The Talented Mr. Ripley
: 1422
Summary: "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is an Hitchcockian and blood-curdling study of the psychopath and his victims.
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Write-up Body: "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is an Hitchcockian and blood-curdling study of the psychopath and his victims. At the centre of this masterpiece, set in the exquisitely decadent scapes of Italy, is a titanic encounter between Ripley, the aforementioned psychopath protagonist and young Greenleaf, a consummate narcissist.
Ripley is a cartoonishly poor young adult whose overriding desire is to belong to a greater - or at least, richer - social class. Whilst he waits upon the subjects of his not so hidden desires, he receives an provide he can't refuse: to travel to Italy to retrieve the spoiled and hedonistic son of a shipbuilding magnate, Greenleaf Senior. He embarks upon a study of Junior's biography, personality, likes and hobbies. In a chillingly detailed procedure, he really assumes Greenleaf's identity. Disembarking from a luxurious Cunard liner in his destination, Italy, he "confesses" to a gullible textile-heiress that he is the young Greenleaf, traveling incognito.
Therefore, we are subtly introduced to the two over-riding themes of the antisocial personality disorder (still labeled by several expert authorities "psychopathy" and "sociopathy"): an overwhelming dysphoria and an even a lot more overweening drive to assuage this angst by belonging. The psychopath is an unhappy person. He is besieged by recurrent depression bouts, hypochondria and an overpowering sense of alienation and drift. He is bored with his own life and is permeated by a seething and explosive envy of the lucky, the mighty, the clever, the have it alls, the know it alls, the handsome, the happy - in short: his opposites. He feels discriminated against and dealt a poor hand in the great poker game known as life. He is driven obsessively to proper these perceived wrongs and feels entirely justified in adopting whatever indicates he deems required in pursuing this objective.
Ripley's reality test is maintained all through the film. In other words - Whilst he gradually merges with the object of his admiring emulation, the young Greenleaf - Ripley can often tell the distinction. Right after he kills Greenleaf in self-defense, he assumes his name, wears his clothes, cashes his checks and makes phone calls from his rooms. But he also murders - or tries to murder - those who suspect the truth. These acts of lethal self-preservation prove conclusively that he knows who he is and that he totally realizes that his acts are parlously illegal.
Young Greenleaf is young, captivatingly energetic, infinitely charming, breathtakingly handsome and deceivingly emotional. He lacks real talents - he know how to play only six jazz tunes, cannot make up his musical mind between his faithful sax and a newly alluring drum kit and, an aspiring writer, can not even spell. These shortcomings and discrepancies are tucked under a glittering facade of non-chalance, refreshing spontaneity, an experimental spirit, unrepressed sexuality and unrestrained adventurism. But Greenleaf Jr. is a garden selection narcissist. He cheats on his lovely and loving girlfriend, Marge. He refuses to lend income - of which he appears to have an unlimited offer, courtesy his ever a lot more disenchanted father - to a girl he impregnated. She commits suicide and he blames the primitiveness of the emergency services, sulks and kicks his precious record player. In the midst of this infantile temper tantrum the rudiments of a conscience are visible. He evidently feels guilty. At least for a Although.
Greenleaf Jr. falls in and out of love and friendship in a predictable pendulous rhythm. He idealizes his beaus and then devalues them. He finds them to be the quiddity of fascination one moment - and the distilled essence of boredom the next. And he is not shy about expressing his distaste and disenchantment. He is savagely cruel as he calls Ripley a leach who has taken over his life and his possessions (having previously invited him to do so in no uncertain terms). He says that he is relieved to see him go and he cancels off-handedly elaborate plans they produced together. Greenleaf Jr. maintains a poor record of keeping promises and a rich record of violence, as we discover towards the end of this suspenseful, taut yarn.
Ripley himself lacks an identity. He is a binary automaton driven by a set of two directions - turn into an individual and overcome resistance. He feels like a nobody and his overriding ambition is to be an individual, even if he has to fake it, or steal it. His only talents, he openly admits, are to fake both personalities and papers. He is a predator and he hunts for congruence, cohesion and meaning. He is in constant search of a loved ones. Greenleaf Jr., he declares festively, is the older brother he in no way had. Together with the long suffering fiancée in waiting, Marge, they are a family members. Hasn't Greenleaf Sr. really adopted him?
This identity disturbance, which is at the psychodynamic root of both pathological narcissism and rapacious psychopathy, is all-pervasive. Both Ripley and Greenleaf Jr. are not certain who they are. Ripley wants to be Greenleaf Jr. - not simply because of the latter's admirable personality, but since of his funds. Greenleaf Jr. cultivates a False Self of a jazz giant in the generating and the author of the Great American Novel but he is neither and he bitterly knows it. Even their sexual identity is not totally formed. Ripley is at as soon as homoerotic, autoerotic and heteroerotic. He has a succession of homosexual lovers (though apparently only platonic ones). However, he is attracted to ladies. He falls desperately in love with Greenleaf's False Self and it is the revelation of the latter's dilapidated Accurate Self that leads to the atavistically bloody scene in the boat.
But Ripley is a distinct -and a lot more ominous - beast altogether. He rambles on about the metaphorical dark chamber of his secrets, the key to which he wishes to share with a "loved" one. But this act of sharing (which by no means materializes) is intended merely to alleviate the constant pressure of the hot pursuit he is subjected to by the police and other people. He disposes with equal equanimity of both family and the occasional prying acquaintance. At least twice he utters words of love as he really strangles his newfound inamorato and tries to slash an old and rekindled flame. He hesitates not a split second once confronted with an give to betray Greenleaf Sr., his nominal employer and benefactor, and abscond with his cash. He falsifies signatures with ease, makes eye contact convincingly, flashes the most heart rending smile as soon as embarrassed or endangered. He is a caricature of the American dream: ambitious, driven, winsome, properly versed in the mantras of the bourgeoisie. But beneath this thin veneer of difficult learned, self-conscious and uneasy civility - lurks a beast of prey very best characterized by the DSM IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual):
"Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior, deceitfulness as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning other people to personal profit or pleasure, impulsivity or failure to plan ahead... reckless disregard for safety of self or other people... (and above all) lack of remorse." (From the criteria of the Antisocial Personality Disorder).
But possibly the most intriguing portraits are those of the victims. Marge insists, in the face of the most callous and abusive behavior, that there is some thing "tender" in Greenleaf Jr. As soon as she confronts the beguiling monster, Ripley, she encounters the fate of all victims of psychopaths: disbelief, pity and ridicule. The truth is too horrible to contemplate, let alone comprehend. Psychopaths are inhuman in the most profound sense of this compounded word. Their emotions and conscience have been amputated and replaced by phantom imitations. But it is rare to pierce their meticulously crafted facade. They much more usually than not go on to great success and social acceptance Although their detractors are relegated to the fringes of society. Both Meredith and Peter, who had the misfortune of falling in deep, unrequited love with Ripley, are punished. One by losing his life, the other by losing Ripley time and again, mysteriously, capriciously, cruelly.
Therefore, ultimately, the film is an intricate study of the pernicious approaches of psychopathology. Mental disorder is a venom not confined to its source. It spreads and affects its environment in a myriad surreptitiously subtle forms. It is a hydra, growing one hundred heads where one was severed. Its victims writhe and as abuse is piled upon trauma - they turn to stone, the mute witnesses of horror, the stalactites and stalagmites of discomfort untold and unrecountable. For their tormentors are constantly as talented as Mr. Ripley is and they are as helpless and as clueless as his victims are.
