Hannibal

View Date: February 10th, 2001

Cast :

Writers: Steven Zaillian (screenplay) Thomas Harris  (novel)

Director: Ridley Scott

It takes a lot to make me turn away from the screen while I’m watching a movie.  I have sat through some scenes that were painful to watch from both a physical and emotional standpoint, but still survived, for the sake of fairness to the filmmaker’s message.  However, when what is on the screen seems to serve no other purpose than to shock, intensify, and keep the viewers attention distracted from some other void, then I have a problem with it.  I turned away several times during my viewing of Hannibal, Ridley Scott’s gruesome, offensive follow-up to Jonathan Demme’s 1991 masterpiece, Silence of The Lambs.  There are some truly graphic, disgusting scenes which show up, and while I don’t really have an aversion to violent acts, senseless or not, I do have a problem when their purpose is not discernible. There is a fine line of discretion about knowing when and how to use graphic visions onscreen.  David Fincher did it right way in Se7en, Antonia Bird did not in Ravenous, the only film that makes this one look tame.  Hannibal comes in more towards the latter than the former in the above comparison.  In Silence, there were some gruesome activities, but these were tamed and tailored so that the focus could be where it needed to be, on the power of the story, and the suspenseful nature of the interaction of two great minds.  This time, the scenes are drawn out, to steer us away from noticing that this is a story that sputters, wanders, finding focus and moments occasionally, but overall, serving to support that premise that sometimes well enough, should be left alone.

Hannibal picks up the story ten years after the original, with Lecter living a life of seclusion and careful indulgence in Florence Italy.  Clarice Starling is an established FBI agent, and Barney the orderly is an entrepreneurial collector, capitalizing on his 15 minutes of fame.  Starling gains infamous notoriety while heading a task force, which goes horribly awry and causes 5 deaths including a fellow agent.  Their fates are about to interact, as Barney encounters Mason Verger, the only surviving victim of Dr. Lecter's rampage.  Verger is a multi-millionaire with friends in high places and only one thing on his mind, revenge on Lecter.  He’s willing to do anything to get it, and thus begins the chess game of the movie.  In Italy, suspicious law enforcement agent Rinaldo Pazzi (Giannini) coincidentally becomes suspicious of a new library curator whom Pazzi discovers is none other than Lecter.  What remains is an international game of cat and mouse involving Verger, Pazzi, Starling and Lecter, with supporting characters thrown in to sometimes spice things up, but mostly to create more confusion.  Comparisons to the original would be unfair, because the question this time isn’t who did it, but where is he? The mystique of the first movie was that we were Lecter’s unwilling participants in a journey through his mind.   We had no choice, and Hopkins reveled in it, deviously manipulating events and characters with joyful glee.  This time around, Lecter is free to move around; hence his intensity is replaced with a vicious appetite that we only imagined before.  Another problem, amongst many, is the fact that there are too many stories going on, and too many characters and subplots introduced, intertwined, and then quickly resolved.  We are given some twisted bovine farmers, a conniving co-worker of Starling’s, Pazzi’s plodding, relentless and sometimes baffling, pursuit techniques. These only clog what is already a story that lacks any of the bite (pun intended) of the psychological power of the first film.  

It’s obvious from the title that this film is meant to focus more on Lecter, since he didn’t get as much screen time during first film. This was obviously his chance to be dissected and analyzed; showing who he is, why he is the way he is, and just how thirsty his blood lust really is.  In Silence, Lecter was as menacing and creepy a presence as has ever graced the screen.  Scott has reduced him to nothing short of a ravenous beast, with a vocabulary.  The gruesome visuals don’t stop with Lecter’s escapades.  There is a car chase in the beginning, that ends very badly and several instances where the camera lingers a bit too long on something, turning the effect from the intended shock, to disgust and repulsion.  Jonathan Demme created a more fearsome monster by the mere implication, and occasional depiction, of Lecter’s violent nature.  He gave hints, showed a little, teased even more, and let the audience’s imagination fill in the rest.  The best way to terrify a mind, is to let it’s own fears of the unknown and unseen run rampant.  Scott fails to do that, opting instead for the Faces of Death filming style that makes this almost unwatchable.  If it hadn’t been for the beautiful cinematography of John Mathieson (Gladiator) and the powerful score of Hans Zimmer (Gladiator, Crimson Tide), there would have been nothing redeemable to experience at all.   It makes me wonder where the $80 million dollar budget on this film went (the original was made for $19 million).  I wonder if it went to elaborate gross out effects, which include frightening bovines, a disembowelment, and a final 15 minutes that is to be seen (if your eyes can handle it).

While Hopkins is chilling at points, his bloodthirsty killer mode is overdone, thus diminishing his scare factor. I was not terrified of Lecter because of fear, but more of what disgusting way I would end up dying if I encountered him.  Not exactly what is intended.  As far as the well-publicized replacement of Foster with Moore, I will still and always see Jodie in the role, but Moore does an acceptable job, although her accent slips a bit.  The true mystery and enigma is that of Verger, who spends the majority of his time in bed or a wheelchair, hell-bent on capturing Lecter.  The actor who plays his is uncredited, which I shall honor as well, but he is well known, and pulls off a chameleon like performance here, before he too is sucked down into the muck of it all.