This little piggy went to market... (Hannibal (DVD))

Member Name: zusy

Product:	Hannibal (DVD)
Date:	25/02/01 (217 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Thrills! Spills! The pleasure of meeting up with an old friend...

Disadvantages: Too scared to go all the way?

Menu: Starter - Palpable sense of expectation served on a cold, rainy afternoon at Brighton Marina's cinema. Excitement sauce with twist of anticipatory nerves... (Serves a queue of 50)

So there we were, huddled against the wall, waiting to get our tickets for the awaiting feast. Some people were discussing Silence of the Lambs (could Hannibal possibly live up to its predecessor?)Some people were loudly dismissing the film without having seen it. I was trying to remember every aspect of the book, which I'd read some months previously, to see how the dramatisation would compare.

I had read some glowing reviews, some not so good, and some outright 'this film stinks' articles that had me prepared for the worst.

Tickets in one hand, over-priced popcorn in the other, we shuffled our way into the darkness, blinking as we disrobed from winter coats, scarfs, gloves and preconceptions.

Adverts over, and trying to ignore the fact we had yet again been singled out by The Most Annoying People In The World as desirable seat-neighbours, we moved on to...

The Main Course: Meat of indestinguishable origin served with a garnish of stylish thrills and pleasant surprises. Side-salad of slight disappointment.

Hannibal was much better than I had dared allow myself to hope it would be.

I couldn't see how Julianne Moore could fill the shoes of Jodie Foster, but she did admirably. I still think Clarice can only ever *really* be Foster, just as Hannibal can only be Hopkins in my mind, but I was glad to see she didn't try to imitate. Moore was just the right mix of gutsy bravado and fragile innocence.

Ah, Anthony. I could watch him play Hannibal forever. He has captured the essence of Lecter and yet cannot explain how. I saw a fascinating interview with him, in which he said that whilst filming Hannibal, he saw the rushes and scared himself half to death.

There is a scene that Clarice
watches whilst re-checking her notes on Lecter's case. Video footage of him tearing the face off a nurse (which I think we only heard as hearsay in SOTL). The scene lasts only a few seconds, yet it is perhaps one of the most frightening moments of the entire film.

Lecter leans forwards, so slowly, then quick as a flash he bites, they fall to the floor and we see Lecter writhing on top of the nurse as she struggles to escape. He is pulled up by security guards and the CCTV footage captures his blood-soaked, wide-eyed maniacal expression.

Hopkins said that, whilst watching that scene back after they'd filmed it, he was terrified. "They captured something on film that wasn't me. It wasn't my face, it was the face of the Devil..."

This is the genius of Hopkins' performance. He can go from the cultured, cool genius with exquisite manners and spare, clipped movements - to a gore-splashed psychopathic monster, in the blink of an eye. And even he doesn't know how.

Hannibal is not presented as a monster in this film. We do not hate Hannibal, we *love* him. After all, he only eats 'rude people', and we can all sympathise with that, now can't we? Part of the film's cunning lies in the fact that we want approval from Hannibal - we want to be Clarice, to be admired, perhaps even loved back. He wouldn't eat *us*, he'd eat those other people over there...

Mason Verger, Hannibal's only surviving victim, is this film's villain. He is a rich pervert with a prediliction for children and cruelty (his paedophillia is quickly skipped over in the film - when Starling interviews him at his mansion, he talks about his time at Summer Camp when..."the kids would do anything for a candy bar..." In the book this is much more evident as his favourite beverage is the tears of children he has abused in some way.)

Verger wants Hannibal caught, not to be put back in ja
il, but to have his carefully planned revenge. Of course, any plan involving man-eating pigs is bound to be on the dodgy side, and the outcome is not quite what he expects...

We do not want Verger to win, we cheer for Hannibal and Clarice, a bizarre kind of superhero team taking on the liars, the cheats, the rude people.

There are some disappointments here, though. I cannot fault the filming - exquisite shots of moody Italian back-streets and sunlit piazzas - I cannot fault the casting (yeah, yeah, Foster would have made the film, but Moore is excellent and was brave to take it on in the first place...) I just hate the way the film makers copped-out from the book's strident anti-morality tale.

I understand why they had to do it, of course. Clarice could not be allowed to submit herself to Hannibal, because 'American audiences wouldn't stand for it.' This is the line always thrown out when and ending or meaning is changed, and is no doubt very true.

In the book, the reader is left in no doubt that the character of Starling has changed. Here, in the film, she gets angrier at the authorities, maybe, but she never loses her steely determination to Do The Right Thing. That determination may waver slightly, but she never actually lets it go. In the book, she does let go, and that was the fact that shocked so many readers and left them puzzling over what Harris was doing when he wrote *that* ending...

(Nope. Not telling you what happens in the book. You'll have to go and read it for yourself. Prepare to have your jaw drop open...)

The much-discussed last few minutes of the film are gorey, yes, but they are also very funny. It's a kind of slap-stick comedy at work, which leaves the audience giggling nervously whilst shading their eyes and making loud "Eeeeeeeeeeew!" noises. Of course we all peep through our fingers - car-crash mentality...we have to look, look away, move closer and look
again.

It's not the goriest film ever seen, but enough pink squishy stuff to make the departing audience smirk with delight as they pass the queue waiting to get in: 'We've already seen it. We know something *you* don't. It's disgusting! We loved it!'

I was so glad to have read a review of the film in The Independent before seeing it, otherwise we wouln't have known to stay until the very end of the credits for a 'private' message from Hannibal... There's something rather thrilling about sitting in a practically deserted cinema (only one other couple sat with us,'in the know') and hearing that silky, chilling voice say the final words, when everyone else has gone...

Having digested the starter and main course, we move finally to...

Dessert: Post-film smirks lavishly sprinkled with discussion and after-thought.

You should see this film.

Of that, there is no doubt.

But first, you obviously have to see Silence of the Lambs...and I would suggest you might like to read the book of Hannibal, too, before watching it on the big screen. I always prefer to read the book prior to watching a dramatisation, if possible, because you tend to pick up little nuances, learn about the characters and build your *own* ideas, without having them dictated by a director.

I don't think Hannibal is nearly as scary as SOTL. I find Dr Lecter far more sinister when he's behind bars, anyway... there's just something about that voluntary stillness that suggests the power beneath, a psychological horror rather than the blood-and-guts-in-your-face variety.

I have to wonder if Harris (and the film makers), having seen how audiences took to the character of Lecter in SOTL, felt the need to try and push us further in love with him... by camping it up a bit, and having one too many 'I am going to get something to eat now' jokes we can titter knowingly a
t.

Lecter is almost played for laughs in Hannibal, we are invited to sympathise with him, to like him better than those who would have him behind bars again (apart from Clarice, of course), or as part of some symbolic revenge.

I loved Hannibal already. (My mother always said my taste in men would let me down...)I didn't need to be pushed! I would have loved the film even more, if they hadn't de-mystified Hannibal's allure quite so much.

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