The Metaphorical Ripley

I wrote up a review of one of my favorite movies, The Talented Mr. Ripley over at amazon.com. I have reproduced it here:

The movie is an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel by the same name. The story line follows Highsmith, but there are notable departures. I find the movie adaptation to be brilliant. It is a psychologically complex movie that continues to probe deeper and deeper into issues of identity and moral conscience right up until the closing scene. Seeing the movie for the first time one might have the feel that director/writer Anthony Minghella is walking one through a tour of a grand old castle where rooms and corridors upon up into more rooms and corridors even more intriguing than the first.

The film seems to divide into two movements. The first is the "age of innocence" for Tom Ripley. He is a boy with an opportunity and a hope for a better life: to escape his boring life of normalcy in New York for a life of beauty and taste. Where else, but Italy!??!

While in Italy he is charged with bringing playboy Dickie Greenleaf back home to his wealthy father in the States. Dickie, however, has no interest, and Tom quickly realizes this and chooses to cast in his lot with Dickie and become fast friends. But Dickie is too fickle for the "brotherhood" that Tom craves. Hence the tension leads up to a moment of dramatic tragedy that forever changes the course of Ripley's life and ushers in the second movement of the film.

There is now a turn towards suspense and intrigue as Tom uses his "talents" to gain a life of privilege and beauty. The narrative unfolds the suspense of Ripley trying to maintain multiple "worlds" and "realities" of deceit that Minghella describes as a myriad of "spinning plates," and Matt Damon creates a character who skillfully holds all of these false realities together in a grand score that somehow makes sense to all the players despite the glaring inconsistencies that the audience can see.

Holding this labyrinth of duplicity together would not have been possible without an absolutely incredible cast of actors and characters who come in and out of Ripley's life at every turn. The classical scenery also provides a setting where Damon can create his character of complexity.

Ripley is desperate to escape the social and aesthetic "basement" of life, and for a while he seems to have succeeded. Yet despite his achievement he is left wondering whether he has not simply constructed another basement of moral and spiritual darkness. This is a character who begins a journey of discovering identity and finds himself trying to attain a new life through any means possible. But the events of Ripley's life play out like a tragedy and the grip of irony becomes tighter and tighter for Ripley as the road to his self discovery leads, as Minghella says, to "the annihilation of self."

I find it ironic as I watch this movie that often times the things we pursue the most wind up out of our reach because of the means by which we pursue them....or sometimes we fail to achieve what we desire simply because we desire it so much. It is this type of irony that I see in Qohelet (crf. the book of Ecclesiastes): Life is a "chasing after of the wind." The metaphor of pursuing what ultimately cannot be caught. And yet this is the metaphor used to describe life, leading Qohelet to conclude in chapter 8 that anyone who is able to appreciate one's position and status in life that this is commendable. After all, life is complex and no one can claim to understand all that God has done!

Notes:
1-For various muddleheaded interpretations of the film/book please see Ktismatics and his dialogue with Parody.
2-If you compare the translations of 8:17 you will notice the NIV adds the word "meaning", as in "no one can discover its meaning." This is a terrible move, and one of many translation/interpretive moves made by the NIV that have enormous and in my opinion devastating philosophical/theological consequences for the book. It provides the setting for theologians to transform Qohelet from someone standing in awe at the mystery and irony of life into a Modern apologetics evangelist preaching about how having God in your life can make it more meaningful. Tragic!)