Hannibal is a gloriously looking, truly beautiful film about some grim, truly ugly people. It's also a confusing juxtaposition that has torn people between hating it and rather liking it; I myself have seen it three to four times over the years but remarkably, remain in a certain… More
Hannibal is a gloriously looking, truly beautiful film about some grim, truly ugly people. It's also a confusing juxtaposition that has torn people between hating it and rather liking it; I myself have seen it three to four times over the years but remarkably, remain in a certain state of not being necessarily too fond of it. Whilst the locations of the Virginian outback and the streets of Florence are shot exquisitely, with a mesmeric soundtrack, most of the characters in Hannibal possess a sense of evil; of wrong-doing; of ugliness, and in two particular male characters of a law-enforcing nature, they can possess these attributes whilst maintaining an outer shell of somewhat rugged handsomeness. This, as the photogenic female lead has to deal with a public shaming following a chaotic opening gunfight, as inner-demons threaten to feast away at her. The film is one-part chase thriller as the titular character remains constantly on the run; one-part journey of redemption; one-part detective thriller as one man goes it alone in tracking someone down and one-part revenge tale.
But there is that sense of pantomime, or melodrama, when Anthony Hopkins' legendary screen character Dr. Hannibal Lecter is revealed as a physical presence for the first time; he turns to face us, the perspective is just to the side of the character of Renaldo Pazzi (Giannini), an Italian police officer, and there is that overly dramatic sense in us knowing who he is but the hapless supporting character not. This is all just before it is revealed Lecter is gunning for a job as a sort of curator at a centuries old library in Florence, and that his predecessor has mysteriously vanished only recently. To a degree, it all sort of works in its own odd little screwball way. Both Harris' 1999 book and this 2001 adaptation seem to warm to the character of Lecter without embracing him, and in titling the film 'Hannibal', the piece moves away from other series titles such as Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs; two headings that were linked to both the plight and internal difficulties of the serial killing antagonist The Tooth Fairy and lead Clarice Starling, respectively.
Clarice Starling is indeed back but is played by Julianne Moore, who does a relatively fine job. Curiously, rather than distance itself from 1991's popular and vastly acknowledged work of brilliance The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal makes the curious decision to evoke immediate, somewhat nostalgic, memories of said film in having Starling play back all the old tapes from when she interviewed Lecter. It's an odd reference to the previous film, an early 'getting out of the way' if you like of texts of old. But there's a sense that the film has its own identity anyway, and eventually comes across as being split into two distinct halves; a sequence, of which, at the beginning of the second half that sees Lecter chased around by some mercenaries employed by disgruntled past-Lecter victim Mason Verger (Oldman). They have it in mind to capture him so that Verger may wreck a horrid revenge, and it's an important sequence, a shifting of power as to where the film's chief levels of antagonism will arise. Previously, Verger was rendered deformed after an altercation with Lecter many years ago; in the process made to look a freak on the outside and just as ugly as on the inside when it arises he had engaged in prior acts of paedophilia, but is now mostly confined to a wheelchair; further still trapped within his huge manner house and vast acres of land.
The multi-strand approach initially sees Lecter based in Italy, giving away his whereabouts following the sending of a letter to Clarice, who is going through her own crisis of confidence with the F.B.I. following a market place shoot out in which an agent is killed. Starling is again struggling with the sexual advances that come with working within the male dominated world in which she operates, with the film making a point as to capture fellow agent Paul Krendler's (Liotta) glances at her in a meeting very early on while later; his physical position within the room they are talking sees him sit himself on a desk, thus looming over a sitting Starling when criticising those of Lecter's kind in that they have a taste for items of a high art nature and therefore are bound to be somewhat strange.
For the best part, the film is a Florence-set pot boiler revolving around Pazzi's attempts at dealing with Lecter who's operating under a pseudonym. The very gradual realisation and plan of action Pazzi puts into operation in capturing Lecter is constructed nicely, director Scott applying a fair amount of menace in having Lecter come across as someone whom may or may not know of Pazzi's plan. Scott additionally applies a variety of long shots at the most heightened of times; a telephone call to the F.B.I. ends with a shot of an entire plaza and that uneasy, mystical sense that someone may by out there amongst the array of busy bodies, observing what he's done; indeed heard the entire conversation if that were at all possible. There's a certain disturbing poetry to most of Lecter's murders in Hannibal, in that each victim evicts some sort of sinful tendency in their aims prior to their demise; be it lust, wrath or greed. It's easier to associate oneself with Lecter in the film as this wondering, loose serial killer but in making those around Lecter so unrelatable, the film rather brilliantly avoids rendering Lecter neither a romanticised figure nor someone we ought to feel natural affection toward. The film is uneven in tone, and pulls out the sort of gross content that sees it severely clash with most of its overall look, but as a pulpy tale of a killer on the loose; a vengeful past victim and a righteous detective on the hunt, Hannibal is in the end a ok film based on a book that I didn't like at all. Its as I said a film that has people who love and hate it so I suggest giving it a watch and judge for yourself