a review of 雷普利

the first three episodes of ripley are among the most brilliant and gorgeous cinematography i've ever seen. i'm not exaggerating in the least when i say there is not a single frame in those three episodes that is not perfect. roughly half the shots are lit with stunning, soft, even light that reveals some of the most texture i've ever seen on digital, let alone black and white digital. the camera angles are inventive. the filming locations, shapes, lines, geometry are an absolute treat. the other half of the shots work in a way that i do not quite understand, but they are impeccable and stunning. they are mostly outdoors, or at least are getting most of their light from a harsh, bright sun. then, they bump the exposure up until all detail is lost to pure glowing white in roughly an eighth to a quarter of the shot. thinking about it even now is making my heart race. flipping back and forth between the two styles of shots put me into a deep, lovely trance. not sure where elswit pulled this one from. he's shot more famous films than i can name. they mostly look fine or good, but not in a single one is the camera work the aspect that steals the show. ripley *is* the camera. the next two or three episodes add in kind of the polar opposite of the bright, blown out shots from the first three episodes. i get it. we are starting to now understand the capacity of tom for causing purposeful, selfish harm. the shots are similar in that they seem to have lowered the exposure until about an eighth to a quarter of those shots are lost to deep black swaths, devoid of detail. those shots are nice, but the way the first three episodes are shot has my heart. the dark shots lose so much of the texture that is what makes this camera work so elevated for me. somewhere in the final two or three episodes the dark shots taper off and we return to the soft even lighting and the bright white shots, albeit with a totally different feel now that we've seen things about tom that we can't unsee. look. the writing and the acting aren't bad, but they're what's keeping this from five stars (and i think it maybe isn't four point five stars either, but i can't bring myself to bring the overall rating down). some may argue that andrew scott is doing a good portrayal of a sociopath. in fact, i think a lot of people feel that way, but something about it all was just not believeable to me. tom obviously has to be calculating to pull off this overall scheme...but that scheming is mostly not what is portrayed. we watch him scraping through one close call after another telling honestly pretty unbelievable lies in a pretty unbelievable fashion. maybe tom did this on purpose to increase the chances other characters will think dickie did the murders? i'm not sure what the source material has to say about all this, and tbh i don't love the story enough to read it. more likely, i think it's just a kinda clumsy portrayal of sociopathy...a bit too heavy handed. also, acab, but for me inspector ravini completely stole the show. the only truly standout acting performance in the whole series (sorry andrew, i still love you, even if you never do anything as beautiful as 'all of us strangers' again). the cat is truly the most beautiful cat i've ever seen, and perhaps the most beautiful being i've ever seen. that cat was meant for this camera and for this lens. i would die for that sweet, tiny, stoic beast. the way this story is written and edited is also, sadly, a little distracting for me. (again, this is in comparison to the absolute wizardry of the camera work.) i just don't believe andrew scott as a cold hard sociopath. it comes through at times, but something about it is off, and i think it has to do with the writing and direction as much as his acting. i will die on my soapbox that a mini series is the proper pacing to adapt a novel (unless you're willing to condense or abandon huge tracts of the source material, which i think is an absurd approach), but this mini series could have been easily an hour or two shorter. it probably would have worked incredibly well in the five to six hour range, and this would have given them the opportunity to edit out some of the weaker composed shots as well as the less interesting detours from the main storyline. they tried to tell a few too many unnecessary stories in my opinion and lost the plot more frequently as the show progressed. the final episode is both one of the best, and definitely also the weakest episode as far as the story telling goes. still have no clue why they would include the flashbacks to the other murders...i think maybe that guy was the painter he's obsessed with? anyway, added absolutely nothing and was an annoying distraction right when the show should have been gracefully hitting its stride. the flashback montage at the end...i loathe. this type of storytelling is so lazy and disrespectful to the viewer. you've asked us to trust you the entire film. we've been with you for over seven hours by this point. we've been both delving into the nuanced periods of your storytelling and also bearing the heavy handed portions...but nevertheless we are still with you, we've given you seven hours of our lives. then you cheapen the art by trying to spoon feed us the meaning. nope. i also really don't get the jarring tone shifts that plague the writing from about the fourth episode onward. we waver between more of a drama, similar to the tone of the film "the talented mr. ripley", and an actual noir. i don't think the combo works super well. dakota fanning hasn't aged a single day since two thousand four. absolutely wild how scared rich people are of aging. we should hold some of them in labs to study this phenomenon. if you want to read more about the cinematography, i found this pretty interesting article: https://www.panavision.com/highlights/highlights-detail/robert-elswit--asc--the-cinematography-of-ripley. kudos robert elswit, you have given the world a beautiful, beautiful gift. this is an absolute treasure to the eyes. i'll watch this again someday just to see these images again. should have been much, much gayer. <3