"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 higher - or at least, richer - social class. While he waits
upon the subjects of his not so hidden desires, he receives an offer he
cannot 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 process, he actually 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.
Thus, we are subtly introduced to the two over-riding themes of the
antisocial personality disorder (still labeled by many professional
authorities "psychopathy" and "sociopathy"): an overwhelming dysphoria
and an even 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 called life. He is driven obsessively to right these
perceived wrongs and feels entirely justified in adopting whatever
means he deems necessary in pursuing this goal.
Ripley's reality test is maintained throughout the film. In other words
- while he gradually merges with the object of his admiring emulation,
the young Greenleaf - Ripley can always tell the difference. 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 fully 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, can't make up his
musical mind between his faithful sax and a newly alluring drum kit
and, an aspiring writer, can't 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 variety
narcissist. He cheats on his lovely and loving girlfriend, Marge. He
refuses to lend money - of which he seems to have an unlimited supply,
courtesy his ever 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 while.
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 made 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 instructions - become someone and overcome resistance. He
feels like a nobody and his overriding ambition is to be somebody, 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 family. Greenleaf Jr., he declares festively, is the older brother he
never had. Together with the long suffering fiancée in waiting, Marge,
they are a family. Hasn't Greenleaf Sr. actually 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 sure who they are. Ripley wants
to be Greenleaf Jr. - not because of the latter's admirable
personality, but because of his money. Greenleaf Jr. cultivates a False
Self of a jazz giant in the making and the author of the Great American
Novel but he is neither and he bitterly knows it. Even their sexual
identity is not fully formed. Ripley is at once homoerotic, autoerotic
and heteroerotic. He has a succession of homosexual lovers (though
apparently only platonic ones). Yet, he is attracted to women. He falls
desperately in love with Greenleaf's False Self and it is the
revelation of the latter's dilapidated True Self that leads to the
atavistically bloody scene in the boat.
But Ripley is a different -and 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 never materializes) is intended merely to alleviate the constant
pressure of the hot pursuit he is subjected to by the police and
others. He disposes with equal equanimity of both loved ones and the
occasional prying acquaintance. At least twice he utters words of love
as he actually strangles his newfound inamorato and tries to slash an
old and rekindled flame. He hesitates not a split second when
confronted with an offer to betray Greenleaf Sr., his nominal employer
and benefactor, and abscond with his money. He falsifies signatures
with ease, makes eye contact convincingly, flashes the most heart
rending smile when embarrassed or endangered. He is a caricature of the
American dream: ambitious, driven, winsome, well versed in the mantras
of the bourgeoisie. But beneath this thin veneer of hard learned,
self-conscious and uneasy civility - lurks a beast of prey 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 others to personal profit or pleasure, impulsivity or failure
to plan ahead... reckless disregard for safety of self or others...
(and above all) lack of remorse." (From the criteria of the Antisocial
Personality Disorder).
But perhaps the most intriguing portraits are those of the victims.
Marge insists, in the face of the most callous and abusive behavior,
that there is something "tender" in Greenleaf Jr. When 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 more often
than not go on to great success and social acceptance while 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.
Thus, ultimately, the film is an intricate study of the pernicious ways
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 pain untold and unrecountable. For their
tormentors are often as talented as Mr. Ripley is and they are as
helpless and as clueless as his victims are.
