A QUALITY LIFTING
Aware of arriving after two very personal adaptations of the original work, including The Talented Mr. Ripley Directed by Anthony Minghella, Zaillian reappropriates the story of this murderous escapade in Italy by adorning it with a retro style of the most beautiful effect. To achieve this, he chose to turn Ripley completely in black and whitebenefiting from the expertise of cinematographer Robert Elswit in the matter (the monochrome palette of Good Night, and Good Luck is his doing).
“I felt that this plot – the one that she [Patricia Highsmith] told, the one I wanted to explore – was quite sinister and dark. I couldn’t imagine putting it in a beautiful Italian setting with its bright blue skies, colorful outfits and all that stuff.”explained Zaillian in an interview for IndieWire. If the use of black and white often appears as an aesthetic and somewhat systematic crutch when it comes to probing the depths of the human soul, the process is rightly exploited here.
“Mirror, my beautiful mirror, tell me who is the most wicked?
Tom Ripley is the epitome of a born manipulator, ambivalent in all circumstances. Seeing the contours of his face, as much as his silhouette, bathed in a permanent chiaroscuro is therefore obvious. Each street, each corridor, each vestibule seems thus arranged to maintain the character in this precarious balance between shadow and light, and this wavering from one to the other logically translates his psychological instability, Tom evolving from frustration to desire, from worry to effrontery, in the blink of an eye.
In one way, Ripley recalls less the Casanovas of the golden age of Italian cinema than the specter of M the Accursed, emblematic of German expressionism and its most tormented figures. However, there is not a shadow of a doubt, it is to Italy, to its architecture, to its painting, that the mini-series has an unfailing attachment. When Tom contemplates Caravaggio’s famous painting, David with the head of Goliathand rediscovers him in the confines of a church, in a different light, we see him experience nothing more and nothing less than an epiphany.
We don’t lack the desire to push him over the balcony
Art and religion become in fact the two horizons of the character, both surrounded by the deities sculpted on the facade of the monuments, who judge him symbolically for his misdeeds, and inspired by the Caravaggesque style, dreaming in turn of being a misunderstood and therefore brilliant artist. He then does not just usurp the identity of his victim, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), but uses it as a passport (literally) to achieve excellence and complete his work, even if it means sowing a few seeds. corpses behind him (yes, it takes what it takes).
His credo: trap you in his web
THE LONGER THE BETTER
Over its eight episodes, the mini-series unfolds and deploys what the two previous adaptations had to synthesize in two hours. If we obviously find the pivotal moments of the original story, they are treated here with increased magnitude (the motorboat scene, which gives rise to a Homeric fight lasting several minutes, is the most spectacular example) . By having a sufficiently long duration, Zaillian creates an often exhilarating effect of one-upmanshipmaking each epiphenomenon an event in itself.
The fifth episode, a real piece of bravery in itself, enjoys stretching the action to materialize the hard work of Tom, then busy hiding the damning evidence of yet another bloodbath (yes, that’s an understatement). We thus see him come and go several times through the same settings, gradually rectifying what he has unfortunately neglected, and this impression of redundancy adds to the absurdity of the situation, further increased tenfold by the presence of a cat. (the real star of the episode), silent but vigilant witness to the character’s setbacks.
At the table, crime is served!
“V“You don’t read a novel in two hours (…) it takes eight, ten, twelve hours, and I felt that the rhythm and the beauty of the book’s narration encouraged me to adopt this form.”, confided Zaillian during a preview of the mini-series organized in New York. And he was not mistaken, to the extent that he truly transcribed Tom’s solitary character, his unfailing nonchalance, even when the noose tightens dangerously around him. Andrew Scott is, in this respect, perfect with his drawling voice, his calculated gestures. His performance is in many ways reminiscent of Casey Affleck’s in The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford.
This tendency to expand the temporality of the story nevertheless causes a slight imbalance in the characterization of the characters (that of Marge, played by Dakota Fanning, is put aside for several episodes) or in terms of pure narrative effectiveness. But we would gladly prefer to see these as the symptoms of a project which errs above all through excess of audacity, and this is to its credit.
Ripley is available on Netflix in full since April 4, 2024 in France
