Ripley - starts today on Netflix. Anyone fancy a discussion thread?

[Netaporter]

Based upon the book ‘The talented mr ripley’ by Patricia Highsmith Andrew Scott stars in this adaptation. It is filmed in B&W so interested to see how this differs from the glorious film starring Gwyneth, Jude and Matt Damon.

Going to start episode 1 later this morning.

Well I really enjoyed it. I didn't mind the black and white and it made some scenes quite surreal.
I liked the John Malkovich cameo - recognised a fellow con artist!

I’ve just been rewatching the film & actually as pp said I think there’s def room for both. Jude Law makes a gorgeous Dickie but he’s such a flirt & a tease & he’s quite mean to Marge & Tom. Matt Damon’s Ripley is much more gormless & practically drooling over Dickie & he seems genuinely remorseful after he kills him. Anyway I’d forgotten a lot about the film.

Agree with your review!

I actually think the slight oppressive feel of the black and white film adds to the atmosphere. I saw someone somewhere say it must have been cheaper to make since it had no colour 😂I am old enough to remember when tv was half colour programmes, half b/w though

I'm just marking the thread to return to later. I love Highsmith but never read these books because I'd seen the old film and assumed i knew the story. Just finished the Netflix limited series and have ordered the ripley books as i can now see what she would have written, can't wait to read them. She was a master of suspense, I'm sorry to have discounted these stories based on the original film, which i did love, but based on the limited series, i can see it was so limited.

I have seen the first 5 now. It's much more faithful to the book. I'd forgotten how much murder admin there is 😀.

Two things.
The 'flash of colour' that a couple of posters have mentioned, just so I don't spoil it for others, was it a nod, do you think to a film with the initials DLN?

The other thing is, has anyone noticed the recurrent theme of staircases, endless flights of stairs, in scene after scene, folk are labouring up and down massive staircases, and in a couple of scenes it was almost Escher-like, with one person going up and one going down. Once I started seeing it, it obsessed me. Think I could do an MA on it, 'Relevance of Staircase Imagery in Ripley blah blah blah'.

Hmmm, not sure, unless there is another flash of colour that I missed. Schindlers List did it too. I think in Ripley it's just for an added touch of emphasis.

Despite knowing exactly why the aesthetic choices were made, and whom they play homage to (my postgraduate degree was the sort MN hates the most) at the end of this series I just felt like I'd wasted eight odd hours of my life watching various forms of ID be peered at by suspicious receptionist/bank tellers/ticket sellers. And not one of them, despite all looking absolutely like they knew he was 100% dodgy, did anything proactive about it. With the exception of one bank teller, but to be honest he ran off before he even gave her time to get back to him.

What a waste of a wonderful story. We get it, he forges stuff. And takes seemingly forever to murder people.

Oh the stairs thing is just a direct Hitchcock rip. Nothing smarter or more intricate than that I'm afraid.

Here's what they were getting at with the stairs, and none of it was original. nofilmschool.com/hitchcock-stairs

I absolutely loved the 2000 film and I absolutely loved this new version. The black and white filming was glorious and the slow, slow style was just so tense .

I think in the film, Jude Law stole it and Matt Damon seemed such a sad loser in comparison. Whereas seeing the full horror of the character of Ripley come through with Andrew Scott was a revelation to me. Also off to go look out the books!

There are a couple of crucial stairs scenes in Plein Soleil. Specifically the scene with Freddie and Ripley on the stairs is shot in real time - you feel every second of it.

Oooh how jaunty, this Ripley programme is all black and white to make it artistic. It can go in the bin with that vertigo inspiring monstrosity Poor Things. Can directors not shoot anything in a reasonable manner these days?

@OolongTeaDrinker
Immediately as soon as I read the title, I thought the same thing! 🤣🤣 devastated!

In the film, you really miss Dicky's once he's gone.

In the series, you barely even remember him. He's so bland and there was no chemistry between him and Tom.

Here, Tom is played as an outright sociopath, which apparently is more true to the books. But in the film, Tom kind of falls into the whole thing by accident. He kills Dicky in a fit of rage at being a 'lover scorned'. Seeing him progress from the goofy loser who walked on the beach in thick glasses and clunky shoes, to the suave sophisticate 'to the manner born', as Marge puts it, is fascinating. You don't really have that in the series. I never got why Dicky would want Tom around. Not only is he obviously shifty, he's not great company either. So while the series is tense and well acted, I think it lacks the character development and 'human element' of the film.

And I must be the only one here who isn't a massive fan of Andrew Scott!

Hi everyone. I haven't started this yet, and am just wondering if it's worth it. I recently watched Saltburn, which I loved, and followed it with the Talented Mr Ripley (also enjoyable). If this series has exactly the same plot as the film, though, then I might give it a miss.
Thoughts? Thanks.

I think it would be worth watching.

The basic plot is the same, but there are quite a few differences, with the series apparently being truer to the book. The characters, and their relationships, are handled very differently in the film and the series. To me, the whole 'vibe' of the series is very different from the film. It's 8 episodes, so quite a big 'investment', but no obligation to watch it all if you find yourself getting bored.

I love the book The Talented Mr Ripley, I love to film with JL, and I even played Marge in a stage adaptation of the novel! I just couldn’t get into this Netflix adaptation and I LOVE Andrew Scott.

Them being older changes the dynamic of the relationships. The lack of colour is a let down for me. Somehow, the bright colour of the movie offsets the darkness of what is happening. This is just dark and I didn’t enjoy that.

It’s a shame. I should have loved it for the story and AS alone. I think it will be a marmite adaptation.

Fucks sake! Me too! I was getting all excited then

Finding Ripley very disappointing - Andrew Scott is too old, the wooden, nepo baby, non-binary Freddie is a distraction, and the black and whiteness deadens it. The film I love, this is so meh in my opinion.

I came away feeling privileged to have seen the series! Amazing how differently it has affected viewers.

The cinematography's so good that every shot could be printed & framed. It was worth sacrificing the colours of the gorgeous settings. And I loved the understated acting.

I really enjoyed it!
Didn't think I'd like the Black and White but it really worked for me.

And , of course, the stairs!

I finished it over the weekend and I really enjoyed it. I found the b/w ramped up the tension: you aren't distracted by the wonderful colours of Italy, you have to focus on the people. I loved Dickie, thought he was well-played: a lot sadder and less suave than Jude Law, but after all he had gone to Italy to find himself and knew he was kind of useless at the things he wanted to be (writer, painter). That is sad.

Andrew Scott is just so good at playing a dead-eyed manipulator. He's got one thing in common with Dickie, which is that he's also not very good at what he does. You see how his scheme fails in New York, and he only gets away with things in Italy because people aren't paying attention to him really, they are far more interested in not cooperating with the police, or believing versions of Dickie that never existed. He is thwarted all the time, covering his back all the time, and Andrew Scott's defeated look is so good. The smooth police inspector is the closest to working him out but he isn't imaginative enough. Ripley excels as a psychological manipulator, though, and I loved how they showed his workings in the last couple of episodes. He was better at that than messing about with cheques and scams.

Nobody mentioned it here but the oppressive feel to the series was really heightened by everyone watching him. Every hotel clerk, every bank teller, every character he meets, even his landlady's cat. And the statues! All eyes on him.

I loved it too. I really fell into the atmospheric B&W noir, and felt like I was living in 1960/61.

Scott plays Ripley in a really sociopathic way, without much 'affect', which is true to the book.

Interestingly, read an interview with him yesterday which made me feel that Flynn's depiction of Dickie was truer to the book too, in that he didn't have much talent or charisma and had got where he was through wealth alone. Vacuous wealthy people drifting around, amusing themselves with blow-ins like Ripley, thinking themselves safe from anything edgy because of their wealth. You can imagine this incensing Ripley, who was a better artist and had had to live by his wits alone.

So yeah, I loved it, found it menacing and gripping. I went from hating Ripley (loathing him even, at one point!) to rooting for him, and I'm still not sure how my mind turned!

Loved Dakota Fanning as Marge. Loved her style, her disappointment and heartbreak - loved everything about her.

It's years since I saw the Jude Law and Matt Damon film, but have a vague memory of it being more Hollywood-ish. I clicked onto a tiny snippet of it just now and Gwyneth Paltrow didn't feel like Marge any more. It felt like I was watching actors acting, whereas in Netflix's Ripley, it felt like I really didn't know what the hell was going to happen next, and I loved that.

Great point about the watching eyes, @VerlynWebbe 👀

The one thing that annoyed me was the thick policemen. They ignored the blood-stained bathroom and never once asked for a photo of Tom/Dickie, despite riffling through Marge's many snapshots. I had to remind myself that thrillers of the era always feature dense detectives, but that didn't stop me chuntering indignantly at the screen! I did enjoy the inspector's shambolic arrogance, though.

I also learned more about Caravaggio than I expected to.