BEFORE: While it may not be a spy film, my understanding that it is about deception and intrigue, and it provides me the perfect link between the Matt Damon "Who am I" films of the last few days, and tomorrow night's film. This is another film based on a book series that I'm not familiar with, by Patricia Highsmith.
THE PLOT: In the late 1950's, Tom Ripley, a young underachiever, is sent to Europe to retrieve a rich and spoiled millionaire playboy, named Dickie Greenleaf. But when the errand fails, Ripley takes extreme measures.
AFTER: This is a dark, complicated film about a young man who wants to get ahead in life, and become part of high society, by pretending to be someone else - the deception begins innocently enough, but soon another lie has to be told to back up the first one, and then another, and before long the central character has three different identities, and has to struggle to keep track of which lie he has told each person.
Tom is sent to Italy by Dickie's father to befriend him, and convince him to return to America. But once Tom gets a taste of how the other half lives, he starts to enjoy Italy on his benefactor's dime, so his motives get more than a little muddled. In fact his motives are mainly unclear throughout the film - since he's such a riddle wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a false identity.
We're never sure if Tom is just pretending to be Dickie's friend, or if at some point they've crossed over to being actual friends. For that matter, it also seems like Tom would like to be more than friends with Dickie - not that there's anything wrong with that, but it seems like Tom's also got his eye on the ladies. Either way, there's more to Ripley than meets the eye - but it's also possible that his hidden personality traits are in fact dark and sinister.
Again, still trying to maintain a spoiler-free zone, but this twisty tale unfolded very slowly and intricately - though it seemed at times that the universe was carefully arranging itself to maintain Ripley's deceptions. Ripley claimed to be good at certain things, including forgery and vocal mimicry. I would have liked to see a little more of that, along with some disguises that worked better than glasses - but I guess if they're good enough for Superman...
As I said after "The Informant", I believe in being honest...mostly. But I can recall a few times when it benefited me to be deceptive. In my senior year of high school, I had a lot of free periods (since I took a year of German on independent study) and I lived just 2 blocks from the school, so if my day ended with a study-hall period, I tended to leave early. In my defense, I was also working at night and mostly just needed to go home and catch a nap. But I found that the best way to leave school early and get away with it was NOT to sneak out the back door, which looked guilty, but to stroll out the front door, and wave to the secretary in the office. Now I had a reputation as a (mostly) straight-A student, and perhaps as an honorable person, so everyone just assumed I had permission and/or a reason to leave.
Another thing I'll admit to is not finishing the course work in a computer animation class at NYU. To be fair, there were more students than workstations, so I couldn't always get computer time, plus my heart wasn't really into graphing spheres and cones. (I hear computer animation's come a long way since then) So when the teacher came to me on the last day and said, "I saw your final project, right?" She hadn't, but I said "Yes." And that was the end of my career in computer animation, I passed the class, but really, what was I supposed to do? Admit that I had no final project? Besides, shouldn't there have been a more thorough process for making sure I'd done the work? Yeah, I still feel a little guilty about that one.
Starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow (last seen in "Iron Man"), Jude Law (last seen in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"), Cate Blanchett (last seen in "I'm Not There"), Philip Seymour Hoffman (last seen in "Flawless"), James Rebhorn, Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "Say Anything"), and Celia Weston (last seen in "Observe and Report").
RATING: 6 out of 10 jazz records
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