Lifestyle

Why Patricia Highsmith's most famous creature, Tom Ripley, continues to fascinate

Published

9 months ago

April 15, 2024

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Why Patricia Highsmith's most famous creature, Tom Ripley, continues to fascinate

Andrew Scott plays Tom Ripley in the new Netflix series, Ripley, drawn from Patricia Highsmith’s novel.

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Andrew Scott plays Tom Ripley in the new Netflix series, Ripley, drawn from Patricia Highsmith’s novel.

For a total psychopath, Tom Ripley is remarkably popular. As we near the 25th anniversary of the acclaimed Oscar-nominated big screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s most infamous creation, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Netflix has released a striking new reimagining, simply titled Ripley. Sinister and visually stunning, the series reminds us why the book continues to influence popular culture.

Through seven decades, Highsmith’s novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley has grown in allure as a masterwork of American noir, boosted by – but distinct from – its adaptations. The core story is always the same: A wealthy man enlists fraudster Tom Ripley, his son’s distant acquaintance, to travel to Italy and woo his errant, playboy son back to the fold; but rather than returning Dickie to his family, an envious Tom disposes of him and assumes his identity. Other murders follow to cover the first.

This bloody-minded serial killer fantasist and antisocial social climber would become Patricia Highsmith’s best known and best loved creation. She published five Ripley novels in all from 1955 to 1991, the last a few years before her death. Since his debut, her all-American psychopath has inspired six screen adaptations, a play by Phyllis Nagy, and a musical staging. That legacy is a testament to Ripley’s complicated appeal – amoral, unassuming and audacious — and Highsmith’s scalpel-sharp writing. There’s something irresistible about an unapologetic grifter, who seizes the chance at a better life by stealing someone else’s. The text is rich enough to handle wildly different interpretations that feel true to the original and brilliant in their own right.

A window into Ripley’s roots

In the first Ripley novel, one childhood scene is especially vivid. When he was 12, and his parents long dead, Tom’s reluctant guardian Aunt Dottie made him get out of her car and run an errand on foot while stuck in traffic. When the cars started moving again, Tom was forced into “running between huge, inching cars, always about to touch the door of Aunt Dottie’s car and never being quite able to…” Instead of waiting, his aunt “had kept inching along as fast as she could go…” Worse, she taunted him, “yelling, ‘Come on, come on, slowpoke!’ out the window.” The memory ends with Tom in teary frustration and his aunt hurling a slur at him: “Sissy! He’s a sissy from the ground up. Just like his father!”

Untangling the contradictions of crime novelist Patricia Highsmith

This story bubbles up into the memory of the adult con man Tom Ripley while he’s lying on a ship deck chair on the way to Europe. Buoyed in body and spirit by the luxury and abundance of his surroundings, Tom starts to plot a brighter future for himself. But he keeps returning to past indignities, and that cruel vignette stands out. Looking back from his comfortable perch, Ripley thinks, “It was a wonder he had emerged from such treatment as well as he had.” This isn’t justification, just a part of Ripley’s essence – Ripley as a vulnerable boy rather than cipher or leech or thief, a man whose emotional and physical deprivations curdle into resentment and violence.

Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley in the Netflix series Ripley.

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That window into Ripley’s roots is one reason I loved re-reading the novel in the lead up to a new adaptation. Highsmith illuminates the inner life of what she recognized as her “psychopath hero” with identification rather than judgment (Highsmith was openly enamored of her creation). That intense interiority is one reason Highsmith is often credited with helping reinvent and popularize the psychological thriller, a genre with roots in the 19th century, and why her influence persists despite a deservedly controversial reputation. Her debut novel became Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) less than a year after publication, and her 1957 novel Deep Water appears on The Atlantic’s list of 100 Great American novels.

With Ripley, the narration lives outside of Tom but close enough for dissection. We learn that he’s a loner but not completely, that he gets antsy around people, only able to sustain a performance of normalcy for so long. He’s caught between a need for independence born of his smothering yet loveless upbringing and an aching desire for other people’s good regard.

In proximity to beauty and privilege but not of it, Tom’s neediness escalates. He’s ruthless and amoral, but human and self-conscious. He sobs! And he yearns.. Scene by masterful scene, sentence by sentence, with each disturbing thought and memory, Highsmith reveals how Ripley’s psyche veers out of bounds, a slow drip punctuated by shocking jumps. When Dickie and Tom give a taxi home to a local girl they bump into, and she thanks them, calling them the nicest Americans she’s ever met, Tom remarks to Dickie, “You know what most crummy Americans would do in a case like that—rape her.” It’s a sharp kick in the midst of banality.

Don't call him a sociopath: Here's how Andrew Scott humanizes 'Ripley'

Worse, when real violent thoughts finally result in action, Tom revels like a pig in mud in his stolen persona. Feeling “blameless and free,” he likens his confidence in Dickie’s shoes to how “a fine actor probably feels when he plays an important role on a stage with the conviction that the role he is playing could not be played better by anyone else.” The great beauty of Highsmith’s novel lies in moments like this, illuminating the dark recesses of a psyche spinning out of control.

A story ripe for retelling

A portrait this faceted begs for retelling and reinvention — it’s a dream role for an actor — but the text also defies total capture. Highsmith could make a two-act play out of the domestic symbolism and social psychological dynamics of Dickie purchasing a refrigerator.

The beauty of the 1999 movie and 2024 series interpretations of Ripley, despite this high bar, is that they’re fully formed artworks of their own.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law in the film The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

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Netflix’s series has both the text and the sublimely entertaining 1999 movie with its constellation of Hollywood stars to live up to. Matt Damon and Jude Law were at the height of their powers as Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf (Law earned a best supporting actor Oscar nomination), and Gwyneth Paltrow was incandescent and multidimensional as Dickie’s girlfriend Marge. They’re memorably supported by Cate Blanchette and Philip Seymour Hoffman as trust fund-babies abroad. Their production is gorgeously shot in the sun-drenched Amalfi coast and the Oscar nominated soundtrack beautifully amplifies the emotion and story. In Anthony Minghella’s screenplay, when the nastiness and violence emerge from Dickie as well as Tom it’s an arresting aberration against this deliberately effervescent, candy-colored backdrop.

The appeal of Minghella’s acclaimed and popular film has more than endured, but it’s not the only classic iteration of Ripley’s debut. The first significant big screen rendering was the 1960 French thriller Purple Noon, starring Alain Delon as a Ripley with beauty that rivals Dickie’s. There are three less celebrated adaptations of other Ripley novels. 2023’s Saltburn wasn’t a Ripley reimagining but its story of upper class ruin at the hands of an interloper seem to spring from a similar well. Plus, the film’s most audacious interlude reads as an homage to Jude Law and Matt Damon’s homoerotic bathtub scene, and the movie and discourse around added new heat to the Highsmith mystique.

Anthony Minghella, far left, director of the film “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” poses with cast members, from left, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman at the premiere of the film on Dec. 12, 1999, in the Westwood section of Los Angeles.

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Despite all that history, the pedigreed new Netflix production successfully forges its own haunting vision of Ripley. Written and directed by Steve Zaillian (screenwriter of Schindler’s List and The Irishman), Ripley (mostly) benefits from having more space to breathe than the film – and from Andrew Scott’s unflinching performance.

Netflix's stylish 'Ripley' stretches the grift — and the tension — to the max

Leaving the Hot Priest of Fleabag fame behind, Scott gives a harder, colder interpretation of the title role. Though significantly older than Highsmith’s 25-year-old antihero, the 47-year-old BAFTA winner Scott (All of Us Strangers, Sherlock) fully embodies the brooding and seething Ripley. Rather than charming and boyish, Netflix’s Tom Ripley is visibly creased and battered. Instead of Highsmith’s peevish 25-year-old, who notices with pleasure and opportunism physical resemblances with his privileged friend, Ripley and Dickie’s relationship is more clearly grifter and target. Ripley director Zaillan also advances the timeline to 1961, plunging Ripley into a more modern and edgy world.

Scott is well supported by Johnny Flynn (Emma) as a feckless Dickie, and Dakota Fanning, who delivers a mannered and pricklier Marge, the role that Gwyneth Paltrow made famous. If there’s one flaw, it’s that Ripley masters the style and techniques of Hitchcockian noir, without its momentum. This series’ slow deliberate pace and eerie quiet can sometimes feel like a slog.

'Ripley' returns in black and white — and is so much better for it

Still, Ripley‘s performances and striking style elevate the series. Rendered in stark Black and white tones, each shot is as visually arresting as the best still photo. Anthropological and artistic, it’s the opposite of Anthony Minghella’s bright Italian playground presided over by Jude Law as a golden god. This approach transforms even the most ordinary scene —a cat on a bench in a Roman rooming house — into a foreboding tableau. The noirish visuals are the perfect look for this seedier and more cerebral thriller. So too are the peeling paint, decaying edifices, and too many steps on which the camera lingers. All together, the aesthetic looks like something out of an avant-garde European movie like Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête or a painting by Caravaggio. The series significantly expands on what Highsmith wrote about Tom’s relationship with high art, spinning the idea that he had “discovered an interest in paintings” from emulating Dickie into an obsessive identification with a 17th-century Italian painter known for his bloody and brutal canvases, interplay of shadow and light, and for murder. It’s an ingenious representation of Tom’s descent on screen.

With these inspired creative choices, the Anthony Minghella film and the Netflix series stand on their own. But if you have the inclination, the two major screen productions and the novel form a phenomenal triple bill.

A slow runner and fast reader, Carole V. Bell is a cultural critic and communication scholar focusing on media, politics and identity. You can find her on Twitter @BellCV.

Lifestyle

What Are the Alternatives to TikTok?

Published

2 hours ago

January 12, 2025

Press Room

On Friday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case that will determine the fate of TikTok in the United States. While some users and creators are holding out hope that the ban will not go into effect and that they’ll be able to continue using the app, justices seem poised to uphold the law that could slowly render it defunct.

As the court’s decision looms, some of the platform’s roughly 170 million users in the United States are starting to wonder: Where is everyone going instead?

There have been some murmurs about Lemon8, a highly visual social media app focused largely on lifestyle content that has the same Chinese owner as TikTok, ByteDance. Resembling a hybrid between Instagram and Pinterest, Lemon8 first launched in Japan in 2020 and has slowly rolled out in other countries.

In 2023, as lawmakers in Washington were grilling TikTok’s chief executive, ByteDance was quietly pushing creators to join Lemon8 and offering potential paid incentives. But because of its ownership, the platform could be subject to the same law as TikTok.

If Lemon8 were to be banned as well, TikTok users would largely be limited to long-established social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube, which have added features in recent years to compete with TikTok.

Instagram, for instance, rolled out its vertical video feature, Reels, in 2020 as an answer to the ByteDance-owned platform. Initially, some users found that Reels left a lot to be desired, but its vertical video format is visually similar to TikTok, and some users already cross-post TikTok content there.

YouTube introduced YouTube Shorts the same year, allowing for short-form videos of up to one minute.

And, of course, there’s the traditional YouTube video format. In recent years, TikTok has been putting an emphasis on longer videos, which means creators and users alike may be primed to begin making and watching video content that seems at home on YouTube, rather than YouTube Shorts.

Yumna Jawad, a recipe developer and content creator who goes by Feel Good Foodie, said she felt prepared for the potential ban because she had taken pains to make sure she never relied too heavily on a single platform in her work.

“I was on Flipboard. I’m trying to figure out Lemon8 and Threads,” said Ms. Jawad, who is 42 and lives in Grand Rapids, Mich. “There’s constantly a new one, and I’m always open to trying things out.”

Lifestyle

Should pregnant people evacuate L.A. to escape the smoke?

Published

3 hours ago

January 11, 2025

Press Room

Should pregnant people evacuate L.A. to escape the smoke?

After five days of an unrelenting firestorm in Los Angeles County, medical experts are warning that the area’s smoke levels pose unique risks to expectant pregnant people and their unborn children.

So what should pregnant L.A. residents do?

First and foremost, doctors say they should follow local emergency guidance around evacuation, according to Dr. Allison Bryant, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Mass General Hospital who chairs the American College of OB/GYN (ACOG) Committee on obstetric care practice.

Beyond monitoring evacuation orders, Bryant suggested following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that recommend pregnant people should stay inside as much as possible with windows and doors closed, use HVAC systems with filters or portable air purifiers, and wear N95 masks if outdoor exposure is unavoidable. They should maintain their prenatal care schedule as much as possible and update their delivery plans if evacuation becomes necessary.

Emergency preparedness is also crucial. The CDC recommends keeping a seven- to 10-day supply of prescription medicines and prenatal vitamins ready. That supply can go in a go bag with essential items, including clothes, medical records and insurance information.

The CDC advice closely aligns with new guidance on preparing for disasters that ACOG released this month, specifically focused on helping pregnant individuals navigate emergency situations. While many precautions mirror general public health guidance, pregnant people face additional considerations around maintaining prenatal care and preparing for delivery.

“What’s different about pregnant individuals is that we know that they’re going to need healthcare in the not-too-distant future,” Bryant said.

Research suggests that babies born to mothers exposed to wildfires may be smaller than average, with the effect potentially strongest in later pregnancy, Bryant said. But the risks go beyond just smoke exposure. Pregnancy itself makes people more physically vulnerable, with changes to breathing patterns, heart function and mucus membranes that can intensify the effects of smoke and air pollution.

“During pregnancy, everyone’s mucus membranes — the lining of your nose and mouth — are more active and plump,” Bryant said.

This natural increase in congestion means pregnant people may experience more severe symptoms from smoke exposure than others in their household.

Although the risks don’t vary dramatically by trimester, pregnancy itself makes people more vulnerable to respiratory challenges, according to Dr. Joseph Ouzounian, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

“Pregnant people will breathe more rapidly than non-pregnant people,” he said. “The heart and cardiovascular system are working harder because, to some extent, they’re supporting two lives instead of one.”

Short-term exposure of a few days is typically not dangerous if reasonable precautions like wearing N95 masks are taken, Ouzounian said. However, longer exposure requires more decisive action. Prolonged exposure to environmental toxins could affect a fetus’ development.

With winds expected to intensify again Sunday and potentially reach 50 to 60 mph in mountains and foothills by Tuesday, relief from poor air quality may not come soon. Following public health guidelines should be sufficient for most, but Ouzounian said that those who aren’t close to delivery and can’t maintain adequate air quality at home may want to consider temporary relocation.

“If the exposure is going to be more than a few days, then you have to start thinking about either finding somewhere where the air is better or staying indoors with air filters or air purifiers,” he said.

Some of Ouzounian’s patients are leaving town, including a woman who lived in a mandatory evacuation zone and temporarily relocated to Orange County, where she has already found a new doctor. While most of his patients are staying put, he said that if the fires persist or worsen over the next couple of weeks, he expects more patients will consider transferring their care.

Dr. Christina Han, a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, also has patients who are planning to relocate to Arizona, San Diego and Northern California. This is especially true for those who have lost their homes and know they won’t be able to rebuild within the time frame of their pregnancy.

“Everybody has a different scenario right now, so we kind of have to just use shared decision-making to kind of go through that calculus with them,” Han said.

She emphasizes that patients should consult their OB-GYN before relocating, because doctors can help connect patients with care in their new location.

“It’s really hard to find an OB last minute, so they should try to utilize their OB-GYN’s network,” she said. “OB-GYNs have a very tight network, so many of us know where other docs are around the country and can potentially reach out to ask for help.”

Although research on wildfire exposure’s effects on pregnancy isn’t definitive, Han stressed that pregnant people following simple precautions are going to be fine. Her most crucial advice?

“Wearing [an N95] mask is really important,” Han said, “more important probably than taking prenatal vitamins at the current time.”

Lifestyle

How a Driving Instructor to the Stars Spends Her Sundays

Published

10 hours ago

January 11, 2025

Press Room

How a Driving Instructor to the Stars Spends Her Sundays

Shanti Gooljar recently got a $2,000 tip.

She runs a driving school in Manhattan that caters to a high-end clientele, and only works on referrals. She says she has taught the offspring of a few names you might know:

Jerry Seinfeld. Rupert Murdoch. Vera Wang. Katie Couric.

She had initially worked as a paramedic. But after two years, she decided she did not like it and turned to a driving school in the Bronx. Ms. Gooljar quickly realized she had found her calling.

“I just got real good at what I was doing,” she said. The teens she taught connected with her unfiltered, no-nonsense style, and they soon began giving her number to their friends. So she bought her own car and went freelance. Ms. Gooljar, 62, opened her own school in 2014.

“That was 10 years ago,” she said. “And look at me now.”

She owns the Empire State Driving School on the Upper West Side, which has five other instructors. Behind-the-wheel lessons go for as much as $200 per hour, and she works eight hours per day, seven days a week.

Ms. Gooljar lives in a three-bedroom apartment in the Bronx, near where she lived when she immigrated from Guyana with her four siblings in 1972. After the births of her sons — Philip, 43, and Michael, 38 — she and her husband,Vinny Gooljar, upgraded from a studio to a ground-floor space next to a police station, where she now lives alone. Mr. Gooljar, to whom she was married for 43 years, died of a heart attack in 2022.

“After he died, my family wanted me to go to Florida — my mom is there, and my brothers and sisters,” she said. “But I’m at the age where I like the same routine.”

ON AUTOPILOT I wake up at 5 a.m. I don’t need an alarm — it’s all in my head.

Depending what time my first lesson is, I’ll usually stop by Dunkin’ for a small hot coffee with cream. I’m a regular at a few of them — the one in the Bronx on Webster Avenue, and the one in Harlem near 122nd Street. They all know me — or rather, I make myself known to them!

FIRST PICKUP I often have my first lesson at 8 a.m. I’ll either meet the client at their house, or they’ll come to the school in Lincoln Square. I get a lot of prep school students, but also some older people. I’m teaching a 94-year-old right now!

I often take people up, around and through Harlem. I don’t teach downtown, especially not now with congestion pricing — you can’t get anywhere.

BACK TO BACK I roll straight into my next lesson at 10 a.m. I usually fit in four two-hour lessons per day.

The key is to build up their confidence right away. Driving in Manhattan is like driving anywhere. You have to know what you’re doing. If the driver behind you is beeping their horn, move around and let them go.

I don’t allow my students to argue with me, because I’m more experienced. I’d never gotten a speeding ticket in 45 years of driving until September, when I was driving to my girlfriend’s funeral in Virginia on the highway. The officer told me I went 10 miles over the speed limit — really?!

PIT STOP Around 12:30 p.m., I grab another coffee from Dunkin’ and take a pee break. Sometimes I’ll have a salad, and then when I come home I get something to eat. I don’t eat a lot — I need my coffee, though!

THERAPIST HOUR When I’m teaching these kids, I’m not just their driving instructor — I’m also their therapist. They tell me things they’d never tell their mothers.

One of the girls I’m teaching right now, her boyfriend broke up with her last week. She’s 27. It’s better they break up now than they wait until they get married. She’s young. She can move on. I know it’s hard when you’ve been with someone for that long, but it’s better to have it happen now than later.

HEAD ON A SWIVEL Don’t think I’m distracted, though! I’m so good at what I do that I can sit there and have a conversation and still grab that steering wheel out of your hands, stop the car and move across all the lanes to save you.

This time of year, it gets dark around 4:30, so my last pickup is around 3 p.m. When it comes to taking the road test, I’m very proud of my track record. I can count on one hand the number of people who failed last year.

My last lesson ends around 5 p.m., and my drive home is about half an hour, depending on where I end up.

DINNER PLANS I’ll often grab dinner with my son Philip, who lives in Connecticut. Sometimes we’ll go to a place on City Island — the Original Crab Shanty — and eat lobsters and crabs.

Or sometimes I’ll cook for him at home. I can cook real good. I can cook anything. He likes beef curry. Or, if he’s busy, I’ll eat alone. If it’s just me, I’ll have a bowl of oatmeal for dinner, or Cream of Wheat. I love that. I’m very easy to please.

WASH IT OFF I’ll hop in the shower around 7 or 8. I have always been and always will be a night shower person. Especially when it’s so cold, who wants to get up at 5 and take a shower and have your hair all wet?

SADDLE UP I love “Yellowstone” with Kevin Costner. I don’t know what I’m going to do now that it’s ended. His character’s daughter, Beth — she’s the bomb. I’d love to meet her. Maybe Kelly Reilly, who plays her, needs driving lessons — you never know!

RINSE AND REPEAT I crawl into bed between 8 and 8:30. When Vinny was alive, we used to go places. Now, I don’t go anywhere. What keeps me going is work: I get up and go to work, take a shower, come home, eat dinner, then wake up the next morning and go again.

I’m not ready to retire yet, but I’m laying the groundwork. My son Philip is learning how to run the school — scheduling, how to hire the right people, monitor the money, pay the bills. I’m proud that I’ve hired good people and made such a name for the school. That’s most important — getting good people to work for you.

EARLY TO BED I’m asleep by 8:30. I have to be ready to go at 5 a.m. for another full day of lessons.