Just another remake? No! In a time of over-stimulating “brain rot”, Ripley mercifully redefines pace through intimate thought, glorious black-and-white imagery and a dash of brutal murder. Directed by Steven Zaillian, this suspense thriller Netflix series (Netflix – I know!) is a neo-noir Hitchcock classic brought to 2024. As the second remake of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, Zaillian’s show vitally turns the famous story’s attention to tone, presentation and immaculately crafted details. From Venice to Sicily, Ripley tours Italy’s rich cultural history through paint, sculpture, and gothic Italian architecture, where twisting stairways and caverned corners echo the story’s complex psychological labyrinth.
Ripley is Outstanding
Robert Elswit’s cinematography is nothing short of outstanding. With wide frames and a fixation on space, each achromic shot becomes a voyeuristic painting of light, shadow and depth haunting Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) at every turn. Abstaining from overly emotional music, Zaillian provides Ripley’s intensely ominous sound design with full audial focus and cunningly manipulates it to personify objects as characters haphazardly conducting the narrative.
In a world where we’ve become desensitised to murder on screen, Ripley redefines what it means and takes to kill. The show’s presentation of systematic murder focuses on the more laborious, mundane and isolating angles of the act. Zaillian proceeds each death with nearly 30-minute-long silent clean-up scenes in excruciating “real-time” detail (which I insist do not once lose your attention). Often glorified by the cool action of violence in cinema, Ripley feels like a long-awaited reminder that murder is, surprise surprise, inhumane, awful, cruel, and (judging by Scott’s phenomenal performance), just plain-right exhausting.
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Is he relatable?
Despite being directly exposed to Ripley’s psychopathy, you cannot help but empathise with his struggle, his trial-and-error methodology, and ultimately his mistakes. Although not a new approach to antagonistic characters, the show’s periods of patient silence allow full transparency into Tom’s mind. Instead of being spoon-fed the ins and outs of the protagonist’s choices, the viewer is forced to conclude Tom’s next action independently. Here, your synchronising thoughts immerse you in the killer’s mind. Becoming one and the same, you are forced to sit, guilty, in the complicity of the crime.
But don’t let that stop you! Besides your sweaty palms, Ripley’s relentless tale of deception, duality and desire is guaranteed to obsess you. A remake to be treasured, the show is a visual, audial and narrative triumph that takes a fresh dark psychological spin on the adored crime classic and I cannot applaud it enough.