Mind games

Being with Spike and John and John

LOS ANGELES -- Maybe Jane Austen and William Shakespeare purists are inured to seeing their idols' works distorted on the screen, but not so the fans of Patricia Highsmith. Anthony Minghella -- who for the script of his Oscar-winning adaptation of The English Patient worked closely with its author, Michael Ondaatje -- doesn't expect that his adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley will get the automatic seal of approval from late acclaimed mystery novelist Highsmith's cult following.

"She died within a few days of my starting working on the adaptation," Minghella says. "I think it's much easier to work on [writing a script for] a book while the author is still alive. I loved to spend time with Ondaatje. It was one of the best times I have ever had in my life, to be able to re-imagine the book and then send every drop to the writer to get his comments and his guidance and his approval. It was much harder to re-imagine this book without the blessing of the author."

Without the author's imprimatur, what did Minghella use for guidelines?

"Let's say that this is a reading group and our week's project is to read The Talented Mr. Ripley and then we all said, `Okay, what do you think was great about the book?' I know that we would end up with eight different versions of the key moment. And you have to accept, with a certain amount of chastening, that all I can do is to record as passionately and enthusiastically as I can what I felt I was reading and accept the fact, because everybody's playing the perfect version of a film when they read a novel. That's one of the wonderful things about reading. It's so intensely personal and perfect. All I can do is tell you about my experience with that book and try to console myself with the fact that the book remains intact, that every single decision I make will betray as much about me as it will about the film.

"Highsmith said herself, she felt as if Ripley was writing the book over her shoulder, that he was typing the story for her. When you go back to the novel, you'll see that it's entirely implicit. It's all about a way of looking at the world. It's not really about activity, and the problem with film is that it's explicit. It's about people doing things, so Ripley has to meet people. He has to do things. So the minute you start to make a screenplay, you're going to be inventing."

Some of that invention occurs in a scene where Tom Ripley, the callow young wanna-be hero played by Matt Damon, invites the object of his obsession, Adonis-like Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), to join him in a bath. Minghella's version of the scene makes overt some of the novel's underlying homoeroticism. But the studio people were trying to market the film as a thriller with a romantic story line between Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, who has a smaller role as Greenleaf's fiancée. Was Minghella troubled that the film was being distorted by its own promotion?

"I feel a great deal of sympathy with your observation. There was a real sense of romance in the film, irrespective of which gender was involved. I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty, which is the studios, both Paramount and Miramax, have been incredibly supportive of this project -- and very supportive of me -- as a singular vision of a film. It could very well have been challenged. Of course there was apprehension, and I think if I ever make a film in which there is no apprehension then I should stop doing it. I've got a journal entry from when The English Patient was released in which I wrote, `If there are more than 10 people at this film, I will be astonished.' And I was astonished. I hope that there will be the same sense of astonishment about the degree of sophistication that the audience has for this movie."

-- P.K.

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