Aging Disgracefully

The film opens in Berlin with a scene in which Ripley, in full form, figuratively kills two birds with one stone. One of them is Reeves (Ray Winstone), his associate with whom he quickly parts ways (after cheating him out of a cool several million). Reeves is a crude and stupid understudy, and it is clear that Ripley feels that his "finishing school" cannot help a man like him. The film then fast-forwards three years to find Ripley comfortably ensconced in an elegant mansion in the Veneto, living comfortably (indeed, elegantly) off of his (considerable) ill gotten gains with his harpsichord playing Italian wife (the truly gorgeous Chiara Caselli). In short, Ripley is living the sort of life in Northern Italy* that suits his rather classical, up-market tastes with a beautiful wife who complements him culturally. But one also senses that Ripley is slightly bored with such an unchallenging existence.

We quickly meet Jonathan Trevani (Dougray Scott), a vaguely snotty local English ex-pat picture framer who lives a quiet existence with his wife and child. On a lark, Jonathan invites Ripley to a small party at his far more modest home. However, when Ripley arrives (with, of course, the nicest bottle of Amarone), he finds Jonathan insulting him in front of other guests. After a tense exchange with Jonathan, Ripley returns home to discover Reeves in his kitchen behaving like a caveman. After Ripley, who clearly regrets his earlier failure to literally kill Reeves, brings focus to the discussion ("Are you going to tell me what you want or is some truffling pig going to find your body in a few weeks?"), Reeves explains that he needs help: he has some business competitors that need "de-regulating" and Ripley seems ideal for the job. Ripley suggests that perhaps this set-up is better suited to a neophyte. The next day he suggests Jonathan, who Ripley has learned is dying of cancer and terribly worried for the welfare of the family he leaves behind (insecurity brought on by resentment of Ripley's wealth may have played some role in Jonathan's poor behavior at the party). To increase the pressure on Jonathan, Ripley throws in $50,000 of his own. Jonathan eventually gives in, but in the hands of the incompetent Reeves, the scheme, along with Jonathan's welfare, begins to fall apart.

It isn't really clear why Ripley steered Reeves toward Jonathan. Was he trying to obliterate Jonathan's illusions of moral superiority? Was it simple and crude revenge for an insult? Was he trying to help Jonathan (after all, the money was desperately needed by the Trevani family)? Malkovich's Ripley is a sufficiently complex character that all of these motives may have played an important role in his thinking.

As the film progresses, and Jonathan becomes trapped and imperiled by Reeve's idiotic scheming, Ripley decides to take action. I will say no more about the plot, because this film is, to be sure, a suspense, regardless of the comparative importance of other dimensions of it. But Ripley's actions as the film progresses hardly represent the path of least resistance for himself (ie that set of actions which most easily insures his own welfare). At the same time, this is still a purposeful Ripley at the top of his game. Malkovich thus offers us a complex portrait of a vicious and self-preserving master operator suddenly seized of...is it guilt for having placed the hapless Jonathan in these circumstances? Is it pity for Jonathan and his family? Is it sheer boredom? Or is it all of these things, with perhaps just a dash of something much deeper?

However, despite Malkovich's commanding presence, the film is actually as much about Jonathan Trevani as Tom Ripley. I once wrote that "Ripley is our anti-hero Hero because he speaks to our darkest resentments, needs, urges and capabilities" and that "on some darker level most of us actually identify with him." However, in some sense these statements come too easily: we can maintain this dark delight at a safe distance. It is someone else, someone with a reassuring oddness to him, acting out on these dark urges. This is, after all, a singular character. We may revel in his depravity, but we aren't forced to actually consider seriously our own inner Ripley. This film closes that distance and forces us to ask a harder question: to what extent do we each indeed have one? How many of us, if pressed by circumstance, are actually capable of behaving the way that Ripley does when he is pressed? Ripley is certainly a sociopath, but not a malignant one in the sense of his ruthlessness reflecting gratuitous malice: he commits no more violence than necessary to achieve his goals, chief among them being self-preservation. But is the difference between ourselves and him really a question of degree, rather than fundamental difference? For example, how many of us are capable of ruthless violence if our family was threatened? Or, pushing it further, their financial security? Certainly Jonathan Trevani could not, at the end, answer these questions as smugly as he once might have.

Ripley's Game is an outstanding, and largely obscure, gem.

*It is an interesting commentary on the shifting sands of American fantasies of life in Europe that the book is set in rural France, whereas the movie-made decades afterward in our own era-is set in Northern Italy.