the talented mr ripley

There's quite a clever trick in the Talented Mr Ripley where you are essentially made to empathise with a killer.

Well, I say empathise.  It's more like you feel on his side.  Well, ish.  It's more like you feel a conflict as to whether he should get away with it or be caught.  However, that's more in the beginning.  Towards the end it's more difficult to feel the same as he does more and more wrong stuff.

Let me explain - the issue is that Tom Ripley is a poor kid who lives in a crappy apartment and does crappy jobs.  However, through chance and the judicious application of a bit of fibbing, he finds himself thrust into the world of high society.

And we're talking about the 1950s, so poor was really poor and the high life must have seem like a completely different world.  He also ends up in Italy, which just adds another sheen of coolness.

So okay he fibbed, but he's poor so you sort of feel it's okay.  He then basically latches on to a guy who is very wealthy and privileged and, to be frank, is rather unpleasant.  So although you feel Tom is scrounging, the guy he's scrounging off - Dickie Greenleaf - kinda deserves it.

However, eventually it all turns and to avoid spoilers I won't tell you the exact details of how it turns, but the point is you kinda realise that Ripley isn't really very... balanced.  I mean, I wouldn't say he's mad, just that he's a sandwich short of a full picnic.

There's also a bit of an undercurrent of homosexuality, which would have been a serious taboo back in the 50s.  So was that a contributing factor (I don't mean in a gays are evil but as in it would have been a difficult thing to deal with and he clearly falls in love with Dickie).

What I'm really trying to get at here is that these are complicated characters who feel very real.  Although the circumstances are extreme, you kinda feel like it could all hang together.

Something I particularly liked was that the whole film is told through Tom's viewpoint, but eventually you come to realise that there have been things happening in parallel that almost represent another film.  There's a point towards the end in particular where there's a flip in what you perceive to be happening that clearly says "well those other guys have been doing other stuff and where Tom (and therefore we) thought it was going to be a problem, now it's his salvation".

It's very clever, which is how I'd sum up the film - it's intelligent.  It also looks beautiful and there are some excellent performances.

My only criticism is that it's a bit long.  It is a complicated story and so brevity probably wouldn't have helped it, but there are some sections towards the beginning where it perhaps labours the point a bit heavily.  Also, a couple of things don't quite pay off in as full a way as I'd thought they might, but it's not like it makes it a bad film, just more old school - there's a big build up and a lot of development before it really gets to the "thriller" side of things.