Ripley's Game

"Ripley's Game", a 2002 film made in Italy, was meagerly distributed in the US; no big surprise there. It's way too smart to draw the vast audiences American distributors demand. This is a "character-driven" story if ever there was one, rather than a plot-fest exploding constantly from the screen, or a chase mechanically ratcheted tighter and tighter by the hackneyed artifice of Hollywood to a wild-eyed phantasmagoria of a climax (no matter how many times you hit him, the monster/killer/evil husband gets up again and comes after you . . . ).

This movie is based on a novel — a real novel, with original story and characters, not a "blockbuster bestseller" full of meaningless activity, glamorous settings, and one-dimensional caricatures trundling to their predetermined ends. The book, of the same title as the movie, is one of the four sequels Patricia Highsmith wrote to "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

Liliana Cavani, who gave us "The Night Porter" years ago, is credited here as writer and director, and in "Ripley's Game" I'd say she's at the top of her own game.

This is a darkly polished movie full of dry wit and sly allusions to Alfred Hitchcock's style (his classic "Strangers on a Train" began life as a Patricia Highsmith novel). Just visually it's a knockout (there's a shot of Ripley, in this case John Malkovitch, walking in a quiet rain toward the front door of his country home — one of the great Palladian villas of northeastern Italy — that is just breathtaking). And though it's a thriller, there's no crude engine driving it down the usual tracks, which means none of the forced, testosterone-hyped frenzy routinely substituted for true story-energy in the typical Hollywood product. Also missing is the parade of standard plot contrivances and predictable "twists" widely taught as basic and necessary screenwriting tools.

Instead, we have a film about a man without a conscience acting out his nature, and in the process setting in motion surprising discoveries about not only his major victim but himself.

Tom Ripley, born poor, is driven by his desire to live as a person of wealth and taste. He wants beautiful things around him, and he will lie, manipulate, and kill to obtain and to keep these things. This doesn't make him a psychopath, as some seem to think. Despite numerous critical comparisons he's nothing at all like Hannibal Lecter, who is a demonic figure gleefully doing evil for evil's sake which makes him basically crazy: there is no rational justification for the sickening extremes of his flamboyant, provocative violence.

Ripley, on the other hand, does precisely what he thinks is necessary to stay alive and comfortable: that much and no more. It's his disregard for the common rules of acceptable behavior that makes him pathological, not the wild-eyed bloodthirst of a lunatic.

Let's remember that Texas-born Patricia Highsmith, an author of enormously respected mystery novels that had meager sales here in her lifetime, was lesbian at a time when America was insanely paranoid about deviance of all kinds -- the gay-baiting, commie-hating '50's. Not surprisingly, she moved to Europe where her work was more widely appreciated and her private life was naturally assumed to be nobody else's goddamned business. I'm sure I'm not the first to see Tom Ripley as her rebel, outlaw self, empowered and turned loose to range over her fictional world like a prowling leopard.

He's a beauty of a character, right from his debut in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" in which he re-invents himself via forgery, impersonation, and murder as the rich aesthete he aspires to be. In "Ripley's Game", we first discover him in action as con man and forger, which is his baseline reality: his identity as Tom Ripley is a con job, and his performance of urbane humanity is just that, an act.

He's now a mature predator living in Italy, so secure and content that he must be forced back into criminal activity: a former associate importunes him, with menaces, for help in removing some gangland rivals in Germany. Ripley only accedes to these demands because he himself has a small score to settle: a neighbor, a humble artisan and family man (Jonathan, played by Dougray Smith), has disdainfully remarked to some party guests that Ripley has no taste — a remark overheard by its target, who takes it hard.

Ripley's revenge takes the form of maneuvering Jonathan into murdering one criminal on behalf of another. But the violence swiftly rebounds to its source, leading to a slaughterous shoot-out in the foggy north Italian winter.

**** Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers: if you want to take in this film unprepared, as you were meant to see it, stop reading HERE, for now. And in any case bear in mind that my comments are strictly about the film, since it's years since I've read Highsmith. In the later books, as I recall, Ripley is a much more sensitive person, full of doubts and fears, than Calvani's and Malkovitch's version of him here; it's the film Tom Ripley I want to talk about.

So: Jonathan has a fatal leukemia. He's an ordinary fellow living an ordinary life framing pictures, but Ripley sees some other capacity in him and determines to drag it to light ("I have no taste? Well, you don't have the civilized standards that you think you have. Know thyself before thou judgest me" is the gist, I think, of his revenge; also, "I have enough taste — that is, discrimination — to see that you have murder in you, murder for gain"). Sure enough Jonathan at length agrees to kill a stranger, for money to leave to his wife and child.

And indeed unexpected qualities are called out in him by extreme events. Jonathan shows himself (and — this is important — discovers himself) to be a fast learner, surprisingly adept at murder (although he is haggard and shaken, tossing his cookies afterward); Ripley himself is at times a more clumsy and less efficient killer than his dupe proves to be. Ripley's insight into Jonathan, undistorted by social conventions and assumptions, was startlingly correct.

The outward realization of that insight draws them both inexorably closer together, but to what ultimate purpose? Ripley is no garden variety brother-in-arms, no hate-you-love-you buddy in an action picture.

He's not a gangster either, although he has been entangled with thugs in the past. He isn't, so far as we see here, an adrenaline junkie getting high on death, not bloodthirsty, not sadistic. He just wants what he wants and guards his own dignity without mercy (or, clearly, a sense of proportion). He describes himself as an "improviser", which is exactly what he shows himself to be. He's very, very good at it.

In an odd way he's a very passive character (which may be the root of the complaint of critics who praised the the film's virtues with faint damns; one found it inexplicably "dull" for a thrilling thriller). Once the action has been set in motion by his affronted pride, Ripley's own actions are all responses to the decisions and attacks of others — a curiously feminine (though not female) stance, and (to those attuned to such things) a subtle reminder of the character's basic but unobtrusive gender ambiguity.

He's like a well-fed cat sunning itself on the windowsill, content to lie there lazily twitching its tail all day. Everything that he ever wanted he already has: a pretty, talented, and slightly depraved wife; money; beautiful art and music; peace and quiet; and a respectable cover identity in a country with great food. There is nothing more to pursue.

Once roused up he's terrifyingly effective in action, though not perfect — there are mistakes. But there's no panting anticipation of spilling blood or obliterating enemies. In fact, Ripley doesn't really think ahead much at all. Like an animal, he does what he wants to do and then deals with the repercussions as they appear, reacting instinctively to defend his life and comforts. He knows he can trust his responses because he has no morality to check them.

In a way this animal calm of his affects the pace of the picture, giving it the character of his own perception of the world: one thing follows another; or not. There's no emotional thrashing around about what might or might not happen or about what has already occurred but might not have if this, or if that.

All in all, Tom Ripley is a rather mild-mannered sociopath who's a whirlwind of unmoderated violence only when absolutely necessary.

So why does Jonathan, a decent man involved against his will in nine or ten killings, in the end deliberately take a bullet for Ripley? Why is the framer's dying expression a smile? Why does Ripley, replaying that last scene in his thoughts while he listens to a concert, also smile — not with relief or satisfaction but with evident delight?

Because in repose, contemplating events, he sees that without intending to he gave to the dying Jonathan an incalculable gift. And Jonathan willingly paid it back in full, making a balanced, satisfying closure to a chain of unpredictably contingent events (and Ripley loves beauty, remember; perhaps in place of morality or ethics he has an appreciation of symmetry).

But what gift? What has Ripley's spiteful little scheme done for the dying frame-maker?

Why, it has given Jonathan a lifetime of high-risk adventure compressed into a few days. It has driven the steady, doomed artisan into bold action against evil men, forcing him to exercise hitherto untapped resources of quick thought, ruthless determination, courage, and sheer physical effectiveness beyond any man's wildest adolescent dreams. On top of all that add a culmination that allowed him to return a commensurate gift, man to man, with a heroic act of self-sacrifice. What's more, this redemptive climax took place before the eyes of Jonathan's wife, whose own life he also saved in the process. And then there's all that generous payment that Jonathan did the first murders for, which will go to sustain his family as he had planned; not to mention the avoidance of a lingering death from cancer.

Adventure, success, wealth, nerve and resolution vanquishing villainy, family duty done and sins expiated in one last grand gesture — what's not to like? No wonder Jonathan dies smiling! His suicide is the discharge of a debt for which no other repayment could suffice because the gift was so immense — even though Ripley bestowed it inadvertently, in a moment of cruelty that was also a moment of brilliant discernment: Ripley saw truly the framer's hidden potential and liberated what he saw.

For Ripley himself there's still another reward, as he contemplates all this in peace at last under the stars. His wife plays beautifully on the fine old harpsichord he found for her; and he himself has just made a work of art too, one with its own gory perfection and piquantly paradoxical meaning.

Think of it: Ripley, an odd-looking little "nobody" who has always coveted beauty (which he could only have by buying it, stealing it, or faking it) has with casual malice tossed off — a masterpiece. And he's done it without bowing to the social fictions of morality that mean nothing to him. Better yet, it remains a secret masterpiece known only to himself and to the dead picture framer, of whose final days this grand, improvised ballet of discovery, realization, and redemption was made. Ripley both choreographed and performed in this dance of clandestine battle, sensing and externalizing its natural form as he went along.

So Ripley has found something, too. Listening to his wife's artistry under the stars, he recognizes also the true, accomplished artist in himself: an artist of improvisational reality, an artist innately aligned with the deeper, darker truths of life, an artist in spite of himself.

--SMC
August 2004

Copyright © 2004 by Suzy McKee Charnas