Hannibal (DVD)

...I confess to having enjoyed Hannibal a lot more than Silence of the Lambs, which I think received excessive praise in the press. Yes, it could be due to the fewer expectations I had going into this one. Then again it also could be thanks to my twisted nature that I took much wicked pleasure in witnessing Dr. Hannibal Lecter preparing in such elegant fashion worthy of the world's best gourmet chefs, some very freshly obtained intracranial contents, ...
...Hopkins, reprising his role as Hannibal Lecter) is back. He’s been hibernating for much of this time, and now finds employment as an art historian in Florence. It’s been a while since his escape from the hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) is back, too, ten years after her life-changing encounter with the good doctor. The young, wide-eyed idealist is now ... more

Okay, slap me, curse me, hang, draw and quarter me, but I confess to having enjoyed Hannibal a lot more than Silence of the Lambs, which I think received excessive praise in the press. Yes, it could be due to the fewer expectations I had going into this one. Then again it also could be thanks to my twisted nature that I took much wicked pleasure in witnessing Dr. Hannibal Lecter preparing in such elegant fashion worthy of the world's best gourmet chefs, some very freshly obtained intracranial contents, gently sautéed with green pepper and onion.

But are we sure we know who the truly evil ones are in this tale?

The Cannibal (Sir Anthony Hopkins, reprising his role as Hannibal Lecter) is back. He’s been hibernating for much of this time, and now finds employment as an art historian in Florence. It’s been a while since his escape from the hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) is back, too, ten years after her life-changing encounter with the good doctor. The young, wide-eyed idealist is now a remote memory. More recently, Clarice has even received the dubious honor of being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the agent with the highest number of kills. (The implausibility of such a listing does strike one as silly, doesn’t it, but what the heck! On with the show!)

At the film’s start, we watch as Clarice’s latest drug-busting mission goes horribly awry when the tag-along D.C. police decide to ignore her orders to stand down. With that unsexy, press-poor incident and allegations of concealment of evidence brought to the attention of her superiors, Clarice is summarily suspended, even as she’s just begun to pick up leads on her latest case—none other than the missing Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

The times have changed, and even the FBI has to live in a Public Relations-conscious world, and the folks in charge believe that the (supposedly) tarnished image of the agency is in urgent need of polishing. And so the axe falls on Clarice.

Does she raise bloody hell about the unfairness of it all, as she has every right to? Not at all. Clarice has seen the enemy, and it’s . . . well, it’s *not* that cunning criminal of whom she’s officially in pursuit.

Could the enemy really be…that same revered law enforcement institution she has faithfully served to the best of her abilities for ten years? One asks rhtetorically whether those years have caused a cynicism to grow within her. Indeed, hardened and disillusioned by her experiences with some blindly stupid, highly-placed minds at the Bureau, she thinks it’s easier to suffer the consequences of accepting command responsibility for the disastrous drug bust than to point fingers at the real culprits.

Meanwhile, Hannibal Lecter remains incognito in Florence. He’s still the astute, learned, cultured and meticulously polite gentleman we’ve come to know. (He reminded me of another exquisitely refined but blackhearted character named Monsieur Verdoux, written and played by Charles Chaplin.) But beware the fool who dares tangle with the Doctor, as one greedy victim finds out, to his own extreme prejudice.

Back in Asheville, North Carolina, the disfigured but handsomely wealthy Mason Verger continues to live from day to day as one of Hannibal’s victims who has survived to tell the tale. Understandably, Verger has an axe to grind (pardon the pun) with Dr. Lecter. More than an axe to grind, it is an obsession with Dr. Lecter that consumes Verger completely, so desirous is he of the sweet taste of revenge.

All one can add at this point is that some characters do, indeed, meet their respective gruesome fates. Hannibal and Clarice are reunited, and the seemingly strange and unlikely bond between the Agent and the Cannibal—a deep, symbiotic understanding of sorts—is restored, something that is unseen by and incomprehensible to everyone else around them.

It is this dark irony in Hannibal that struck me as the film’s most fascinating element. Clarice and Hannibal are misfits and outsiders in their respective worlds, with Hannibal much more so and in a larger context. Both are possessed of highly intelligent, sharp minds, and each has his or her own standards of integrity. Yes, even the Cannibal does.

Their relationship might appear truly bizarre and on the face of it, but dig a little deeper and it begins to make more sense. He is perhaps the sole person who has a penetrating insight into her psyche—what it is that makes her tick. She recognizes that he fully understands, even sympathizes with her own personal struggles. And, likewise, she knows quite well how his mental gears turn and mesh—he doesn’t just kill people at random, for instance. He chooses his victims carefully, and they aren’t exactly the innocent, upstanding or heroic characters or contributors to the common good.

There might be more than the average quota of cinematic “gore” here (as many keep exclaiming with horror), but director Ridley Scott has wisely employed deception in portraying much of the violence. Most of these scenes comprise medium to long shots assembled with quick, rapid cuts, and there is much blurring of movement. Details are obscured through the careful use of dim lighting and dark shadows, and scenes are swathed in deep crimsons and midnight blues. So you come away thinking you actually saw the grisly deed happening right before your eyes, but a lot of it is just plain optical trickery. Enough, perhaps, to make you cringe, but there really are no lingering sequences of full-frontal gore. Except, maybe, for the final dinner scene, which I will get to shortly.

Apropos of grisly sequences in cinema, if you’ve ever seen some of the unique films of British director Peter Greenaway [The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover and The Pillow Book], then you might know what true skin-crawling, stomach-turning gore is all about. Ridley Scott is a distant cry from the certifiable Peter Greenaway.

One can chalk it up to my weirdness (no offense taken), but the sheer absurdity and pitch black humor of the formal dinner scene only drew some unexpected giggles from me. (So did the final shots in the airplane, and that window scene in Florence.) You might have to see the, uhm, gourmet sequence for yourself to understand why.

To move on to more conventionally pleasing film elements, there is Scott's excellent choice in music that demands more than a passing mention. Against the visually hyperkinetic opening credits we are treated to the soothing sounds of the Aria da capo from J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations played by Glenn Gould—a celestial aural experience, and a compelling contrast to the film’s macabre undertone.

The other memorable musical moment features the poignant aria from the staged Italian opera, attended by Hannibal Lecter and a few unfortunate characters. This music radiates a transcendent loveliness tinged with melancholy, a combination perfect for my odd preference for bittersweet, haunting music.

Of course, an added plus for me and the beau were the shots of familiar places in our old stomping grounds in Washington, D.C., and of the Vanderbilts’ grandiose Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. (Cameras were still rolling in the Estate the summer we visited, but, alas, the only "celebrities" we got to spy were those slithery eels in the aquarium).

So I did like Hannibal quite a bit. Although some well-crafted albeit predictable and formulaic parts made it a less than perfect product, I was very much impressed by the excellent work of the leads, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore. They assume the skins and souls of their respective characters here with such ease and persuasion. Only when these two are onscreen is the film transformed from merely mediocre-good to grippingly, chillingly good. It doesn’t hurt that an onscreen chemistry exists between them.

To be sure, Hannibal will not delight the squeamish, but I thought the widely criticized violence here was meaningful, in a sense similar to the meaning of violence in Hitchcock’s films. The story and characters here might be much darker than those in Silence of the Lambs, but they’re also more credible and realistic. And, I might add, right up my narrow and twisted alley.

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Note:

I haven’t read the book, but from what I’ve been told, the ending was altered in the movie version. Be that as it may, I found the conclusion here entirely satisfactory and credible.

Any detectable lapses in movie fact recall can be blamed on post-prandial muddleheadedness caused by overindulgence in Chinese buffet fare. Which is as good as any other excuse I can come up with.

For trivia nuts, the millionaire victim, Mason Verger, is played by a well-known and highly regarded actor in an uncredited role, although you can scan the ending credits for his name. If you pay close attention, you might even guess his identity just from his brief scenes sans makeup. (No fair sneaking a peek at imdb.com!)

Early on, the film makes a sly dig at a former real-life D.C. mayor who had his own personal issues with cocaine. Just for fun, does anyone recall the mayor’s name?
 

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