The question of how to get away with murder has driven many crime dramas, but none more powerfully than Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, which hews closer to character study than thriller. Netflix’s 2024 limited series Ripley reimagines the young, inexperienced criminal of Minghella’s film as a seasoned professional akin to the protagonist of the source material, Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel. Each version of this story investigates an individual’s ability to construct a reality around what he chooses to believe. 

In Minghella’s film, Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), an orphaned custodian, commits a string of murders to cover up a white lie. He succeeds by dismantling the credibility of those who doubt him, as opposed to convincing anyone of his innocence. In an essay for The Guardian, director Anthony Minghella wrote, “Only Marge Sheerwood [the girlfriend of Ripley’s murder victim] has a spirit uncluttered enough to both welcome Ripley then suspect him.”

In The Talented Mr. Ripley, those investigating the disappearance of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), Ripley’s first victim, disregard Marge’s (Gwyneth Paltrow) accusations against Ripley as a product of her grief. Their doubt proves that Minghella’s embrace of the novel’s queer subtext isn’t necessarily an exercise in advocacy. While the film acknowledges that queer men in the 1950s lived in hiding, it portrays Ripley as a gay man who capitalizes on his status as a male to erase his crime, letting implicit misogyny do the work in his case against Marge. 

The Talented Mr. Ripley as a Subtle Advocate for Gay Men

Matt Damon spoke about his approach to playing a queer character in a 2000 interview with The Advocate. Throughout the discussion, Damon pitched himself as capable of understanding his character’s innate sexuality even though he does not share it. Of his upbringing, Damon said, “Being gay was not something I was ‘introduced’ to at some age. I was introduced to the prejudice against it.” 

In the interview, Damon treads carefully on the subject of Ripley’s sexuality, as the actor’s real-life friendship with Ben Affleck was often the target of romantic speculation. Damon acknowledged that there was no way to address these rumors “without offending somebody”. The actor didn’t want his fierce denial of them, due to their untrue nature, to come across as homophobic. 

Like Ripley turned his life into a glamorous lie, celebrity interviews can blur the truth. Damon’s sympathy for Ripley may be genuine. However, it is ironic that a discussion with The Advocate focuses on keeping queerness within the bounds of a fictional word. 

Although the film elicits sympathy for its protagonist, it does not seek to exonerate him. The Talented Mr. Ripley ends with Damon’s character murdering a love interest, Peter Smith-Kingsley (Jack Davenport). Earlier in the film, Smith-Kingsley was intrigued by Ripley’s charm, unaware that he had already killed several people. Offering sympathy, Smith-Kingsley said, “Whatever you do, however terrible, however hurtful…it all makes sense in your head.”

Transcending Queer Tropes in Ripley’s Stories

At the start of the film, Ripley, wearing a borrowed Princeton jacket, is mistaken for the classmate of the son of a wealthy shipping magnate, Herbert Greenleaf. Believing they had gone to school together, Herbert hires Ripley to go to Italy and convince his son, Dickie (Jude Law), living abroad supported by a trust fund, to come home and run the family business. 

In their tellings of Ripley’s beginning, Minghella’s film The Talented Mr. Ripley differs from Netflix’s 2024 limited series Ripley, in which Andrew Scott plays an older version of the character who has long embraced a life of petty crime. This distinction sets up two different arcs. In Steven Zaillian’s Netflix series, Ripley embarks on a grotesque misadventure, testing his sociopathy. In Minghella’s film, Damon embodies a boy horrified at the unraveling of his life. 

In each version, Ripley’s queerness serves a different purpose. In Zaillian’s series, the protagonist’s attraction to Dickie increases his alienation from society. Scott imbues the character with desperation and awkwardness, making Ripley’s misanthropy sympathetic. 

Conversely, regarding the “gay serial killer” trope, Minghella said, “…if you can only write about a homosexual character who behaves well, that’s a new form of tyranny.” Damon also encouraged viewers to “make up their own minds about sex and psychology” when addressing this stereotype. The Talented Mr. Ripley frames Ripley’s failed romances, though they end in murder, as a side effect of poor judgment, not a product of his sexuality. 

However, the film does point out that the marginalization of certain individuals prevents them from becoming well-adjusted members of society. Transforming an innocent boy into a killer may be a hyperbolic way to expose homophobia, but this approach shows how the internal pressure from cloaking one’s authentic self can manifest in extreme ways.  

Chekov’s Gun Stays Cold in The Talented Mr. Ripley

Ripley’s story, a crime narrative, lends itself to serialization. Highsmith penned five novels about the eponymous killer, and Netflix’s series includes eight one-hour episodes. Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley differs from Zaillian’s Ripley in that it presents a singular version of Ripley that needs no sequel. His final crime is so heinous that no viewer could stick with him. 

Ripley’s relationship to Marge, the girlfriend of his murder victim, Dickie, varies in each adaptation. In the film, Gwenyth Paltrow’s Marge correctly identifies Ripley as a killer, but those around her doubt her. On the other hand, in the Netflix series, Dakota Fanning’s Marge believes Ripley’s alibi and eventually develops a romantic attraction to her deceiver. Both fates are tragic: Marge is lied to and misunderstood by her peers. 

Ripley also plays with Chekov’s gun, the narrative principle that every extraneous detail in a story must take on greater meaning. In the final episode of the Netflix series, the camera shows Dickie’s suitcase under Ripley’s bed: a clear indicator of guilt. Marge comes within a few feet of it, but doesn’t pry. In this case, Chekov’s gun didn’t go off, but it increased the suspense. 

Alternatively, in Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, Marge finds Dickie’s ring among Ripley’s belongings, and realizes the obvious implication. In this case, a trivial detail reveals the protagonist’s fatal flaw. Considering the precision of his cover-up, Ripley could have easily discarded Dickie’s ring at some earlier time. However, love for his victim and a desire to assume his identity expose him. Reviewing The Talented Mr. Ripley for The Ringer, Haley Mlotek wrote, “Most [thiefs] are not brought down by their compulsion to lie, but to tell on themselves.” 

Our Inner Savagery

In Minghella’s film, Ripley’s murder of Dickie appears to be a crime of passion. The con man felt romantically rejected, and perceived that Dickie was leading him on while maintaining the facade of a relationship with Marge for status. Dickie’s death occurs at sea, in a rowboat, when Ripley strikes him with an oar. The azure palette of the tranquil Mediterranean creates an eerie peacefulness as the film’s climax occurs. 

The characters’ isolation increases tension in this scene, drawing on a prior plot point. Earlier, Dickie’s Italian mistress had taken her own life while pregnant with his child. Remarking on the slow arrival of emergency response workers to the scene of her death, Dickie says, “I don’t know why people say this country [Italy] is civilized…it’s primitive.” 

The implications of this scene echo when Ripley and Dickie fight in the rowboat. Even if Dickie had made it back to shore alive, who could have saved him after he sustained a blow to the head from Ripley?

Throughout The Talented Mr. Ripley, Dickie’s popularity draws people to him. Marge says, “With Dickie…the sun shines on you. And then he forgets you, and it’s very cold.” His self-absorption makes it ironic that he would unwittingly utter the film’s thesis statement about humanity’s inner savagery, and essentially predict his murder. 

Early in the film, Ripley meets Meredith Logue (Cate Blanchett), a textile heiress and character invented for the on-screen adaptation of the novel. Through her naïveté, Logue sees something in Ripley he doesn’t see in himself: the capability to fall in love and live a normal life. When Smith-Kingsley saw this in Ripley, because the attraction was mutual, Ripley’s self-loathing surfaced. However, Logue brings out a purity in Ripley that emerges when nothing is at stake. 

By transgressing class boundaries, and infiltrating Dickie’s life, Ripley finds out that defining one’s sense of self is hard in any circumstance. Forging a new reputation was the first step in the process, which, under a mountain of guilt, Ripley may never finish.  

The New Gay Character Drama

The Talented Mr Ripley became a moderate box office success and a runaway critical one, making Jude Law a star, and cementing the upward trajectory of Paltrow, Blanchett, and Damon, the last of whom would become an action star in the Jason Bourne franchise. Reflecting on his transition from films such as Goodwill Hunting and The Talented Mr. Ripley to thrillers like Jason Bourne, on the podcast Hot Ones, Damon said, “The movie that was my bread and butter, the 25 million dollar character drama, is gone. They don’t make it anymore.” 

As in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name (2017) uses tranquil Northern Italy as a backdrop for a romance between two men wrestling with their sexualities. Both films advance the narratives of queerness in pop culture by portraying heartbreak as a consequence of youth, not necessarily of queerness. 

In Call Me By Your Name, 17-year-old Elio (Timothee Chalamet) falls in love with his father’s graduate-student assistant, Oliver (Armie Hammer). Oliver, an adult, viewed Elio as a temporary fling, albeit one that elicited mutually strong feelings. However, their connection didn’t have the power to change the course of the older partner’s life, who returned home and married after the six weeks spent with Elio. 

During their affair, the pair helps Elios’ father excavate ancient Greek statues, which symbolize their mutual attraction. The statues, intact except for hollowed-out eyes, represent the superficial nature of beauty. Fate pulls Elio and Oliver apart, but they can’t resist reaching out for one another.  

Similarly, Tom Ripley searches for love despite killing for it. Like a statue, he rigidly upholds a set of rules and becomes hollowed out. The Talented Mr. Ripley‘s tagline, “,” captures the origin story of a murderer: someone who wants to bury himself and let other people become part of the carnage. 

Sympathy for the Devil in The Talented Mr. Ripley

Zaillian’s Netflix series ends as Ripley smugly poses for a photo to be printed on a fake passport. He absconds to England free from the law. Conversely, Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Rippley concludes with a shot of Ripley sitting beside the body of his final murder victim. A mirror on the inside of a closet door reflects the final shot, the interior darkness implying he will forever live in secret. 

What is to be gained from telling sad stories? Call Me By Your Name ends with a three-minute shot of Timothée Chalamet’s Elio crying by a fireplace, tears streaming down his face. A sad conclusion helps viewers make sense of the dead ends in their own lives. Life is full of narrative threads; some resolve cleanly, others don’t. Tragic figures are endearing through their need for an audience’s pity. Receiving it is the only thing that can redeem them. 

It’s heartening to imagine Ripley as he was at the beginning of The Talented Mr. Ripley, happening upon Dickie on the beach in Mongibello, wearing a neon bathing suit. Vogue called the film’s wardrobe “ravishing” and “effortlessly stylish”. Maintaining his appearance is central to Ripley’s sense of self: although it is a beautiful cage, it is one he controls.

The forces that guide young people through life weigh heavily on the three protagonists, Ripley, Dickie, and Marge. The tension between them originates from external expectations: Dickie seeks to rebel against his father, who hired Ripley to fetch him from Italy. Marge, meanwhile, clings to Dickie even as he fails to give her the love she deserves. 

By viewing each other as a means to certain ends, the three miss out on what they have to offer one another. Unlike Ripley, Dickie’s emotional needs are straightforward, but he never has the means to express them. Marge serves as the film’s beacon of honesty, most notably when she accuses Ripley of murdering Dickie, and is shunned by those around her. Life can treat good people this way: instead of rewarding them, it punishes them as they show more realness. 

In this sense, Marge and Ripley are exact opposites, one unflinchingly truthful and one a total liar. The Talented Mr. Ripley leaves them to reckon with that outcome, while Dickie, the uniting force, also bore a talent that led to his doom. Although the story’s true antagonist remains unclear, it argues that the best villains elicit sympathy and cause an audience to turn on itself. Is it a crime to sympathize with a killer? There are worse things that can be justified. 

Ripley’s is a story of love lost. To The Advocate, Matt Damon said, “[Ripley] deserved better. He was so close to knowing happiness.” Although a serial killer may never know happiness, his story proves that tragic missteps can only be viewed in so many ways. The Talented Mr. Ripley‘s eponymous killer has no shortage of disguises and charm, but cannot avoid the most dreadful point of view: his own.

Works Cited

Canfield, David. “The Talented Mr. Ripley at 25—Frank, Queer, and Ahead of Its Time”. Vanity Fair. 11 December 2023.

Lemon, Brendon. “Going to the Matt”. The Advocate. 18 January 2000.

“Matt Damon Sweats From His Scalp While Eating Spicy Wings | Hot One”. Youtube. uploaded by First We Feast. 5 August 2021. 

Minghella, Anthony. “Truly, Madly, Ripley”. The Guardian. 13 February 2000.

Mlotek, Haley. “The Most Stylish Scammer: 20 Years of The Talented Mr. Ripley”. The Ringer. 23 December 2019.

Rich, Frank. “The Talented Mr Minghella”. The Guardian. 23 January 2000. ‌

Sepinwall, Alan. “‘Ripley’ Review: The Talented Mr. Andrew Scott Leads a Hell of a Remake”. Rolling Stone/ 4 April 2024.

Seth, Radhika. “The Talented Mr. Ripley: 25 Years Later, a Look Back at the Film’s Sublime Summer Style”. Vogue. 18 March 2024. 

Smith, Krista. “The Rule of Law”. Vanity Fair. October 2004. 

Thomson, David. “Without Them, Mr. Ripley Would Be a Nobody”. The New York Times. 19 December 1999.

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