BOOKS INTO FILMS
- send us your favourites from Gone With The Wind to Doctor No
Been to the
cinema lately. Fancy a good read. Try both. Christine Bridgwood explains how…
'TOM GLANCED BEHIND HIM': THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY
The prepublicity for Minghella's film sent me
hurtling back to the first Ripley novel, and I was drawn into Ripley's world of paranoia,
frustration and intrigue all over again. The measured, understated style; the obsessive
attention to detail; the way everything and everybody is observed and judged through Tom's
jaundiced eye so that it is almost impossible for the reader not to identify with the
murderer and long for him to get away with it – the result is one of the most
original, disturbing and exhilarating crime novels ever.
For me, the film of a book is often a
disappointment. When you've invented your own personal version of a novel by reading it,
it can be hard to respect the film-maker's. I've spent too much time in cinemas whining, 'But
that didn't happen in the book' and
'No way she'd be a blonde –
why on earth did they cast her?'
I went to see the film of Ripley determined
to be less concerned this time with seeing a faithful representation (or even a respectful
interpretation) of the novel. Some great films, after all, have used novels as launch-pads
for something specifically filmic, as inspiration for a director's own idiosyncratic
vision.
With my new mature attitude, I enjoyed the
film immensely. Gigantic liberties are taken with just about everything – plot,
character, motivation - but it looks gorgeous. The seductive
ambiguities of the novel (has Dickie actually slept with Marge? Is Tom a repressed
homosexual or is he just too repressed to
have any sexuality at all?) are replaced by
film-friendly certainties.
The lumpen jolly-hockey-sticks Marge is
transformed into a sublimely-attired Gwyneth Paltrow (love that leopardskin coat
and matching pillbox hat). One of the most interesting changes is Dickie's richboy hobby:
not painting, as in the novel, but jazz, with all its associations of bohemian cool. This
also allows Minghella to cleverly insert a scene set in a sweaty Naples jazz club, where
Dickie, and eventually Tom, party and make music with the locals.
I was happy enough with these largely cosmetic changes, but
slightly less so when the teasingly amoral stance of the novel is abandoned. Where the novel ends with a jubilant Tom on his
way to his longed-for Greek islands, having got away with it, the film can't resist the
easy final image of Tom as tragically isolated and doomed. It's effective – but what
would Patricia Highsmith have made of it? Maybe,
like me, she would have enjoyed the film so much on its own terms that she wouldn't really
have minded all that much.
Christine
Bridgwood Coordinator, Poetry On Loan and West Midlands Readers' Network
Thanks, Christine. Forget your Hannibal Lecters, Tom Ripley is the literary villain of the last century. Available as a book, video or maybe a DVD at a library near you..
Rancid Aluminium by James Hawes (Vintage ISBN 0 09 975971 3)
Things are not what they seem in this cynical black comedy full of plot twists, leaping back and forth in time with an infuriating climax. Although this novel portrays a bleak view of the human condition it make me laugh out loud at its surreal visual humour.
Peter Thompson is a weak greedy character who wants it all, but most people would be able to relate to his feelings of helplessness and lack of control over his life. The parts I enjoyed most were the novel’s fast pace and the author’s ability to confound at every turn. It is impossible to predict the outcome, even at the last moment... It would make a brilliant off-beat movie. T.S. (Birmingham)
- now out as a Brit Film, catch it on video, probably in your library system or maybe FilmFour
REVIEWS -send yours into info@lit-net
