Director Anthony Minghella, who saw himself in "The Talented Mr. The Talented Mr. Ripley," portrays the loss and pain of love. *Note! Contains spoilers.

Minghella's portrayal of Tom The Talented Mr. Ripley, a musician himself

Minghella passed away in 2008 at the young age of 54, but I had the opportunity to interview him while he was still alive. It was when he came to Japan to promote " Cold Mountain " (2003), the sequel to "The Talented Mr. The Talented Mr. Ripley." When I told him, "I really love your 'The Talented The Talented Mr. Ripley' and I enjoy listening to the soundtrack," he was delighted and replied, "The truth is, it's a film that I've entrusted a very personal part of myself to. Music is a very important element to me, and I often think about my works from the music first."

The director himself wrote the following essay on the film's soundtrack: "Music is at the heart of The Talented Mr. The Talented Mr. Ripley. Patricia Highsmith's original novel, written in the 1950s, is full of surprises and is deeply perplexing, but it is the music, not the motifs of the paintings in the book, that seems to me to more fully convey the provocative atmosphere of the era."

So, as music that represents the freedom of the characters, he focused on jazz, which was a symbol of the new culture of the time. In the original The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley lives off petty tax fraud, but in the film, he is a struggling pianist who loves classical music. He spends his days in misery in a dark basement while working part-time at a concert hall.

However, his luck changed when he borrowed a Princeton University jacket from an acquaintance, and he ended up going to Italy.

"The Talented Mr. The Talented Mr. Ripley" (c)Photofest / Getty Images

Regarding this character setting, Minghella made the following comment when appearing on the show "Flesh Air" (December 22, 1999) by Terry Gross, a legendary DJ in the American radio world: "I grew up in the UK as a child of Italian immigrants. Living in the UK inevitably makes you aware of class issues."

It seems he empathized with The Talented Mr. Ripley, who is set in a lower class. In the movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley is an unsuccessful pianist, but in his younger days, Minghella played keyboards in a band and aimed to be a successful musician, so it's likely that Minghella himself was projected onto the pianist The Talented Mr. Ripley.

The director said, "I used to be an Outsider with a sense of alienation," and Matt Damon's character, The Talented Mr. Ripley, is a lonely character with a sense of alienation. But when he meets the handsome upper-class man Dickie Greenleaf, played by Jude Law, he steps into another world.

Minghella was told that a play he published as a new writer was similar to the works of Patricia Highsmith, and he became an avid reader of the original novel. Then, his production partner Sydney Pollack approached him about adapting the novel into a film, and he immediately began writing the script. This was before " The English Patient " was made. For many years, the rights to the original work had been held by Robert Achim, the producer of " Purple Noon ," but after his death, American producers were finally able to acquire the rights, and more than 40 years after the novel was published, a Hollywood version of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" was born.

Jazz and classical music that reflects the psychology of the characters