I’d like to start with the opening credits of The Talented Mr. Ripley because it tells you everything you need to know.

The screen is slowly filled strip-by-strip, starting from the center and spanning outwards to the edges, with an orbiting shot of Tom Ripley (played by Matt Damon).  What is important to notice is the use of shadows in the image and the visual representation of the title.  The camera begins at the same location of the light source, giving the viewer a well-lit angle from which to see Tom’s face.  However, the camera, as it pans from left to right, travels away from the light source, which we see is a window, and casts Tom’s face in shadow so that his features are indistinguishable; he might as well be a silhouette.  Only then does the film’s title begin to appear, “The” and “Mr. Ripley” in white block font, which contrasts starkly with Tom’s dark face, upon which the letters are set.  Here’s where things get interesting: the screen rifles through a whole host of words among which are confused, lonely, gifted, tender, haunted, musical, and sensitive, all seemingly disconnected and arbitrary, before finally settling on “talented.”  By quickly flashing these words across the screen, the director, Anthony Minghella, places these words and the associations that people have with them into the viewer’s mind before they know anything about Tom Ripley.  The quick flashing and subsequent discarding of all these words also gives the impression that “talented” is just an attempt to summarize all of these adjectives and all of these aspects of “Mr. Ripley.”

It is with this framework in mind that Minghella proceeds to weave the tale of a young man who advances through the social ladder by lying, forging and murdering whenever necessary.  Many say that this is an exploration of how Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby would have risen thorough the social hierarchy of the Roaring ‘20s, but this movie is so much more than just a prequel.  Damon’s character, Tom Ripley, is so complex and human that he has the viewer rooting for the murdering psychopath that he is.  Damon gives a stunning, real, organic performance as such a tortured individual that, despite his horrendous schemes and murders, the audience is able to empathize with him.

This is Minghella’s genius: he created a horror movie, a thriller, where the protagonist IS the antagonist.  Mr. Ripley IS the horror, the thing to be feared, and the viewer knows this but still fears Tom’s persecution.  Minghella, through Damon’s stunning talent, twists everything that the viewer knows to be true about stories: who’s good, who’s bad, and who they are supposed to sympathize with.  The complexity of The Talented (confused, lonely, gifted, tender, haunted, musical, and sensitive) Mr. Ripley is what pulls the viewer in and wreaks havoc on everything they think they know about good versus evil in a gut wrenching narrative that draws you in just as much as you are revolted by it.

Through this framing of Tom Ripley as an unfathomably complicated, elaboratly portrayed character, The Talented Mr. Ripley emphasizes the complexity of life and of people and highlights how no one can be categorized by one word, one aspect of themselves, because the good and evil in each and every one of us lay in a unique balance that can never quite be captured by words.