A Hill of Fava Beans
Hannibal Rising / Daniel Carlson
For a series that once reached the auspicious heights of The Silence of the Lambs, the ongoing film saga of Dr. Hannibal Lecter has hit a pathetic new low with Hannibal Rising, a clumsy, dull, poorly plotted, ill-conceived waste of film that limps along bloodlessly for two hours before finally shuffling off into the dark. Director Peter Webber, working from Thomas Harris’ screenplay (based on his own novel), commits the genre’s worst sin by offering a thriller completely devoid of thrills. Part of this is due to the very nature of prequels: Hannibal Rising traces the young Lecter’s life as he develops a taste for killing, but it’s not as if the viewer is left wondering whether he’ll get away with it or be captured or killed. We know for a fact that he’ll live until at least his 60s and eat quite a few faces along the way. However, Webber refuses to inject any of the scenes with the requisite tension to keep them from bogging down, and the film is ultimately undone because its hero is a flesh-eating psychopath, and it’s impossible to care what happens to him.
Young Hannibal Lecter lives with his parents and kid sister in a castle in Lithuania, which is overrun in 1944 by roving troops of Nazis and Russians. His family takes refuge in their nearby lodge, but they’re soon discovered by a pack of local thugs who’ve been aiding the Germans. Webber actually demonstrates some skill in these early sequences, and the story’s premise holds promise: How would the boy and his sister survive after a bomb kills their parents? What would the thugs do to them? But after only a few minutes, the film sinks into pathetic melodrama: The child Hannibal crying to heaven as he cradles his mother’s corpse after the bombing; the head thug eating a freshly killed bird and smearing the blood on his jaw as he greedily eyes the children; the flash cuts and music stings that are meant to invoke an air of terror but instead came across as hollow mockeries of actual mood. The boy eventually escapes, at which point the film leaps forward eight years to catch up with the teenage Hannibal (Gaspard Ulliel), now living in his parents’ old home, which has been turned into a state-run orphanage. Haunted by dreams of his sister, Hannibal doesn’t speak to anyone, though he is prone to stabbing his enemies with forks or laying bear traps for them. You know, kid stuff. The headmaster reprimands Hannibal with this curious statement: “You do not honor the human pecking order. You’re always hurting the bullies.” Hannibal’s sin, apparently, is demanding justice, but he’s rebuked for it, which would make an interesting theory as to why he starts taking matters into his own hands and dispensing cannibalistic retribution to his trespassers, only Webber has zero intention of getting anywhere near the psychology of Lecter’s character. He fights because he was traumatized as a youngster by the thugs. That’s it.
It’s at the orphanage that Hannibal discovers some of his mother’s old correspondence, which leads him to his uncle’s address in France. After hitchhiking across the continent to get there, Hannibal learns that his uncle is dead, and his aunt, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li), now lives alone. She teaches Hannibal to fight with a samurai sword — which you know is going to wind up being a bad, bad idea — and flirts with him shamelessly, which is just creepy. From here, Webber doesn’t pretend to connect the scenes with any semblance of suspense; he merely strings together sequences with awful dialogue (“Memory is like a knife. It can cut you.”) until Hannibal, by now a med student, eventually kills someone else. Hannibal lashes out at a local man who wrongs him, then eventually decides that the only way to rid himself of his bad dreams is to hunt down and slaughter the aging thugs that destroyed his youth, most of whom conveniently live in France now.
Hannibal’s plodding pursuit of the thugs takes up the bulk of the script, but Harris, in his first screenplay outing, keeps the film rooted firmly in the kind of episodic ramblings that would be better suited to a novel. The story skirts larger issues like the war crimes the men have committed, as well as the compromises people make in pursuit of a larger good. Inspector Pope (Dominic West) knows Hannibal is guilty of certain crimes, but is willing to ignore them if Hannibal can assist in the capture of Vladis Grutas (Rhys Ifans), who runs girls and engages in other unspecified criminal activities. But none of these issues has a chance to take hold as long as Harris and Webber are content to do nothing more than set up victims and knock them down in increasingly violent means. Which is another problem entirely: In the era of torture-porn, the brutalities of Hannibal Lecter seem downright quaint, or at least understandable. It was the erudition and class Anthony Hopkins brought to the role that lent the character his iconic status and turned him from a psycho into a demigod. Even Brian Cox, in Michael Mann’s 1986 Manhunter, lent the character some grace. But Ulliel is a stilted shell of Hannibal’s former incarnations, moving blindly from murder to murder with none of the fierceness or complexity that made the character so watchable in the past.
But only so much of the blame can be laid at Ulliel’s awkward feet. By focusing solely on Hannibal, Harris and Webber drain the story of the intricacies that made the original films so compelling. It was Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling, and her terrifying conversations with the urbane but mercurial Hannibal, that made The Silence of the Lambs so mesmerizing. He was a caged animal, and she was dangling meat in front of the bars to provoke a response. But in Hannibal Rising, there is no worthy adversary for Hannibal to deal with, just a string of horrible people who, though they probably didn’t deserve to die, never rise above the level of interchangeable victims. Left to his own devices, Hannibal is one boring guy.
Daniel Carlson is the managing editor of Pajiba and a low-level employee at a Hollywood industry magazine. You can visit his blog, Slowly Going Bald.
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Comments
Kinda sad that Lecter's Wikipedia entry seems to be more entertaining to me than this movie.
Posted by: Vermillion at February 9, 2007 9:36 PM
I was kind of bummed when I heard Gaspard was going to be in this movie since it seemed like an obvious trainwreck...but when the first glimpses of the movie started appearing I thought "HMMM...perhaps its not so bad."
Guess it is.
CURSES.
Posted by: Leanne at February 9, 2007 10:27 PM
I have long been a huge fan of the books of the Thomas Harris but i just do not understand how they get so butchered on the way to the big screen. I left the studio ranting and raving after Hannibal and even Red Dragon buys into the whole good is good bad is bad idea. I was hoping that this movie would capture the essence of hannibal that makes him a likable character, albeit a bit mad.
I was afraid of exactly what I read in this review, the issues that are changed are subtle but also are a major part of the develompment of hannibal's character and end up producing a very flat villian which is not what he is supposed to be at all.
I'll still see it though
Posted by: natmusk at February 9, 2007 10:51 PM
how did he hitchhikce from lithuania to france in the 50's? there was the little thing called the iron curtain after all
Posted by: Cap at February 10, 2007 9:35 AM
Cap,
In the book he didn't hitchhike. His uncle found out he was at the orphanage and Lecter was picked up there (his uncle was alive until after the fight with the butcher in the book). Plus, Lecter was a Count after his father died so that opens a lot of doors.
Posted by: SV at February 10, 2007 12:35 PM
This guy's portrayal of the doctor is about as subtle as a hammer to the face. You can tell he's "acting" evil. I swear, if he had a mustache, he'd be twirling it.
They've just about killed the mystique they created for the good doctor in Manhunter.
Yes, I wrote Manhunter.
Posted by: BarbadoSlim at February 10, 2007 4:28 PM
Once more the novel out lives and out does the movie. Not even close to the excellent page-turner I devoured in a single night because I could not stop reading it.
Posted by: vdantev at February 11, 2007 9:07 AM
So much for the "Don't Make Me Come Home And Watch Norbit" Pie, eh?
Posted by: Jaci at February 11, 2007 10:07 AM
In the Silence of the Lambs, didn't Hannibal have a New England accent, and I might be wrong, but weren't we told he grew up in New England? Where the hell was France in there?
Posted by: Confused at February 11, 2007 6:55 PM
Cap, there's a brief scene where he's scaling a chain link fence and dogs are barking and people are shooting at him as he makes his escape across the country. I guess that explains the entire Iron Curtain bit.
Confused, in Hannibal, his background is thoroughly delved into to kind of "explain" why he is the way he is. Mischa was a pivotal moment in his life, as the only remnants of her in the book were a couple milk teeth and picked-clean bones, and it mentions where he landed to become the way he was (i.e., school in Paris). Hannibal states that he comes from a Nazi-inhabited country (I'm assuming Lithuania .. I haven't read the book in forever), not New England.
Damn it. Harris should've stopped at the Lambs screenplay. Demme was the only one to seize this franchise by the horns and twist it in its appropriate direction.
Posted by: duckandcover at February 12, 2007 5:36 AM
Hannibal was such a horrible book- I found it clumsily written, and the plot was messy. I got the feeling that Harris had thought up all these grotesque things to do to people, then had to come up with a story to fit them all into.
On the other hand, his depiction of Hannibal's youth was incredibly delicate and compelling; I felt like I understood how that level of trauma could create the detachment mixed with rage that defined Lechter later on. I also really loved Harris' description of Hannibal's "Memory castle"; it seemed to realistically depict the dissociation that could result from what he endured. All in all- this part of the book had real horror and real resonance, unlike the rest of that putrid book.
So, when I heard that they were doing a film of Hannibal's youth- I thought is could be a brilliant psychological thriller with enough grossness to appeal to those whose tastes (so to speak) lean toward the more graphic type of thrill. How sad it appears to be neither.
Posted by: go big red at February 12, 2007 12:53 PM
The movie wasn't THAT bad, but Gaspard Ulliel was way, way, WAY out of his league. His attempt to channel Anthony Hopkins was the worst part by far. Anthony Hopkins could really freak you out, but this portrayal came across as harmless.
Posted by: Leaf at February 12, 2007 5:20 PM
I was really hoping this would be good, because Gaspard's kinda cute. I'll see it anyway, jsut for him. Then maybe Paris Jet'aime, with my two very fvorite canibals (Gaspard and Elijah Wood).
Posted by: Camille at February 12, 2007 8:08 PM
The Inspector's name is Popil...just FYI.
Anyway, the book was good for a bestseller. The movie isn't the best, but it's good for watching with squeamish people. It was hilarious in the theater when something would happen and this woman in front of me kept sucking air in through her teeth. She practically had a heart attack watching the commercial for dead silence, which looks like crap but very very scary crap.
Posted by: PixieGal262 at February 13, 2007 1:09 AM
I'm sorry to hear that the movie is a flop. The book was excellant. I couldn't put it down.
Posted by: Lisa at February 13, 2007 11:48 AM
I guess I'm unsophisticated. I liked the movie. I thought Ulliel was an odd casting choice, because physically he didn't resemble even a young Anthony Hopkins in any way. I also had my doubts as to whether a movie in the "Hannibal" franchise could stand without Hopkins. And yet I liked it. I liked that there were hardly any actors I'd even heard of before. I liked the look of the movie, the whole melancholic post-war feel. I liked that it wasn't overly gory (most of the violence took place offscreen), and I thought it was pretty faithful to the book. And there was some gorgeous music in it.
Glad I saw it before reading any reviews. :)
Posted by: Noelegy at February 13, 2007 6:47 PM
Gaspard Ulliel?? From the commercial, I thought it was SNLs Andy Samberg.
Posted by: Tracy at February 13, 2007 9:24 PM
I guess for some people it would be hard to understand what war can do to someone, especially a child. Maybe those who have experienced atrocities or at least are not so detached they deem them unrealistic, will have a greater appreciation of this delicate character.
Posted by: al at February 16, 2007 4:39 PM
great movie great plot. detective touch melancholy touch crudeness of hannibal. it felt like the other hannibal movies. plot was that he looked for revenge for the nazis that killed his sister, simple and to the point. why you have to put so many bad reviews and analyze a movie so deeply. Just enjoy it.
Posted by: antonio at February 17, 2007 4:05 AM
This movie was good, two thumbs up! I wasn't palnning to see it until I read that the critics panned the film, then I took a chance. Generally I bypass movies that critics applauded becuase they suck. Well this flcik was good 3 out of 4 stars. I would have ended it a bit differently but the gore, blood, and absolute horror make it worthwhile.
Ross
Posted by: Ross Carpenter at February 19, 2007 7:36 PM
The 3 comments before mine were so clearly written by the same person.
Posted by: chriso at February 20, 2007 7:07 PM
It looks as though they really worked hard on the first 10 minutes and then someone else came in to bore us for the rest of the movie. What is up with the scene where he shoots up and sleeps to remember the past?
Posted by: dave at February 24, 2007 11:03 AM
i couldnt finish the book or the movie. i plodded along with both for awhile but eventually lost interest. there was no excitement whatsoever in either, for me. good review, except for the mistake on the Inspector's name!
Posted by: robbie at July 5, 2007 2:28 PM