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The two movies that we watched in class The Talented Mr. Ripley and Ripley’s Game were both about this guy named Tom Ripley who was trying to survive in New York City with no prospects, but with a talent to survive by doing whatever is required. While working at a party, playing the piano in a borrowed Princeton jacket, he is approached by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf, who believes Tom to be an actual graduate from the university and a friend of his son, Dickie Greenleaf. Ripley is asked to travel to Italy to persuade Greenleaf’s errant son, Dickie to return to United States to help run the family business.
Tom agrees, immediately seeing this as a great opportunity for him even though he did not go to Princeton and has never even met Dickie. In the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley Tom’s character is both talented and lucky. He has a great talent of forging people’s signature and he can impersonate anyone’s voice. By having those two talents he had done really bad deeds. As a gesture to Ripley, Greenleaf agrees to travel with him on a short holiday to Sanremo. The two hire a small boat and head out to sea.
They begin arguing while on board, with Dickie rejecting and mocking Ripley. Ripley then mocks Dickie in return. Enraged, he threatens to hit Ripley in anger but backs down, and resorts to further describing his disgust with even being around Ripley. Ripley then loses his temper and swings an oar, hitting Dickie on the head. Dickie furiously attacks Ripley, attempting to choke him. The two struggle, and Ripley kills him in the ensuing struggle. Horrified, he lets the boat drift to shore while lying on the chest of Dickie’s lifeless body.
He then sinks the boat, with Dickie’s body still on board, to conceal his crime before swimming to shore. Later Riples existence becomes “cat and mouse” game with the Italian police and Greenleaf’s friends. Mr Greenleaf’s Dickie’s father ends up helping Tom get away with the murder unintentionally. When Marge was suspicious of Tom and when Italian police was looking for the murderer. Dickie’s dad wanted to close the case and he came to Italy with a private American detective. The private detective reveals that Mr.
Greenleaf has decided to give Ripley a portion of Dickie’s income with the understanding that certain sordid details about his son’s past not be revealed to the Italian police such as a vicious assault on a fellow student at Princeton or an affair with a girl he impregnated who subsequently committed suicide. In the movie sexuality plays different roles. In Riply’s case he was confound as a metro sexual. He did not go after a certain sex male or female. When he talked to someone and thought they were fun, he would have feelings for that person regardless if it was a male or female.
The other big thing that’s being played in the movie was identity. Tom was pretending to be Dickie after he had murdered him. When the hotel concierge mistakes him for Dickie, Ripley realizes he can assume Dickie’s identity. He takes on Dickie’s signature and passport and begins living off his allowance. He carefully provides communications to Marge to make her believe that Dickie has deserted her. He even books into two separate hotels as himself and Greenleaf and passes messages between “them” via the hotel staff, thus providing the illusion that Dickie is still alive.
Tom Ripley in the movie was a poor guy and he did everything he could to be living the life of the wealthiest. After Dickies father had given him the assignment to bring Dickie home. Most sociopaths essentially do not care about society or how they are seen as long as they are not seen for what they really are. This is what Tom felt, he did not want to appeal as a poor guy in front of the society. He changed and appealed himself as someone much wealthier than he ever could have been.
In the other movie Ripley’s Game, a wealthy Tom Ripley is living in Italy and is involved in an art scam in Berlin, Partnered with Reeves, a crude British gangster. From young Ripley to middle-aged Ripley in Ripley’s Game seems plausible because in the movie he continued to do illegal things. At the end of the movie his neighbor Johanthan sacrifices himself to save Ripley after Ripley gets him involved into killing business. Johanthan takes the bullet for Ripley because he’s guilt of killing someone made him hard to live his own life so he ends up giving his life away.