The Talented Mr Ripley Movie Analysis

The successful novel by Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr. Ripley, follows the psychopath Tom Ripley’s journey as he changes his identity, and navigates his life through his own talent of lying. The adaptation of the novel to a film addresses some changes to meet the ‘requirement’ of the new form of entertainment in order to grab the spectator’s attention. This paper will compare the narrative configuration of the novel and the film, and will show how the differences between the two affect the themes of the story. Both the novel and the film follow the chronological structure, starting with Herbert Greenleaf asking Tom to convince his son Dickie to come back to the states from Italy, followed by Tom’s Dickie’s, and Marge’s first meeting, friendship, and traveling trips, Tom’s murder of Dickie and Freddie, and ending with investigations. Although both the novel and the film follow the chronological structure, the film has a few additions and changes. For instance, the murder of Peter Smith-Kingsley, the addition of Meredith Logue’s character, the love affair …show more content…
When Tom is lying, the reader immediately knows it through the author; “But he didn’t want to say he was working for the Department of Internal Revenue” (11). However, in the film we do not know exactly what every character is thinking in any given situation. We might assume what the character’s intention is, but it is up to the viewer’s interpretation in some of the circumstances. Sometimes, we know what the characters are thinking about later on from their reactions. For instance, in the beginning of the film we cannot know if Tom likes or dislikes Marge. It seems that at the beginning of the film Tom actually liked her. Though, when reading the book, we know immediately that Tom does not like her. Therefore, The Talented Mr. Ripley is both objective and subjective – when the plot takes us into each character’s