The Talented Mr.Ripley - Blog#6

Watching The Talented Mr. Ripley made me think about how deception can gradually stop being something a person controls and become something that controls them. At the beginning, Tom is very intentional about creating a different identity for himself. He sees Dickie’s life as something he wants and believes that becoming more like him will finally give him the confidence and acceptance he lacks. However, as Tom’s lies become more complicated, he becomes dependent on them. What starts as a way of controlling how other people see him eventually controls his decisions, relationships, and entire life.

I also found it interesting how easily the people around Tom accepted the version of him that he presented. Characters like Marge and Meredith each believed different parts of Tom’s story because they had their own assumptions about who he was. Tom was able to use their trust, but he also understood what each person wanted to believe and gave them a version of the truth that fit it. This made me think about how deception does not always work because the person lying is especially convincing; sometimes it works because people naturally fill in the gaps with what they already want to believe. Tom becomes successful at deception because he learns how to give people the version of himself that they are willing to accept.

What stood out to me most, though, was the irony that Tom seemed so desperate to become someone other people would like when there were people who appeared to accept him as Tom. He seemed to view his own identity as something that needed to be replaced rather than something he could develop. That made his story feel less like simply a story about lying and more like a story about losing yourself while trying to become someone you think you are supposed to be.

The film made me think about how easily wanting to change yourself can cross into rejecting yourself. Tom initially uses deception to create the life he wants, but eventually he has to keep sacrificing more of himself to maintain it. The other characters’ willingness to believe him also shows how fragile our understanding of other people can be. We often see people through the assumptions we already have about them, which can make us vulnerable to deception. Tom even points this out to Marge when he explains that a promise from Dickie can mean something completely different to Marge than it does to someone else. His point is that we can know someone in one context and still have an incomplete understanding of who they are. I thought this was especially relevant to the way everyone around Tom believes they know him while each person is actually seeing a different version of him.

In the end, Tom is not only deceiving everyone around him; he has created an identity that he has to continue performing even when no one is watching. That, to me, is what makes his deception ultimately control him.