Excessive Desire In The Film 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'

Excessive desire can have disastrous consequences, a recurring theme In the film ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ directed by Anthony Minghella and produced in December 1999. one scene in particular that explores this is the ending scene of the film (Peter's death scene), as it contains a variety of film techniques in culmination that are skilfully used to captivate audience's attention and create emotion to portray Minghella’s message that excessive desire can have disastrous consequences . A few of these important techniques I analysed was lighting, music, symbols/motifs and editing.
The foremost aspect in Peter’s death scene I evaluated, was the use of lighting. Near the ending of the scene, there is a mid-shot of Tom sitting on the floor with half his in light, then pans to the other side of his face shaded by darkness. The use of the lighting installs a sickening, mysterious atmosphere. As the split natural cool toned lighting emphasises Tom’s split personality, and consequently the light represents the good in him and the darkness represents the evil that he has become. Throughout the film Tom has been presented as a lost soul trying to find his identity as he tries to swap between his personality and dickies as he says to peter before he murders him ‘I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody’ thus this use of lighting shows the …show more content…
As we are looking at tom with the split lighting we can hear a voice over from the previous scene of peter talking to Tom as he struggles for air and tom sobbing. This shows the audience that tom does feel regret and has some good in him which ties back into the lighting. The use of an L cut allows us to figure out what tom is thinking about as he is sitting on the floor and create depth to the scene in order to show the audience that mistakes you have made will stay with you even after the incident has