Five stars for Netflix's Ripley
Because I loved Netflix's eight-part series Ripley for a lot of reasons, I was compelled to read the book to which it was based, The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. This was a novel experience for me to want to read after watching a movie based on a book. Part of it perhaps was because I want to find out more about the paintings featured in the film only for me to uncover that none of them was referenced in the book. Director and writer Steven Zaillan did deliver a visually stunning film from a book with a valuable addition of allusions to the life of Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio whose works led the way to modern chiaroscuro , a technique that heavily uses light and dark to which was later referred as tenebrism from the Italian word tenebroso which means dark, gloomy, mysterious. The black-and-white wide shots and the micro shots are all necessary ingredients to the film's delectable dish. As homage to the book, the...