Review of the Netflix series Ripley

Netflix has released an all-black-and-white series Ripley, based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. The main character, or rather the antihero, is portrayed by Irish actor Andrew Scott, known primarily as Moriarty from the Sherlock series. The show was written and directed by the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List, Steven Zaillian. The story of a petty crook who becomes a sociopathic killer in the midst of Italian resort landscapes, small picturesque ports and grandiose antique Renaissance art has become not only a deep and sophisticated criminal psychological thriller noir, but also an existential search for the meaning of murder and rebirth in a world of figures and shadows that have always been imbued with torment, sin, and tragedy.

It is well known that Patricia Highsmith dedicated several novels to a fictional character named Tom Ripley, where she showed her great killer, born from a small man, at different ages and in different periods of his life. On the screen, in different years, the image of Ripley was embodied by such actors as Alain Delon, Matt Damon, John Malkovich… (the latter, by the way, made a symbolic cameo in the last episode of Zaillian). Fans of European cinema believe that Delon was the best (although, as for me, the French star is too handsome and too French for the role of Thomas Ripley). Fans of Hollywood aesthetics, of course, prefer Damon. In his version of Ripley, one could clearly read the plebeianism of the harsh American backwoods, which the faceless virtuoso of wearing many masks tried to get rid of with the help of money, pseudo-secular manners, silk robes, someone else’s ring, and involvement in high art.

Andrew Scott’s character shows not so much the provincialism of a commoner as banal poverty and undisclosed psychological trauma (a hint of incest with his own aunt, who “got too much” in exchange for the pennies she continued to send monthly to her young nephew, whom she once took under her wing after the death of both parents). He is impressed by luxury, envies Dickie Greenleaf’s money and status, and therefore takes everything away and rakes it into his skillful (though sometimes rather clumsy) hands. But chic and high life are not the end in itself for the mysterious Mr. Ripley, although, of course, he is not a Mr. He doesn’t seem to know what he wants, but it’s obvious that he is desperately searching for something. He is absolutely sterile, like a white virgin sheet on which he writes drafts of other people’s stories with disappearing ink until he comes up with his own. By the way, it is still unclear what his sexual orientation is: homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, anti-sexual…; whether the inscrutable and extremely private Thomas Ripley has ever had a healthy sexual relationship with anyone.

And the ink and white sheet are not just a metaphor. After all, Tom Ripley is constantly writing letters. By masterfully forging his manner of writing and signature, he lives several lives on paper at once, which are much more difficult to live out loud (despite the fact that he also masterfully imitates voices). Although the most difficult thing seems to be living his own life, the life of Thomas Ripley, because he has no idea where and how to end the masquerade and become himself without becoming a dreary blank slate again. And the black-and-white image perfectly emphasizes the concept of black ink and white paper, not to mention the fact that blood in monochrome also looks like ink, and black-and-white Italy, although it has lost the fantastic ultramarines and azure of the colorful south, but has become, in accordance with the much darker tone of Zaillian’s narrative (compared to Anthony Minghella’s film), almost demonic (especially in the Roman scenes), introvertedly infernal, like the dark paintings of Caravaggio, which play a separate role here; as well as Ripley’s black personality.

The question of whether Tom Ripley has a white side could probably be written in a separate essay. Is he whole or split? In one beautiful shot at the very end of the story, Andrew Scott’s antihero, sitting at a table and illuminated by a table lamp, moves the lamp away so that half of his face is hidden in the shadows. That is, he is only half a monster and sits somewhere in the shadows next to Mr. Hyde, but he is not dead and still defends the ghostly good of Dr. Jekyll? It’s hard to say, because neither Patricia Highsmith nor Stephen Zaillian show us Dr. Jekyll. At least we can say for sure that Thomas Ripley, unlike the absolute pacifier Dickie Greenleaf, who, thanks to his father’s money, allows himself to pretend to be a writer or an artist, although he can neither write nor draw…, does have talent, and even a flair for painting, so the paintings of Tom Ripley, who imitates Dickie Greenleaf, look more dignified than the pretentious smear of Dickie Greenleaf. However, talent and virtue are completely different things.

As for the rest of the characters, again in comparison with the 1999 film, it is obvious that the deadly boring (even before he was dead) Dickie played by Johnny Flynn loses out to the totally charming Dickie played by Jude Law. Dakota Fanning’s Marge, on the other hand, looks deeper, smarter, more dramatic, more contradictory, and more embossed than Gwyneth Paltrow’s smooth-tabletop character. The queer character of Freddy, portrayed by the non-binary Elliot Sumner (daughter of Sting and a native of Pisa), fortunately, does not give off any shocking or pretentiousness, and although he looks like a transgender gangster, he harmoniously blends into the architecture and chiaroscuro of both Italy and noir, and his blurred gender rhymes with the blurred dualism of the dark romantic doctrine of human nature.

Tom Ripley kills Dickie Greenleaf for most of the third episode, and Tom Ripley kills Freddie Miles for most of the fifth episode. And both episodes are filmed so powerfully, almost epically, almost like a bloody ancient tragedy, that Caravaggio would probably want to paint a portrait of them: a portrait of the killer with an oar on a boat in San Remo and a portrait of the killer with an ashtray in a rented apartment in Rome, where an apathetic demonic Maine Coon lives in the front door as an observer. Murder is difficult for the hero. Physically, it is terribly hard. This hellish physical labor is the seventh sweat. And again, returning to antiquity: Ripley seems to be rolling up a huge Sisyphean stone, and it inexorably rolls down. But the paradoxical meaning, as Albert Camus said, is not in rolling the boulder, but in the continuous rise and fall.