But this is a game of choosing a favorite shot, not describing the heartbreak of finding that experience has caused one to significantly downgrade a film that one had previously thought quite highly of (and please, Minghella partisans, understand that I'm speaking relatively: we're talking about the drop from a 9/10 to a 7/10, maybe an 8/10 when I get my bearings back). So let's not dwell on it.
Luckily, Minghella and cinematographer John Seale make the task of picking a shot, if not "easy" - in fact, the very opposite of easy - then at least, extravagantly pleasurable. The films is paralysingly beautiful: beautiful sets, beautiful locations, beautiful actors, beautiful lighting. Picking something based totally on its beauty, while appropriate in its own way, quickly proved to be totally impossible, so I shifted gears a little bit, and this is where I ended up:
In a very literal way, this shot dramatises the gulf between those two states: Tom stands looking down at Dickie and his girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow, in what remains my favorite performance of her career), and the outside, where they are, is light and beautiful and soft; the inside, where he stands, is dark and gloomy. It's a touch foreboding, in a noir sort of way, and Damon's posture adds to it: a certain tenseness despite his casual pose, with that little tiny detail of his right foot ready to move, like he's anxious to dart forward and swallow the couple up right now, but he's restraining himself.
And then there's the weird balance of the shot: by every classical rule, Damon should be much farther to the left, given his eyeline. What the simple gesture of putting him on the "wrong" side of the frame, the filmmakers quietly suggest that he's abnormal in some way (many ways, some of which we've already seen by this point). This composition also serves to emphasise the room, stuffed with various objects and pieces of furniture, none of it Tom's - he's Dickie's guest, staying in a spare room - but all of it standing in his figurative shadow, belonging to him now: it is the first part of Dickie's life that he has colonised, and by showing the room in the same instant that we're given our first hint that Tom is much darker than just an easy liar, the film engages in some foreshadowing. Here are the tools that Tom will use to rebuild his identity; here is the base from which all his future evils will spread. Lavish, but also a touch disconcerting and creepy, and a perfect note with which to begin the film's spiral into psychosis.
I don't want to overstate, because there are many many things I love about this film but I always feel like a significant percent of that love falls to Seale's cinematography. I think that this one of the "shottiest" films we've done - this season at least, in a good way and then I feel slightly miffed that no one really speaks of him when the topic of great cinematographers comes up and then I remember the last film he shot was The Tourist...
ReplyDelete...which is all a roundabout way of saying great shot and it makes use of one of my favourite photography elements of the film - beautiful lighting.
I like to think that "Minghella partisans" line was directed at me, to which I shall only bow in response as I exit clutching my chest. (A 9 to 7 demotion hurts!)
I don't have anything to say about the shot in particular--I haven't seen the movie since it was new. But I will say that few films I've ever seen have had a more intense emotional effect on me than this film did, due to the context in which I saw it. I was 14, relatively newly accepting of the fact that I was gay, and unintentionally in the midst of a run of seeing "being gay is connected to killing" films and plays (I saw "Never the Sinner", about Leopold and Loeb, shortly afterwards).
ReplyDeleteInto that simmering stew was dropped this film, aching with both erotic energy and dread. It shook me up good, and for a while. I have no idea what impact it would have on my relatively-together late-twenties self. I should probably rewatch it some time.
I'm hoping that it being chosen for "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" presages it being considered as a major movie of the late 1990s--I feel like it doesn't get the kind of respect it deserves.
Andrew- Not at all, sir! The "partisans" shot was because the film was such a crowd favorite suggestion for a future entry before he posted it, and though I didn't comment to that effect, I was awfully glad when he picked it. More a general, "please don't be mad at me, I still like it a lot" bit of bet-hedging.
ReplyDeleteAgreed about Seale; the first draft had a lot more about him and his fall from grace, but it was too much spurious chatter.
Zev- I will not lie, the degree to which it plays as "Gays am killerz" - more than the book, frankly - is part of why I don't like it as much as I thought I did. Definitely curious to see what you'd think on a re-watch.
I have to say, that's a hell of a shot right there. This film is one of those "bought the DVD for cheap and never got around to watching it" things for me, but that shot's all the motivation I need.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember who suggested this one, I'm not sure if it was this or "Summertime" I kept saying we *had to had to* do.
ReplyDeleteOn the gay thing, which I was hoping someone would bring up because I didn't have time to touch on it. There are two ways I consider this. The film is in a prickly spot re that, but
one one hand: I'm never convinced that Ripley reads as "Gays are evil" because I don't think he reads as gay (maybe bisexual, definitely sociopathic). Peter, the gay character, is along with Meredith the two characters who come across best in the narrative - the innocents.
And then, on the other hand, at the end Minghella has deftly managed what I suspect he aimed to do - make us feel overwhelming sympathy for Tom. That last shot of the door closing slays me and this time around watching I wondered, if Ripley IS meant to represent homosexuality the film offers a potentially tragic view of how the attitude towards homosexuality will forever keep someone like Tom forced to destroy what's close to them in the quest to keep up image.
Still, so much to consider because the film is so wily with what it shows us.
Chris- It's definitely worth watching at least once. Really tight thriller storytelling with some great movie star acting. I wish it was 20 minutes shorter, but that's about it.
ReplyDeleteAndrew- That's definitely a solid defense. I suppose my thing is (and here big ol' subjectivity gets in the way), I see it less as sympathising with Tom because he is sympathetic, and more as a way of implicating the audience. In a "look how easy it is for me to make you root for a psychopath" way, y'know? But I will concede that you've plainly thought more about the movie than I have.
For what it's worth, at the time I definitely saw the message as "The Wages Of Closet and Unrequited Desire Is Death". And as I was still semicloseted and (like every 14-year-old) suffused with unrequited desire, it was very easy to identify with and root for Tom.
ReplyDeleteI, too, liked the movie so much I read the book. I can forgive the one thing that makes the film less enjoyable (namely, Meredith) because she's absolutely essential to the adaptation of a one man show into a movie.
ReplyDeleteHer place in the ending seemed a bit contrived...and certainly Tom could have thought up some better lie to tell her?
But now I'm rambling. I was going to say that as much as she didn't always seem to quite fit into the narrative (obviously she wasn't in the book at all), she solves a serious problem with the adaptation. Since, in the book, Ripley is basically alone most of the time. It would be really hard to make that into good or even coherent cinema without using a voiceover.
Knowing that, I don't mind her so much. In fact I think the addition of her character is damn clever.
This is my really long winded way of asking, "What do you think makes the book so much better?"
"by every classical rule, Damon should be much farther to the left, given his eyeline."
ReplyDeleteI've spent a minute feeling so stupid, and then I've realized, I guess it's because nothing is supposed to direct our attention outside of the frame (or to the "borders" of the frame), and he's too near to the side he's looking at? Sometimes this classic composition rules baffle me, I don't always see the logic. The shot of a character looking at something off-screen is so usual.
I guess nobody mentioned this because it's so obvious, but I love how the room is filled with mirrors and frames. There are so many of them, they seem to alter the geography of the room itself, like they're distorted holes in it, compartments. Mirrors are a big visual motif in this movie.
Pretty much agree with everything that's been said about the movie here (thourgh I haven't read the book).
Alison- A lot of the reason I prefer the book is just that it's easier for a book to be about psychological states than a movie. Highsmith puts us right inside Tom Ripley; Minghella puts us uncomfortably close, but it's imply not the same level of queasy intimacy. And I much prefer the book's ending.
ReplyDeletejavi- Exactly right. The idea is that if the character is looking right off the edge of the frame, we're put off-balance because we expect to see what he's looking at, so to speak. The normal composition gives his face more room to breath. I'm doing a terrible job of explaining it.
I'm supposed to have an interest in these things, so I'm glad I was at least able to understand your point right! Still, since he's looking a little away in the z-axis, through a window, I'm not sure I would rate this shot as problematic that way. It's not like he's in profile looking inside the room, in which case I think the audience would indeed stare in that direction inmediately, leading them to the edge of the frame.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I forgot to mention that I love Gabriel Yared's themes for this movie, so catchy, and that it gets a blu-ray release on September (at the risk of sounding like spam or something, it seems worth mentioning to me, considering how much everyone loves its visuals).