• Adventurous
• Nostalgic

‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ (1999)

The best thing I watched in April 2024 was Ripley, writer/director Steve Zaillian’s stark, eerie, and throughly enveloping series adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. Zaillian’s decision to film the series entirely in black-and-white is, as the kids say, a choice — a choice I applauded, but one that also left me wanting to see cities like Rome and Venice in their full, sun-dappled splendor. So I turned to Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film adaptation The Talented Mr. Ripley, which tells the same basic story in quite a different manner — and not just because it was filmed in color. In its favor, everyone here looks young and impossibly gorgeous in contrast to Netflix’s Ripley; to wit, Matt Damon was 29 when the movie was released but barely looks 25, whereas Andrew Scott is a more world-weary 47 (but still super duper handsome, don’t get it twisted). To its detriment, this movie version features infinitely more jazz. Both are very worthy of your time, though, and now I’m looking forward to watching cinema’s other Ripley adaptations.