The Talented Mr. Ripley - Honey Azh

Thrillers are types of films known to promote intense excitement and suspense. Thrillers tend to have high levels of anticipation, ultra – heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety and nerve-wracking tension. The Talented Mr Ripley is a thriller made in 1999 and directed by Anthony Minghella. The Talented Mr Ripley starred most notably Matt Damon as Tom Ripley and Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf. The film was mainly in Italy with Rome and Venice being used s a backdrop for the narrative.

The film is set in the 1950s when Tom Ripley, borrows a Princeton jacket to play piano at a garden party in America. When the wealthy father of a recent Princeton graduate speaks to Tom, Tom pretends to know the son and is almost immediately offered $1,000 to go to Italy to persuade Dickie Greenleaf to return home to his father in America. Tom therefore goes to Italy, and attaches himself to Dickie and to Marge, Marge who is Dickie's fiancée. Aside from Tom’s lying, Tom’s talents also included impersonation and forgery, so when the confident Dickie has enough of Tom, dismissing him as a boring, Tom goes to extreme lengths to make Dickie’s privileges his, by to the audience surprise killing Dickie. This part most of all portrays the fact that The talented Mr. Ripley is a thriller as there is of course a murderer who is Tom Ripley wanting to fill Dickie’s shoes. This is therefore conventional of a thriller.

The characters in this film are typical of this thriller genre, most of all Tom Ripley’s character as shown in ‘The talented Mr. Ripley’ because he will go to any measure to be and achieve what he wants. For example as I have mentioned that Tom kills Dickie in order to take his identity from him and make Dickie lose everything he has. Therefore the film has a clear antagonist with a single minded goal to be someone he is not in Tom Ripley’s case. Another main character in this film is Dickie; he is rather typical of a thriller also as he is clearly the protagonist the man who was unfortunate to be there and is unaware of all of Tom’s horrifying thoughts. This is typical of a thriller due to the fact that someone completely innocent was gone after by the antagonist through no clear fault of his own.

The films mise en scene commences in America and continues in Rome where most of the film is shot. The majority of the film was shot in daylight which is considerably unconventional for a typical thriller. This perhaps connotes that the fear for the audience is laid down from somewhere else. This is symbolized when Tom and Dickie were on the boat in broad daylight which was the scene were Tom killed Dickie, ironically on Dickies own boat.

The genre of this film is a clear and typical thriller. This is because it consists of a murderer and a clear antagonist. This represents the fact that ‘The talented Mr. Ripley’ is a thriller with suspense and tension used to appeal to the audience to this genre.

The shot used when Tom killed Dickie were a mixture of close-ups and also bird’s eye view. This allowed the audience to experience a high tension murder scene with plenty of reactions shots used to show the characters expressions throughout the scene. Other significant moment were the camera shots were important was in Tom house as Marge discovered that Tom is in fact murdered her fiancée. The camera work and angles used were very focus, which reflected her emotion. There was also the use of close ups to show the emotions of her face once she discovered the shocking truth. As Marge walked away from Tom there was also a panning shot used to represent her fear. This shot intensified the scene as the audience felt as though Tom was walking towards them. This was one of scenes that highlighted the genre of the film, because of how frightening and edgy it was. This was frightening for the audience because they thought that she would be the next victim since tom killed anyone who got in his way, or anyone who suspected the truth that he murdered Dickie. Therefore these were all techniques used by the director to enable this film to follow the codes and conventions of a thriller.

All in all ‘The talented Mr. Ripley’ is a conventional and thrilling film that follows most of the codes and conventions of a typical thriller film. This is not only because of the fact that there is a murderer in the film but also because it involves someone wanting to steel someone else’s identity. I therefore feel that anyone who likes thriller will defiantly enjoy this film as in goes into thrillers from a different perspective which is maybe a bit more realistic that people will go through outrageous measures to get exactly what they want, like Tom Ripley certainly did in this film.