INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVES WEEK 4: THEMATIC STATEMENTS
Write a paragraph on the themes you identified in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and from this decide what the life lesson is that screenwriter/director Anthony Minghella wanted you to learn.
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a complex film that conveys its central themes in a range of subtle ways. The narrative examines the universal human experiences of jealousy, envy, and the desire for a different or better life.
These qualities are taken to the extreme in the character of Tom Ripley, whose willingness to slip in and out of different identities is established from the very first scene, in which he fills in for a friend at a party, wearing his Princeton jacket and playing piano in his friend’s place. In fact, clothing is used throughout the film as a visual marker of identity, highlighting Ripley’s warped belief that a human identity can be shed or adopted as effortlessly as one might change clothes.
Throughout the film, secondary characters mirror the themes that the our protagonist personifies: they, too, want a change of identities. Herbert Greenleaf says that he wishes his own son Dickie was more like Ripley. Meredith Logue travels under the name Randall in an effort to “shrug off the dress” of her high status - once again using clothes as the visual manifestations of one’s identity. Dickie Greenleaf is incredibly flighty and mutable, leaving his hometown to start a new life in Italy, constantly moving from relationship to relationship and city to city. Dickie’s fickle nature once again reflects humanity’s frustration with stasis and our desire to constantly change to something better. The influence of this thematic statement extends even to Minghella’s choice of song for Dickie and Ripley to sing at the bar: the lyrics, “tu vuoi fa l’americano, ma si nato in italy” translate to “you want to be an American, but you were born in Italy”, again reflecting the idea of being dissatisfied with our own identity, and wanting to change it.
As Dickie himself tells Tom Ripley, “You’ve got to get a new jacket, really. You must be sick of wearing the same clothes.”
However, when Ripley does wear his clothes, Dickie is repelled, feeling that his own identity has been violated: “I wish you’d get out of my clothes. Do you have my shoes on, too?” This suggests that while we may all experience a desire for something better, we should not give in to this desire.
Most of the characters in this film want things they cannot have, and are dissatisfied with their lot in life. However, attempting to get what they cannot have will be their downfall.
As such, the overarching thematic statement I gleaned from this film is the following: Covetousness leads to destruction.
This is seen in the character of Sylvana: she wishes for a relationship like that of Dickie’s with Marge, but because she cannot have this, she ultimately kills herself.
However, “destruction” is a very abstract concept that does not necessarily refer to physical destruction. Ripley, though never harming himself, embodies this film’s thematic statement. His envy of Dickie’s identity leads him to destroy his own identity, and this is an internal form of self-destruction.
Of course, Ripley’s covetousness of Dickie also leads him to hurt countless others. He becomes obsessive and jealous, as seen when Dickie starts devoting more of his attention to Freddie Miles. Ripley covets Dickie’s attention, but kills him in order to steal his identity and thus enjoy his lifestyle, which he covets just as much. The “leech” Ripley desires a life in which he can have anything he wants, and this is exactly how Dickie seems to live: when talking about house-hunting, Dickie simply says: “First thing I liked, I got it.”
Ripley soon learns that getting whatever you like comes at a terrible price. In one scene, he struggles to remove Dickie’s green ring, this use of costume once again reflecting theme and conveying that it is not so easy to simply shed an identity once it has been adopted.
Ripley panics when Freddie enters his apartment, plays his piano and moves his statues. Ripley is controlling of the external things around him which are used as visual markers of his identity, personality and status, and Freddie meddles with these things as he meddles with Ripley himself. To hold on to the life he so coveted, Ripley resorts to killing Freddie, again conveying the thematic statement that covetousness leads to destruction.
Ultimately, Ripley’s actions lead to total self-annihilation, as he is unable to leave Dickie’s identity, and unable to return to his own, “stuck in the basement forever”.
Ripley “always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody,” but Minghella shows the audience that in wanting everything, you will inevitably be left with nothing.
