Hannibal (2001)

"People will say we're in love", quoth Dr Lecter to Starling. Well, people did say a lot in response to Hannibal, such as how full of shit author Thomas Harris was when he released a highly anticipated follow-up to The Silence of the Lambs, the film adaptation of which had already become considered a classic of cinema. For Starling and Lecter to end up as lovers and companions, free in the world, was just too implausible and tone deaf for most to swallow. I confess that during my adolescent infatuation with the Starling and Lecter pairing, I revelled in this fan-fic of an ending. It made perfect sense to me, and satisfied the sexual chemistry that had been brewing, in my view, for years between the characters. I still somewhat stand by this, but it really does read like the ending was drawn from a Reader's Wives contest or something.

When the third book in the Lecter series, simply titled Hannibal, was announced for cinematic adaptation, some speculated that parts of the novel were simply too obscene to translate to screen.

Many a book far more extreme than Hannibal has been very faithfully adapted to the screen, but when the writers got their grubby mits on Harris' book, they decided to water it down in very derogatory and inexplicable ways. The novel it takes its material from is far from perfect, but a number of key characters and plot threads that were fairly central to the story never quite made the leap from page to screen. Hannibal is a pretty messy and poorly-coordinated movie, that is far too preoccupied with looking stylish.

Captured that Demme sophistication perfectly

Ridley Scott's professional name has gone through some transition over the years. Alien brought him acclaim as a sharp and effective visual storyteller; someone who could craft characters and cast actors who breathed life into them. His 21st century reputation precedes him as an overly-flashy, technologically-preoccupied director whose grasp on character and sensical plot seems to have slipped. Prometheus characterises this shift in artistic direction. Scott was about midway between these two extremes when he took the directorial helm of Hannibal, and what he turned out was a confused mish-mash of these styles. Far too much time is dedicated to visuals that do not suit the narrative, while the two or three main characters whose lives constitute the emotional weight of the story are diluted to mere silhouettes.

Hannibal, as written by Thomas Harris, is driven by its characters and their experiences. We are a decade on from Starling's ordeal with Buffalo Bill; she is physically and emotionally worn out by the significant influence that media and federal politics have had on the career she has strived so hard for; meanwhile Lecter, having escaped custody at the end of Silence of the Lambs, is living his best life in Italy, seamlessly carrying on as an art curator. His morbid curiosity with Starling is tickled by prominent media coverage of an assignment gone wrong that ended in the deaths of a perp and several of her colleagues, and he drip-drops back into her life via taunting correspondence. The third figure, this book's Buffalo Bill, if you like, is one Mason Verger, a meat empire heir with a history of paying big bucks to cover up his indiscretions, the most heinous being systematic child molestation. He is a hideously disfigured husk of a man whose life depends on a cornucopia of machinery and personal care, provided by his right-hand man Cordell. A sort of mutual, three-way pursuit ensues between Starling, Lecter and Verger. Starling wants to track down Lecter through Verger's inside knowledge and possibly revive her career; Verger wants to take the ultimate revenge on the psychologist who coerced him into cutting off his own face; Lecter... well, he wants to enjoy the finer things in life, and probably to use Starling's professional situation to gain her trust.

Ridley Scott presents Hannibal in Whoville

Now Scott is a filmmaker who knows his way around a good visual, and you'll recall that one of the many weapons in Silence of the Lambs' arsenal was the engrossing cinematography by Tak Fujimoto. The film guides audience sympathy and hints at motives and alliances, all through meticulous use of a camera: the close-up fourth-wall-breaking shots of Clarice as she talks to people, and the way she only makes eye contact with those she considers her intellectual equals. These include Lecter, Ardelia, Jack Crawford, and even Buffalo Bill himself. It was a prime example of how to tell a story visually. Hannibal requires this same attention to detail and emotional drive, but it just doesn't get it. This time John Mathieson is in charge of cinematography, and although he also worked for Scott on Gladiator the year before, it is rather telling that one of his later works was none other than Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera - a movie notorious for visuals that get an A for effort but fall artistically flat. It's all, "oh, that looks pretty cool", and no, "that shot tells me a lot about X, Y or Z". It's not all about looking cool, kids.

I'm generally not one for pointing out dated film techniques, as I like to appreciate art for what it was in the context of its creation. However, Hannibal just screams early-'00s with its approach to visuals. Like the contemporaneous Lord of the Rings movies, the action will suddenly and randomly go into a slow frame rate for a few seconds. It puts silly images not just into the background, but into the foreground of its shots, such as a flock of pigeons forming Lecter's face on the cobblestones. It just throws any shit at the screen to see what sticks, like a first year film student project, as if the director is unsure of his style. And that's what's so damn frustrating. This is Ridley fucking Scott. He knows much better than this. But at least he could give his very talented actors some decent direction, right? RIGHT?

Ohhh, you know I also voiced Caitlyn Jenner?

For whatever reason, Jodie Foster does not reprise the role she gave so much heart to, and honestly, if I'd had my way, they would have just called off this stupid idea then and there. But hey, still gotta make those sweet sweet dollas, amirite? So Julianne Moore, of all people, gets called in to fill Foster's boots, and this movie is the reason I still have trouble liking Moore to this day. It's certainly true that Starling is not the same woman she was ten years before, and Moore is only doing what the writers and producers tell her to do, but her performance is so stilted and cold that I cannot even like Clarice Starling, or hope for her to succeed! Gary Oldman, who is hidden under layers of prosthetics and even had his name scratched from the credits and marketing, is somehow infinitely more engaging than Moore, and he is playing a fucking child molester! Why do I find myself more drawn to his silly games, than I do to Starling's very grave situation? 

Even the brilliant Hopkins, whose serious and studious approach to his work is well-known, has his cinematic prowess neutered by the ways the director and cinematographer decide to show him to us. No longer is he the predator, watching unblinking, as he eyes up his imminent prey; no longer is he such a powerful creature that he occupies every inch of the space he stands in. Now he is an average man, in civilian clothing, striding down the endless streets of Florence, standing lonely in the vast halls of old churches and apartment buildings. The way he disappeared into the crowd at the end of Silence, he continues almost the entirety of this film. Suddenly, he is a little blip on the landscape, despite being the namesake of the entire story. 

One movie that really does need a porn parody

Thomas Harris has always built this world with a good number of substantial characters. Silence gave us the likes of Crawford, Chilton, Ardelia, Catherine and Senator Martin, and they were all pertinent and realistic figures within the narrative. The book Hannibal brings back Crawford and Nurse Barney, and introduces Verger's sister Margot, whose ultimate murder of her twisted brother is entirely justified in the story as we read it. Her elimination from the movie causes a terrible domino effect: Barney is introduced, then has no further purpose to serve, so disappears; the bit part of Cordell is the one to finally kill Mason Verger, but he has so little personal or emotional stake in the situation, that it seems unreasonable, and unprecedented. Compare it, if you will, to Arya being the one to kill the Night King. We all thought the same thing: why her? Of all the conflicts she has endured, the Night King was the last person on her mind; meanwhile, a good half-dozen other characters' arcs seem to have led to this very moment, in which they will defeat the ultimate evil in a profound and meaningful way. So after being subject to nothing more sinister than Verger's minging face and snippy attitude, Cordell suddenly decides that he hates his boss so much that he will murder him. However, Margot has suffered years of sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of her brother, to the point that she is a bodybuilder in an effort to feel powerful, and has engaged with Starling and Barney extensively. She is square in the middle of this whole mess, and she has many good reasons to make her brother suffer. Why they decided to cut her character, I will never understand.

As a result of Harris' work, not Scott's, there are two lawmen who become supposedly central figures to this story. The first is the detestable Paul Krendler, who got a brief mention and sweeping mid-close-up in Silence, this time played by Ray Liotta. Now he is high-ranking, hates Starling for some reason, and has the mentality of a frat boy half-a-keg deep. He peeks at a pen-and-ink sketch of a nude woman like a naughty schoolboy, and concludes his officious diatribe at Starling with, "this town is full of cornpone country pussy." It's as if Scott woke up one morning and thought, "I forgot about the feminism!" and put this stupid line in off the cuff to emphasis what an asshole this character is, but once again, this is the regrettable work of Harris. Silence, both in film and literary forms, gave a subtle undertone of the sexism Starling faced in her job, but it never preached or made a point of it, like modern takes on the same story would. Basically, Krendler is a douchey man-child who wants to destroy Starling's career.

Then there is Detective Pazzi who - so underwritten that you need to have read the book to know - is a somewhat disgraced Florentine police officer, and he is looking to improve his financial and professional standing by capturing Lecter, who he has spotted working in a local museum, and is on the FBI's Most Wanted List alongside Osama Bin Laden (lol). Poor old Pazzi, however, is way out of his league, as most lawmen tend to be in these stories, and not only does he end up dead, but Lecter even serenades him with the embarrassing histories of his traitorous ancestors before disembowelling him. So... Senora Pazzi is one husband lighter, the unfortunate tourists in the square that night get a holiday to remember, and Lecter... escapes and somehow gets back to the US, completely undetected. Pazzi's sacrificial lamb-ing serves as the climax of the second act, but then once the third act gets going, you realise that he died for nothing. Hell, he lived for nothing. His influence on the story is negligible. Despite his calls to an official FBI phone line, and Starling's explicit warning to him not to pursue Lecter, nobody goes looking for him, or wonders what the hell happened to that overconfident married Italian dude that just disappeared. Our time is all but wasted on this whole saga, and when we get back to the US, there is no trace of Pazzi at all. Just forgeddabowdim. 

One of the defining characteristics of Silence of the Lambs is how neatly, how perfectly, everything came together. No loose end left, no stone unturned. Hannibal is such a jumbled mess that asks questions and doesn't answer them. And as much as I dislike the visual style, general direction and overall tone of this movie, much blame is to be attributed to Harris, or moreover, the writers who decided that his way was the best. It is a piss-poor follow-up to its impeccable predecessor, and such bad form on behalf of everyone involved. It's like when the problem kids at the grammar school get lectured by their form tutor about how they are letting themselves down: it's embarrassing, but entirely true.

You're not going out like that, Paul

Hannibal seems to have fallen by the wayside, mostly forgotten by your average moviegoer. If anybody you ask does, in fact, recall having seen it at some point, I am fairly certain that the only thing they can tell you about is brains, in some form or other. It's either the stupid scene in which Lecter slices off Krendler's crown to serve his brain matter alongside a fine wine sauce and side salad, or it is the even stupider final scene, in which a young child with an unnatural desire to try weird food badgers Lecter into feeding him tupperwared leftovers of Krendler's brain. Mmmm, tastes of Pabst Blue Ribbon and misogyny! I never took the Lecter chronicles for stories that had to be explicitly gory. We aren't supposed to fear that this immensely intelligent psychological professional will empty our skulls out like jack'o'lanterns. We are supposed to fear that he is the everyman, someone who we might start chatting to in a cafe, only for a short conversation to have given him everything he needs to mentally torment us for the rest of our lives. Murder is almost incidental when it comes to Hannibal Lecter. If it weren't, he would be your average Michael or Jason or Freddy. It is that razor-sharp brain that is so terrifying. This is why Hannibal eventually spills out into a silly freak show, culminating in Lecter feeding Krendler his own Michelin-star-worthy cerebral matter, before he chops off his own hand to save Starling the same fate. 

I have always believed that Lecter was in love with Starling, in some weird way or other. This movie tippy-toes around such an implication, and pushes it too far as to imply that Lecter would disable himself in such a fashion to avoid capture by the authorities. I mean, he has evaded them before, and has always been about self-preservation. How can he play piano or write or draw with one hand? OK, he is Hannibal Lecter, I'm sure he'd soon train himself to do so, but the point is that I don't believe that Lecter would do this out of desperation, or affection for Starling. I am far more inclined to believe that Starling would flee her tattered FBI career and scant social life, to take refuge with Lecter, with his money, intellectualism, and uncanny ability to evade capture. 

George R R Martin has said that if a writer changes the direction of his work halfway through the narrative (in his case, because fans have guessed what will happen), they inevitably throw the whole product out of joint. The first half, or whatever, has been carefully crafted to result in the logical second half, and moving the goalpost mid-game just ruins everything. Consider this when watching Hannibal which, for the most part, follows Harris' material. The main difference is the ending, and where Starling and Lecter end up. Harris was writing towards them living an exuberant life together under the radar, but Scott detours the third act toward a final confrontation, before Lecter escapes again, with all emotional ends untied. This bitter encounter, paired with Krendler's head-shrinking, gives us a really flaccid and unsatisfactory ending to the second chapter between one of the most memorable couples in film history.