Cheap The Talented Mr. Ripley [Region 2] (DVD) (Anthony Minghella) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of The Talented Mr. Ripley [Region 2]

The Shadows and Selves of the Tragic Mr. Ripley
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."

Matt Damon's Best Work
I'm a huge Matt Damon fan because he is such a versatile actor. He doesn't disappoint here in The Talented Mr. Ripley. A+ for the most beautiful cinematography I have ever seen with a musical score that is haunting. I'm giving the movie five stars because to me it was perfect until the very last scene, which felt incomplete and unfinished. Jude Law more than holds his own against Matt Damon's subtle performance as Dickie Greenleaf, the wealthy dilettante that has the life that Matt Damon's Tom Ripley covets. The film completely draws you in and you truly feel both Damon's desire and desperation and Law's utter contempt of both of those emotions. The film also makes you long to be in Europe during that era, to be a part of that time period. The supporting performances of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett and Gwenyth Paltrow are also very strong. This film truly shows you how the other half lives and what it feels like to be on the outside looking in.