A score can help identify a tone or propel a scene forward, but sometimes the notes can reveal a person’s psyche or inner feelings. It is rare, though, that we get to hear the workings of a sociopath’s brain. For Netflix’s Ripley, composer Jeff Russo brings us on a tour of Italy, but we need to be careful of the company we keep.
Tom Ripley is an iconic villain, and there is a reason why keep coming back to him. Embodied with a disquieting stoicism by Andrew Scott, this Ripley is slipperier than ever before, and his calm demeanor is more unsettling than someone screaming in your face. It’s dangerous to think that someone needs to go into his head in order to understand him for fear that his treachery will take hold. Russo needed to find a balance of empathy in order to get out unscathed.
“Normal, empathetic human beings don’t want to connect with or side with the psycho serial killer,” Russo says. “With this case, what I wanted to do was connect to the character because he’s human, but he’s psychotic. Finding the balance of not wanting to be too empathetic with that character, but you have fun watching Tom. You do have a little bit of fascination that he’s getting away with it. Tom goes from petty thief and fraudster in episode one to full-blown murderer by episode three. What I wanted to do was to play his underlying feelings of loneliness, desire, and feeling short shrift. One of the reasons why he is who he is is because of how much was taken away from him when he was younger–I am making up my own backstory. I have to do that in order to do that in order to represent a character in music. The fine line was trying to write music that was sufficiently tense and off-putting while allowing us to connect with a character.”
There are three tracks on the Ripley soundtrack that Russo wanted to bring out a sense of atmosphere while visiting Italy. His music helps orient us, especially since the gorgeous black-and-white photography (by Robert Elswit) drains the colorful cityscape away.
“When I spoke with Steve about the episodes, he told me that we needed music to put us in our place,” he says. “He liked the idea of Sicilian style which is different than Northern Italy. The idea was what kind of music would I write to have a unique flavor but could plant us into that world. The fact that I called them all Sicily has less to do with that geographical location but more about that style of music. If you ever get to go there, you’ll get out of the airport and you’ll hear that kind of music.”
There are two tracks that follow one another on the soundtrack that do not come one right after the other in the show but they feel connected. “Being Richard” feels cautious with softer piano notes in the beginning. It’s almost hopeful before some Italian-sounding flourishes color in in the distance with some mandolin. “Dickie by Day,” by contrast, feels like the blood is rushing out of your face as the notes feature an unexpected heaviness in places.
“They are related” Russo confirms. “The first piece I wrote inspired by the scene where Tom is standing in Dickie’s bedroom and putting on his clothes. It’s creepy in a very sad way to me. This is a truly ruined individual–a broken human. I wrote that in that vernacular. ‘Dickie By Day’ is more sinister. At the end of an episode where Tom is looking in the mirror and talking to himself. He’s already begun thinking about taking over someone’s life while ‘Being Richard’ is more lonesome and pathetic version of what Tom might have been feeling underneath that exterior. On the surface, Tom could play off being caught by Dickie in that moment as playful, but then there are times when he reveals himself to the audience. In those reveals, we see that sinister side, and I needed to take that journey with Tom while also giving my own empathetic quality to the character. I had to reveal my own empathy to Tom, so I had to play both sides of my own artistic thing as it affected me.”
In another track, “Tailing Tom,” it sounds like metal on metal as if a chase is about to begin. We get the overwhelming feeling like we caught Ripley committing a crime, and we need to escape quietly without being seen.
“As the music plays, you really do feel those feelings that you would feel when you’re watching him do his thing,” he says.
Caravaggio is referenced all throughout Steve Zaillion’s series, and his paintings begin to feel like they are haunting its audience. When we flash back to 1606 in the final episode, we see how much of a monster the Italian painter was, and we begin to wonder if his life will soon be seen in Ripley’s footsteps. Russo, however, didn’t want to connect them too much.
“With that episode, we are now out of the world,” Russo says. “Caravaggio was murdered in a really bad way, and he was a terrible, terrible person. The idea of exploring that as it relates to Tom’s obsession was something how I tried to connect them. I didn’t want to relate them thematically, so I purely focused on tone. I didn’t want one to take you to the other and the sinister aspect when you’re in 1606 to what you’re feeling now. But I didn’t want them to wink at each other.”
Ripley is streaming now on Netflix.