Well, sir, I am afraid you chose the maroon bathrobe again. It’s just crass and tawdry.
Now why is that whole little sequence reversed from the novel? (In the novel, Tom picks a maroon robe he doesn’t himself much like but thinks Dickie will like, and he is correct. Jokes about pretentious color names in fashion, inserted anachronistically into this show as cliché markers of bobo snobbery, belong to 1990s NY and LA.) Why this clutch of evaded moments of cringing, vindicated embarassments? Because this isn’t hardboiled Nietzschoid existential pulp modernism, this is more sitcom ‘awkwardness’ cataloguing — victimological, ressentimental, rapacious crybaby fantasy Rowlingism (by Steve Zaillian, Schindler’s List. And yeah this is Schindler II, The Shopping List after it was revealed he was an ordinary Nazi who didn’t actually save anyone.) It’s not really any friendlier, any less vicious, but it’s more childish.
Stylish did you say? Actually this Netflix stuff is highly professional, commercial tasteless kitsch, unrecognizable as the Highsmith, a book you must have long ago forgot if you ever read it. The show is truly saran-wrapped, slick junk — ersatz, vacuous, fanfic. It’s supposed to turn you into a brownshirt. It’s pablum noir with edges filed. The many changes from the novel are all in the direction of the worst, most contrived post-videogame formula tv writing, aiming to fashion Tom Ripley into yet another Presteeeej TeeVee cuddly antihero ego ideal, the standard awkward mediocrity turned lawless, hustling winner, as viewer proxy.
From the first moment the J. J. Abramsification is embarassingly obvious: how could anyone justify, in aesthetic or any other terms besides the infantilizing ideological-commercial, the insertion into this novel’s materials of that unnecessarily cagey magical emissary, and the film buff ‘reference’ scene in the Old Town tavern? With its strained cliché signals? Its Dungeons-and-Dragons-becoming-Lost mood? What’s this there for? One thing is it allows the placing of intro to the Rich Man as Fitty Capitalist with metaphoric sleeves rolled up in a wholesome unpretentious old workplace, now a fantasy of prosperity. But one might have just opened there. The ‘magic negro,’ yes siree, is stuck in there as fantasy genre world-building to help the viewer slide into the artificially smoke-and-gin-flavored, wish-fulfilling, ultimately Harry Potteresque dreamworld that the Highsmith text has been shredded to make.
This Ripley is rescued from under the stairs and sent off to the Italian Hogwarts. The imposter-Strether is demoted to an imposter Hobbit. A fantasy genre child. The book’s world is depopulated, leaving the make-your-own allegory fairytale family ensemble. Cinderella. And like all post-war cinematic Cinderellas, this low-middle brow entertainment is finally just more real estate porn, and cosplay romp on the Time Travel Channel, with its emphasis pandering to American imperial nostalgia, complete with winky verbal anachronisms (anything else I can help you with? Says the fraudulent dun in 1960?) and a gallery of Italian primitives, presented as authentic fauna, that, in the filmmaker’s eagerness to flatter and ingratiate himself with the Showtime / Netflix audience, alter Highsmith’s often despised opacities to gratifying collectible stereotypes, dusted with American tv powdered saccharine to be yet more gratifying. Mrs. Buffi is transformed into Miss Buffi making an unimaginable overture to RipleyGreenleaf? Why? This is advertising writing, artificial syrup, so that nothing interferes with your pure desire to be Ripley on his Personal Journey and to acquire talisman souvenirs of your wonderful day on this Disney ride. Strange casting of a right wing hate figure & mean-worldification of the character slated for a brutal murder makes Ripley’s violence yet more gratifying for the titillated audience, wholeheartedly congratulated for its resentful sadism rather than provoked then punished or despised for it, as is the Highsmith style (dubious enough).
As for the visual feast, look again: it’s kitsch for children. The paradise regained that is the Amalfi Coast is of course lost utterly by the desperate gimmick of black & white (crass noir pastiche as you see) and vanished with it, all possibility of historical meaning, of political and psychological depth, all dramatic stakes. The world is translated into digital ons and offs: he’s winning; he’s losing. Anxiety is running or paused. The screendamage and the titillation of the merely signalled freedom & real estate wish-fulfillments will prevent the target viewers even noticing that the entire visual stream is a storyboard made up of kitsch postcard slides. This is fact, not hyperbole. There is no filmmaking. There are dioramas with slight movement of the action figures. It’s a manicured, AI-look slide-show, with meaningless easter egg references for the film noir afficionados. For the entire first episode, (I couldn’t bear it beyond, except ff) the camera never moves (well once, for 1.5 seconds, descending on yet another pseudo portentous symmetrical proscenium image, at 10:23) Visually it is one kitschily staged facsimile ‘vintage’ shot after another, imitating a graphic novel imitating canonical period product, a lifeless, tedious sequence of calendar art populated by posed dolls, seemingly hypnotized, who are intended as these comic book archetypes, with Ripley as the single shooter, running his maze of challenges. Like this typical fare for kids, it tries to pass off the allegorization of crudely contradictory pairs of ideas (parasite dun, lumpen prey) as sophisticated ambiguity. It’s endlessly childishly a-moralizing in this now standard HBO dramedy winnerist way. The black & white is an expedient and nonsensical pomo gesture, chosen to disguise the shoestring and 21st c. formula storytelling of it all. The whole thing is meretricious. So I guess it hands you that as pomo adolescent excuse, form fallacy——the show is an imposter, a Ripley RipOff itself.