Literary Point Of View In The Movie And The Talented Mr Ripley

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Literary point of view: both contribution and limitation
Serving as a method of narration, literary point of view is, in fact, the “eye” and the “ear” of the readers and the audience, through which people are able to have access to the imaginary world in the novels and the films. Different points of view will lead to various angles and perspectives upon the same individuals, events or actions, and thus bring about divergent interpretations of the emotions, feelings, and comprehensions. Therefore, to analyze the literary point of view in the narrations of both novels and films is essential for people to approach the core values and the true attitudes below the surface of the stories, in that it determines the audience’s connection with the world inside the stories to a huge extent. The third-person point of view applied to both the novel and the film “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, focuses on the protagonist Tom Ripley, presenting the view of a nonexistent person who follows Tom Ripley all the time in the story.
In the novel, by taking advantage of the third person point of
Nonetheless, in order to condense the novel into a two-and-a-half-hour film, director Minghella abridged some of the plots in the novel, such as the part Tom’s trips to Paris and Venice and the suspension of Dickie’s signatures that he fakes. Minghella also created some new characters to make the transition in the movie more reasonable and to intensify the conflicts in the film as well, including Silvana, Meredith and Peter. The most significant difference is that the movie takes advantage of the music, which is not even mentioned in the novel. The music in the film becomes vital clue to drive the plots ahead and to decode the persona of Tom. Though there are changes from the novel, the film maintains the same settings, main characters, critical climax and the ending. (892

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