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Talent Mr. Ripley

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The 1999 American psychological thriller The Talented Mr. Riley was directed by Anthony Minghella and was adapted from the novel by Patricia Highsmith. The film starts in 1950’s New York and moves to multiple cities in Italy. The film stars Matt Damon as Tom Ripley, who is hired by his boss to go to Italy and retrieve his son, Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law). While he ventures to return Mr. Greenleaf’s son to him, he meets Dickie’s fiancé, Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow) and is accepted into their walk of life for the time being. Tom sees the lavish and careless lifestyle that Dickie lives and becomes obsessed with the things that he has. He becomes jealous of Dickie’s friends and infuriated by his way of life and this causes him to lash out violently. After a confrontation, Tom kills Dickie and starts to live life falsely under …show more content…

In the film The Talented Mr. Ripley, director Anthony Minghella uses the portrayed actions of Tom Ripley to accentuate the notion that men would rather sin to become a false somebody rather than return to their antecedent real nothingness. The film opens with Mr. Ripley’s first lie as he is playing the piano at a luncheon in the place of someone else. Immediately after his performance, he returns the Princeton University blazer that he was wearing to its rightful owner and returns to work as a bathroom assistant. Early in the movie, the viewer sees that Tom would rather lie about who he is to get a taste of the limelight instead of stay devoted to his humble line of work. This instance is not immensely extreme because most people would trade the task of brushing rich, pompous men’s jackets for the opportunity to show off raw talent. Here, Tom is willing to fake and lie about who he is as long as it delivers him from the simple life that he currently has and this theme is transcended throughout

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