In Switzerland, a two-hander by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, American novelist Patricia Highsmith receives a visit near the end of her life in the mid-1990s from a young publishing hack named Edward Ridgeway, who pressures Highsmith to sign on for one last Ripley novel.
A Talent for Murder, an adaptation of the play directed by Anton Corbijn and starring Helen Mirren as Highsmith, marks the first time Murray-Smith has adapted her own work, having published more than two dozen plays and worked as an occasional “gun for hire” on scripts for TV and films. After returning home from the Toronto International Film Festival, where she caught the film’s premiere, she spoke to PW about what drew her to Highsmith and Highsmith’s relationship with Tom Ripley.
You’ve got a lot of history with this story, having premiered Switzerland back in 2014 before the play toured the world. What was it like to see the story on screen?
You know, the writer ultimately does not have much control on a film, so you’re sort of in suspense, waiting for it to come out. It’s not like a play, where you’re feeling very in touch with how it’s going as it evolves. But when a film works, it’s incredibly exciting. When I saw it, I thought, I’ve written a film that is the kind of film I want to see.
While writing the screenplay, what choices did you make to give your vision the best chance of being realized?
What I knew about having seen the play all over the world, performed with the same script but different interpretations, was that it lives or dies by the intensity between Highsmith and Edward Ridgeway. I knew the film had to be more expansive, and it had to be visually more alluring and diverse. But whatever I did to it had to preserve the intensity of that conversation. Originally, Stephen Frears was going to direct, and I was working with him in London on the script. He read the play, and the first thing he said was, “I want the screenplay to be more like the play, not less like the play.” It was very important when Stephen said that, because it gave me the confidence to stick to my guns.
Could you talk about what drew you to Highsmith and the Ripley character, and your impetus to write Switzerland?
I was working on a play at the Geffen in Los Angeles, and they used to have this most wonderful crime bookshop in Westwood. I went in one day, and there was the Joan Schenkar biography of Highsmith, and I read the biography and thought, oh my God, what an amazing character. She is so complex—brilliant in terms of her psychological acuity but neutral on moral judgment. What a feat it was, to be able to bring the reader onto Ripley’s side. Intellectually, you’re judging him –he’s a psychopath– but you’re also kind of wanting him to get away with it. And that sort of moral ambiguity, I guess on Highsmith’s part, was really fascinating to me. I’ve always been attracted to writing that, rather than judging the characters, allows us to tap into the parts of ourselves that identify with the darker side of the human psyche. And Highsmith was the best at that.
And of course, conflict being the heart of good theatre, I had to bring in a worthy opponent, and really the only opponent worthy of Highsmith herself is Ripley. He’s the only one smart enough, and he’s the only one that incited her respect. I think she saw him as not only the key to her success, but as her companion.
How did your portrait of Highsmith evolve for the screen?
I was very conscious of wanting to ensure that you feel Highsmith’s vulnerability. In theatre productions of Switzerland, some actresses go full tilt into Highsmith’s awfulness and struggle a bit with the vulnerability. Others are more attuned to it. For the film, I wanted a sense that even though Highsmith is vile in her homophobia and her racism and her antisemitism, her death is a loss on some level. And whether this is just about the vulnerability of us all being mortal, I really wanted to have that feeling, so I wrote more moments of vulnerability into the script, both physical and psychological. As it turned out, Anton was incredibly faithful to the script. I mean, I had no complaints, which is kind of unheard of.
You spoke earlier about the lack of moral judgment in Highsmith’s work. There’s a scene in the film where she tells Ridgeway she has no moral compass; she’s right in the middle, she’s Switzerland. As an artist yourself, how do you feel about this sort of statement? Are you Switzerland?
My feeling, as a writer, has always been to avoid didacticism in any way, and to not look at art as polemic. And that’s not because I don’t have strong political views. I do have strong political views. But more because you are more likely to sway minds and hearts by stealth. I do believe that art has a role to play in changing minds and hearts, but it must be done with great care. I don’t mind being manipulated if I’m well manipulated, but I don’t like being lectured to.
