Hannibal

I hadn’t watched Hannibal (2001) in a number of years, but Ridley Scott’s film on the novel about Hannibal ‘the Cannibal’ Lecter is one fucked up experience. It is a twisted story and Hannibal’s activities here are quite ghoulish. He guts a detective (Giancarlo Giannini) out to arrest him in Italy, hangs him off a balcony in a parallel to his ancestor’s similar fate, and before doing that to him (he likes to use chloroform to knock them out), he informs him he might just “dine on his wife” (not with, mind you, *on*)! Oh, but that isn’t nearly as warped as the tale of a pedophile (Gary Oldman, whoa Nelly, is he grotesquely disfigured!) who was a patient of Lecter’s, “influenced” (by poppers and Lecter’s offering through their influence) to carve his face off with broken glass, feeding the flesh to the dogs! Then there’s the douchebag prosecutor always antagonizing Lecter’s muse, Clarice Starling (the role occupied by Julianne Moore), and instigating her career’s difficulties. Never does her actions during the job acquire the punishment served her. She does what the job requires (the attempted call off of a drug raid, given the go-ahead by a local street narcotics cop unwilling to allow her to call the shots ends in death and destruction with a lot of machine guns rounding off, and a baby almost killed; her detective work almost catches Lecter), but Clarice still winds up on suspension. Well despite her best efforts, Clarice never is able to arrest Lecter, but the prosecutor giving her the shit (Ray Liotta, a real sleazy prick) has his skull opened by Lecter (!), with pieces of his own brain cooked and fed to him!

The first part of the film has Clarice dealing with her own FBI and shit-eating-grin (or is that the cat-that-swallowed-the-canary more apt) Liotta seemingly looking at how to convict her for something in regards to her work performance. Hannibal enjoys analyzing how her own agency dismisses and diminishes her even though Clarice is a fine officer. The film spends a hell of a long time with Giannini putting together a plan to capture Lecter and gain the prestigious award for his arrest. The result is never in question so the prolonging of Lecter vanquishing him seems odd. The film loves to adorn us with the scarred up face of Oldman. Without his voice, you could barely tell at all that was him.

I envisioned Anthony Hopkins practicing how to say “Clarice” in the mirror. He says it in different variations of tone. I’m all about Moore in everything. So just looking at her face for the running time is fine by me. I didn’t dislike her performance, but does it light up the screen? I’d say, “nah.” Hopkins just looks like an anaconda in the jungle about to swallow whole a monkey. He’s got a scary face, which is the point. The whole “brains cooking” scene with Liotta is just a diabolical, sick piece with Hopkins working the room as if he were a chef in a fine restaurant. Liotta, at this point, is like a rude little boy offering Clarice a secretarial job (she is woozy due to morphine after Hannibal removes a bullet she took to help him get free prior to what appeared to be his end thanks to Oldman’s rich sicko and hired creeps with man-eating pigs) while belittling her. Oldman getting ditched by his hired help (Željko Ivanek) to get eaten by boars as Hannibal calmly carries off the wounded Clarice is a fitting end to the ghoul. Giannini perhaps is a different story. He’s a broken cop needing to solve a case of a protégé of Lecter’s going missing, turning his attentions to nabbing him, and in doing so pays with his life. Art and history in Italy, with Lecter as an authority in it makes sense. It provides him with a career, a profession that adheres to his intellect, and the place of which he lives seems perfect for his exquisite tastes (pun intended).

But he’s soon in America near his beloved Clarice, getting involved in her life. He even passes through her house while she’s asleep, and they communicate through earbuds and mics.  As you might expect, she can never grab him; even with handcuffs, he’s willing to cut off his hand in order to keep from getting caught (he admires her enough not to lop of hers which is handcuffed to his!).

Scott really lets this film get nasty, with repulsive people and situations involved with his popular cannibal, intellectual psychopath. Clarice is alive at the end of this so that’s something in her favor; few others that come in contact of any personal form can say the same).