Hannibal Review
by Mark R Leeper (leeper AT mtgbcs DOT usae DOT avaya DOT com)February 19th, 2001
HANNIBAL
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Our third outing with America's
favorite psychopath shows us more of the damage
he can do but little of the inner man or how he
thinks. This is a stylistically visualized
crime story but nothing like what the fans of
Hannibal Lecter had been hoping for. HANNIBAL
is even an occasionally slow crime film
punctuated with some over-the-top gross-out
scenes. Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4)
Thomas Harris has written four novels and each has been adapted for the screen. The last three have dealt with serial killers and casting his shadow over all three is the figure of Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychotic who triumphs over the forces of the law not only because he is brilliant, but because he thinks in an entirely different way from sane people. He understands other psychotic killers because he is both a psychiatrist and a psychotic. His thinking is perfectly logical, but it is just not the way a sane person would think. Lecter has been getting larger amounts of attention in each successive book. In RED DRAGON, made into the film MANHUNTER, he is on stage for just a short time, but still manages to dominate the story. He gives the story the feeling that in some senses psychopaths are a form of superior intellects who are capable of incredible feats and who understand each other in ways we normals cannot. Lecter has a major part in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, though like RED DRAGON it is in large part as a consultant about another serial killer. At last comes HANNIBAL, a novel and film about Lecter himself.
One would certainly feel that this at last is the film in which we really delve into Lecter's aberration. But the unfortunate irony is that is not at all what happens. If anything each film tantalizes us that we will be learning more about Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and with each film we are more distanced from the character, even as he is more dangled in front of our eyes. In the first film we can see how he makes deductions based on obscure facts like what blood looks like by moonlight. We also see how he plays mind games with his captors. In the second story we learn a little more about the mind games and in the novel more things like how his sense of smell contributes to his success. But in the end we have learned less than what we learned the first time around. Now we have a whole film about the recapture of Lecter and he is turned into a cipher. He is an inscrutable monster who can kill with a touch and whose culinary tastes run to gourmet cannibalism, but we are never allowed into his mind. In the end we really do not know why he made the most unexpected choice of the film. One is left to wonder if we are not going to come to understand Lecter, what is the point of sitting through the film?
Director Ridley Scott has in HANNIBAL given us a stylish box, but the box is empty. We have a story with settings among the upper crust of the United States and in Rome, beautiful and old, quite a change from the tawdry world of Buffalo Bill's cellar in the previous film. The story on the other hand is really little more than a police and crime film spiced with a few gross out scenes. This is a film for people who do not mind a little bit of gore with their entertainment, but who do not have stomachs strong enough to take the Shakespearean prose of the much parallel Anthony Hopkins gore-fest TITUS. TITUS is a film that is superior to HANNIBAL not just overall, but in every single aspect that comes to mind.
As HANNIBAL opens Clarice Starling (this time played by Julianne Moore) is involved in an FBI operation that goes wrong. In spite of Agent Starling doing everything right she is later held responsible for the failure. (And isn't that a familiar plot?) Particularly negative on Starling is a member of the oversight committee, Paul Krendler (Ray Liota). It could be the end of her career or the FBI could hush it up. They will do the latter if Starling is willing to go back on the Lecter case. It seems that a very rich and influential recluse, a living victim of Lecter (played unrecognizably by Gary Oldman), is putting pressure on the government to capture famous psychopath. Meanwhile Lecter (again Anthony Hopkins) is living the good life as Dr. Fell, an art expert in Rome. Apparently he is killing just occasionally to protect his identity. But when a local policeman deduces who he is there begins a cat and mouse game in which is it not clear who is the cat and who is the mouse.
It goes without saying that Hopkins is impressive as Hannibal Lecter in a role that he must have known would come been practicing and since his role in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Still perhaps he dissipated some of his maniacal energy in TITUS. Julianne Moore has perhaps a tad less vulnerability than Jodi Foster, but once the story gets going (and a case could be made to say that is ninety minutes into the film) one can easily picture either delivering the other's lines. Gary Oldman seems to feel that the screen has seen too much of him already and seems to be specializing in the kinds of characters of whom you say at the end of the film, "You mean THAT was GARY OLDMAN????? I had no idea." In that sense he is sort of like a younger John Hurt. Or maybe even an Eddie Parker.
As usual Ridley Scott takes a great deal of care with the visual style of the film. To give the film an expressionist feel he overcrowds scenes with detail difficult to take in in its entirety. As he usually does he keeps his scenes smoky or very dark. This is a very noir-ish threatening and shadowy world and Lecter likes to hide in the dark. Occasionally there is a witty allusion. A scene from the point of view of animals in a chamber about to be released from their stalls is shot to look like they are within the walls of an arena in GLADIATOR. Sadly, Scott gives in to commercialism giving us multiple product placements. Perhaps another visual joke is that in Rome, Dr. Fell dresses and looks like Truman Capote. In another place a newspaper photo of Lecter has had the eyes enhanced to make him look more like a demon.
In HANNIBAL Lecter is reduced to being a sort of an extreme version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The film pays more attention to his cannibalism than his brilliance. In spite of Scott's visual style, HANNIBAL is little better than a prosaic monster movie. I rate it 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
The reference to Doctor Fell is a reference to a famous verse written by student Thomas Brown about the Dean of Christchurch: I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell.
But this I know, I know full well,
I do not like thee Doctor Fell.
Mark R. Leeper
[email protected]
Copyright 2001 Mark R. Leeper
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
