treat Tom as a punching bag. (Hoffman, who’s been on a roll lately, brings a perceptible delight to playing this caustic shit.) Worse, Dickie is sick of Tom’s poverty and his weak-kneed attempts to lure Dickie into something more than friendship – he wants Tom to disappear back down the rat-hole he climbed out of. 


His mission a failure, and spurned as a brother, a lover, and even as a friend, Tom murders Dickie in a spasm of humiliation, unrequited love, and greed. A grim farce ensues as he tries to convince Dickie’s acquaintances that Dickie has moved away even as he tries to take Dickie’s place in life by cashing his checks and occupying his hotel suites and wardrobe. Marge, Freddie, the Italian police, a textile heiress (Cate Blanchett), and a private detective all have to be dealt with, juggled, and manipulated. And Tom’s natural instincts lead him to a growing involvement with Peter Kingsley-Smith (Jack Davenport), another member of the ex-pat set. The effort involved in keeping his legal, sexual, and ethical identities in focus pushes Tom to the breaking point. 


Mr. Ripley loses a little steam after Tom dispatches Dickie because Law is so well cast as the bronzed and fickle Dickie, and because the men’s relationship is so alive and true. But writer-director Anthony Minghella’s conception of Ripley keeps folding back layer after layer of the character, and Damon works wonders in the part. The story calls for him to be constantly mutating in appearance and demeanor, and these changes are seamlessly wrought – they all emanate from a single source and build on top of one another. Like Norman Bates, Tom Ripley is a serial killer for whom identity is a subterfuge, and Damon puts a different face on every one of his demons. 


Nearly every decision Minghella made pays off – the creation of an important character who isn’t in Patricia Highsmith’s novel, the accent on the important role that sex plays in class envy, the straightforward handling of the gay-themed material. (The atmosphere has a heavy sexual charge although the movie has a minimum of sex, either hetero or homo.) The impish xylophone riff that plays when Tom tells his lies, the extras whose clothes and postures make them look like escapees from La Dolce Vita, the million little verbal stratagems by which Tom manipulates everyone around him – all work together to create a cunning little machine of a movie. 


Minghella’s Tom Ripley is more morally convulsive than Highsmith’s sleek killer. The movie’s Tom – variously described as "a quick study," "a dark horse," and "a double agent" – starts out by killing his enemies but winds up killing his friends, and our rue-laden final view of him gives the picture its delectable sting. By the end of the movie the cost of his freedom is skyrocketing, and while he’d do things differently if he could, he just can’t resist paying the price. The Talented Mr. Ripley is a seductive hall of mirrors in which voluptuous desires have consequences that can only be guessed at.


Hmmm what else...oh yeah besides watching dvds, I also made Lasagne. Cooking seem theraputic for me. Only because I don't cook often, see when you tend to cook everyday it seems more like a chore, but if you cook one in awhile, it can be very theraputic. Two easy ways to calm myself is having a nice cup of coffee and cooking.

Posted by zaianne at March 21, 2006 11:55 PM

Comments

Posted by: George at May 16, 2006 03:24 PM

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