Can we forgive Hannibal for castrating the nineties most perversive and engaging screen character? Shouldn't we condemn it's very making as obviously bowing to financial motives? Well, we probably should and plenty have seen the film and drawn these conclusions. The truth is that Hannibal performs a cantutian task. The critics are right, in one respect, that the Lector character is devoid of the menace and intelligence of its predecessor from Jonathon Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. Similarly, without Jodie Foster, Starling never retains that fragile defiance that mirrors Lector so perfectly. But wasn't this always going to happen? The film would, quite rightly, never have been made without the signature of Hopkins yet, with his recasting, came the acknowledgement that the Lector in this movie would not be the same. Watching him swan about Florence will trigger audible disappointment from any fan of Lambs, but would we really have believed the promise of savage and brutal homicide at the hands of the aged and flabby Hopkins? The recreation of impressive invulnerability that we get in the previous film would have been impossible.
Instead, there is a premeditated effort on the part of Scott to distance this film from the unsurpassable Lambs. There is a departure from the bleak Baltimore landscape in Demme's film and, with the stylised scenery of Florence, it becomes inherent that we are watching a markedly different film. If Lector is to be portrayed as a rather eccentric old gent, then at least he's put in a place where this seems feasible. Other aspects of the new film, however, are less excusable. The introduction of a new antagonist, the billionaire vegetable Verger, reminded me of a Bond villain, complete with physical disability. At one point I'm sure he utters the words "Dr Lector, my archenemy. We meet again!"
Hannibal is certainly flawed - we're never convinced that these events would follow on from The Silence of the Lambs and there is no reminder, provided by Buffalo Bill, that Lector's theorising and posturing is weighed against his own pathological rage. This loses the character its mesmerising quality. The film succombs to various sins but, nevertheless, it avoids a few too. Hannibal never promises the undeliverable, it never tries to disturb like Lambs did, and should perhaps be seen more as a mischievious meditation on the character from the previous film rather than a worthy sequel. Hannibal intends to wrong-foot an expectant audience by giving them a colourful yarn, but this is ultimately unsatisfying. If the hype from Hannibal serves any purpose then it should make us refocus on Jonathan Demme's incredible earlier film. |
