Summary
- Andrew Scott shines with a chillingly faithful portrayal of Tom Ripley in a visually unique TV series.
-
Ripley
delves deep into the slow, methodical descent into crime, with meticulous attention to detail. - From mesmerizing cinematography to a haunting score, this adaptation is a masterful take on Highsmith’s
Talented Mr. Ripley
.
Patricia Highsmith’s enigmatic Tom Ripley character has been brought to life in some very good movies — Alain Delon played him in Purple Noon, Matt Damon took on the role in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and John Malkovich was sublime as an older version in Ripley’s Game. So do we really need another Tom Ripley? Watching the story play out across eight hours of gorgeously produced television in Ripley, the answer is unequivocally yes. This is simultaneously the most faithful adaptation of Highsmith’s character and the most visually unique.
Andrew Scott stars as the titular con artist, who is sent to Italy on an all-expenses-paid trip by a worried father (played by the great director Kenneth Lonergan) hoping to bring his bohemian son home. Ripley, who has been living parasitically in the proverbial gutters of New York, forging checks and hiding out from the law, relishes the opportunity, and from there will let nothing stop his lifestyle change.
It’s a slow series, methodical in its portrait of Ripley, Italy, and what really defines a life of crime. It’s the kind of show that will spend an entire episode having Ripley carefully, sometimes clumsily, clean up after his own crimes. If you have the patience for it, it’s so much more fulfilling than the usual crime series.
Andrew Scott Brings Ripley and His Crimes to Life
Ripley
4.5/5
- Release Date
- April 4, 2024
- Seasons
- 1
- Andrew Scott is phenomenal as a very different Tom Ripley.
- The direction, cinematography, and score are masterful in a prestige TV series.
- An extremely faithful adaptation that’s very different from any other.
- Ripley may be too slow and emotionless for many people.
Ripley heads to Italy and awkwardly infiltrates the lives of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and his girlfriend, Marge (Dakota Johnson), and has no intention of bringing Dickie back to his father. He sees the way these lackadaisical rich kids live and wants it for himself. He views them with a mixture of envy and contempt — they want to be artists in Europe, but they’re talentless Americans fooling themselves. The most recognizable human emotion Ripley has is pride. He believes he’s more talented than anyone else, and his small crimes escalate into big ones as if to dare the world to prove him wrong.
Andrew Scott is an interesting choice to play Tom Ripley, ultimately giving a fantastic and very physical performance. The soulful and charming man from the cast of Fleabag and All of Us Strangers is gone, only to surface in ugly artifical ways when Ripley is pretending to be ‘good’ or ‘normal.’ The closest analog to his role here would be the criminal genius Moriarty in Sherlock, but even that character seemed delighted with being bad. There is little joy in Scott’s performance, which makes it all the more disturbing. Self-satisfaction surfaces from time to time, when Ripley feels like he has outsmarted everyone else and gotten away with it. That’s what he seems to live for.
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Ripley only ever feels comfortable in his own skin when he’s lying or deceiving; his actions only seem purposeful when he’s enacting a scheme or cleaning up after one. The series is slow and meticulous in chronicling these, sometimes injecting dry humor at the almost absurd lengths Ripley will (or is forced to) go. The disposal of a dead body or the sinking of a ship becomes a long, awkward comedy of errors. It’s very realistic. Ripley is not superhuman, and his crimes are almost justified after the fact. Like a predator, he acts, and then thinks his way out of it. The way the creators of the series depict all this is, again, methodical, but mesmerizing.
Ripley Comes from Oscar-Winning Artists
Ripley is prestige television, crafted by some of the most skilled artists in the industry. Steven Zaillian writes and directs every episode, and if you think it’s strange that the Oscar-winning writer of Schindler’s List would take on a Highsmith adaptation, recall that Zaillian was also the writer of cat-and-mouse thrillers like Hannibal (2001), American Gangster (2007), and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011). This series, like his last television show, The Night Of, is better than all of those films, however.
Zaillian assembles an expert team here, his ace in the hole being cinematographer Robert Elswit (P.T. Anderson’s go-to director of photography for films like There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights, who also did wonders with Syriana, Michael Clayton, Nightcrawler, and two Mission Impossible films). The wonderful composer and musician Jeff Russo (Legion, Fargo) works perfectly with Elswit to create a beautiful synchronicity of sound and image.
Netflix’s Ripley Is Very Different from Its Talented Predecessors
The great irony, though, is that these fine artists are working to drain life and emotion from what’s typically been presented as sensual, sweaty, and suspenseful. Ripley is certainly still tense with suspense, but of a very different kind than other adaptations that lean into the hot, colorful, sexual aspects of Italy and Ripley and Dickie’s relationship.
Presented in cold black-and-white and keeping conversation sparse, Ripley utilizes its sublime talent not to glorify and beautify Highsmith’s story, but to portray it through the icy and amoral perspective of Ripley himself. The result is still gorgeous, but lonely and haunting, stripped of zest and zeal. Ripley’s Rome is a ghost town and he is an apparition. It’s a far cry from previous versions, and more honest to Ripley’s headspace.
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This may lead some to find Ripley too emotionless and droll for a crime thriller. Even the supporting characters can come across as indifferent or without affect. The point, as indicated by the title, is that this adaptation is an illustration of Ripley’s world and worldview. Some life is sparked by the detective on Ripley’s case, Inspector Ravini, mainly because actor Maurizio Lombardi (of The Young Pope and The New Pope) is so inherently charismatic and delightful. And John Malkovich himself shows up near the end in an interesting twist, like a delicious cherry on top of this frosty milkshake of a show.
Malkovich’s character, like some others in Ripley, complements one of the show’s most interesting themes and details, namely that there is a sixth sense of evil, a kind of criminal radar detection system lurking beneath polite society. The only people who really see Ripley for who he is are criminals and con artists themselves, and Ripley recognizes them as well. Game respects game. That’s another haunting suggestion from Ripley — that Tom is not the only one, that disguises are best worn by devils, that recognizing them takes a kind of talent only they possess.
From Endemol Shine North America, Entertainment 360, Diogenes Entertainment, FILMRIGHTS, and Showtime Studios, all eight episodes of Ripley are now streaming on Netflix. You can watch them through the link below:
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