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I don’t tend to gravitate toward depressing media, unlike my wife, who seems to love it.  We watched “Ripley” – a Netflix limited series – because it takes place in Italy (suckers for Europe over here), it’s in black-and-white (suckers for arty posturing over here) and looked like a beautiful rendering of a 1990s thing (a depressing movie called “The Talented Mr. Ripley”) that we kind of liked (her more than me). 

Here’s a minute on the plot:  It’s about a New York con-man (Tom Ripley) who is sent to Italy by a rich acquaintance’s father to retrieve said father’s rich son, who his spending his trust fund like it’s going out of style and not ever becoming good at anything (he wants to be a writer and a painter because of course) because he’s too busy drinking and taking trips.  Anyway, Ripley becomes obsessed with the rich kid (Dickie Greenleaf) and his girlfriend Marge, eventually kills Greenleaf, steals his identity, and (kind of, by the letter of the law) gets away with it.  Which isn’t a spoiler because “what happens” isn’t the point at all. 

Here's a minute on aesthetics:  If you love a ton of beautiful shots of old architecture, bodies of water, old paintings, old phones, old ashtrays, old Italian cars, old cameras, and all manner of boat/wharf stuff, you’ll love the aesthetic of this series.  I think I love all of those things. Moreover, there’s a sort of modern minimalism at play here.  The characters go a long time without talking, and even the talk is kind of minimal and deadpan, which I usually don’t like but which seemed appropriate for this.  And unlike in the case of the movie, nobody in this is really “anybody,” which adds to the appeal, I think. 

Bonus: if you love cats (I do), there’s an awesome one (that doesn’t die) in this.

The movie was, tonally, lighter than the series.  In the movie version, Matt Damon’s Ripley character was more charming…more coquettish...and because it was Damon, had a great head of 90s hair.  In the Netflix series he’s kind of churlish and creepy.  Movie Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow during her 90s run) smiles once in a while, while Series Marge frowns and harrumphs her way through eight episodes which I also thought appropriate because these are people who have the whole world but have lost their souls. 

Ripley’s only hat-tip to Dystopian 2024 stuff is the way that it cast a young girl (Sting’s kid – the musician, not the wrestler) to play a young guy, but this is in no way the focal, besides him/her being another person for Ripley to murder.   

But “Ripley” is really about sin.  And it’s the rare thing in that it shows sin – envy, covetousness, lying, murder – without ever even for one second glorifying it.  It makes it look really gross, really unappealing, and exceedingly miserable.  All things which are true about sin.  As Ripley is sinning, and getting away with it (again, letter of the law), he is miserable in his newfound wealth.  Every ringing phone, every footfall on a staircase, and every knock on every window sends a shudder of guilty paranoia through him.  He can literally never rest. But it’s not the kind of guilt, in Ripley’s case, that leads to repentance and faith.  It’s the kind of guilt that leads to more deceit, and ultimately more killing to cover up the previous killing. It is sin leading, literally, to death.

Only two people die in “Ripley,” and they die in ways that invite us, as believers, to feel at odds with death.  We recoil because there is nothing “Hollywood” about it.  It looks, to be frank, like two image-bearers having their lives taken from them, followed by the grisly aftermath/cover-up.  It was hard to watch but not because it was gory (it wasn’t, especially) but because you really got the sense that these were people. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a piece of media do this specific thing, this well. 

And while watching “Ripley,” it’s difficult for us to completely (or easily) explain away the notion that we have “this” (total depravity) inside of us as well.  Tom Ripley doesn’t immediately scan as a bad guy/murderer/psychopath.  He seems like us in the first act: a little discontented, a little lazy, a little envious.  These sins, unchecked, beget more sins. 

This is the point of Ripley and, perhaps, the point of all honest, depressing media.  It should show us what our hearts would look like, but for Christ.

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