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| Credits |
Director: Peter Webber
Starring: Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Helena Lia Tachovska, Rhys Ifans, Dominic West
Screenplay: Thomas Harris
Country: USA
Australian Release Date: February 8 , 2007
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Running Time:
121 minutes |
Throughout Hannibal (1999), Thomas Harris' superb
follow up to Silence of the Lambs (1988), the fugitive
Dr. Lecter is haunted by the memory of his baby sister Mischa, who was
slaughtered and eaten by starving looters on the Eastern Front of World
War II. By the conclusion of that book, aided perhaps by the bizarre
consummation of his 'love' for FBI agent Clarice Starling, Hannibal stops
dreaming of his beloved sister. In a way, Starling returns the favour
Lecter did for her in the previous tale, which was to stop the lambs from
screaming and grant her peace of mind. Of course, an obvious similarity
exists between Starling's lambs and Lecter's Mischa: both were innocents
taken away and slain for human sustenance. Like Hannibal, whose parents
were killed at the hunting lodge during the war, Starling also lost her
father at an early age.
Hannibal Rising delves further into the events in
Lithuania leading up to Hannibal's childhood trauma at the hunting lodge
– ostensibly causing his mind to snap – as well as covering
what happens to him afterwards. With the SS-Waffen sweeping in from the
west toward Russia in Operation Barbarossa, Hannibal's father Count Lecter
(Richard Leaf, The Fifth Element, Braveheart) and mother (Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Mission: Impossible) decide to leave Lecter Castle and
hide in their secluded hunting lodge. Aged eight and three, Hannibal
(Aaron Thomas) and sister Mischa (Helena Lia Tachovska) ride along with
their parents through the forest as various functionaries stay behind to
lock down the family residence. Suddenly, a German regiment appears,
accompanied by local Nazi sympathizers who terrorize the cook and
housekeeper, then loot the premises. Several years later the Lecters,
still holding out at the hunting lodge, suffer an unfortunate encounter
with a Russian tank and a German dive bomber. Soon afterwards, the
vagabonds who looted the Lecter homestead stumble upon the hunting lodge
but only find Hannibal and Mischa giving each other comfort in the cold.
Led by Vladis Grutas (Rhys Ifans, Notting Hill, The Shipping News) and posing as Red Cross helpers, the
amoral band of deserters do what they can to stay alive without food in
the freezing conditions.
Naturally, Hannibal Lecter survives, but in what state? Being an
outsider, his life after the war as a mute orphan is spent in misery,
although his response to bullies often results in worse injuries for the
aggressors than to himself. Still mute, the teenaged Hannibal (Gaspard
Ulliel) eventually escapes the orphanage and treks to France to shack up
with his widowed aunt, Lady Murasaki Shikibu (Li Gong, Miami
Vice, Memoirs of a Geisha, 2046). Despite the peaceful surroundings and sensual
kindness of Lady Murasaki, who willingly or not seems to encourage Oedipal
feelings in the already troubled adolescent, Hannibal is tormented by
missing fragments of Mischa's fate in the lodge. At the age of 18,
Hannibal signs up for medical school in Paris and excels at drawing
dissected corpses, but in his quest to learn the truth about his past,
Hannibal discovers in gruesome ways that the looters are now earning a
prosperous living as smugglers in Europe and Canada. Hannibal's latent
homicidal urges, which once exploded during an altercation with a market
stall butcher (Charles Maquignon), soon turn to the business of cold and
calculated revenge.
Despite a few hitches, the book is excellent – I devoured it in
two days. Burp. Now, Thomas Harris apparently developed the screenplay in
parallel with the novel, which could explain the clichéd plot devices that
surface at the tail end of the story. At 323 pages in hardcover, the novel
contains more detail, characters and subplots and than the film, such as
the whole thread about recovering the family art collection, stolen by
Grutas and his thugs from the abandoned Lecter estate. The book also
serves up more ancillary violence and bloodshed. In one scene, a Russian
machine gunner gets an arm shot off and continues to fire the weapon with
his remaining hand. In the film, he merely does the ballistic tango and
slumps forward. However, both the film
and the novel share the same grim tone and muted aesthetics of 'earlier'
Hannibal the Cannibal misadventures.
The main problem with the movie, which was directed by Peter Webber
(Girl with a Pearl Earring), is the bogey that everyone
involved with the project probably dreaded most: the character of
Hannibal, who is central to the narrative more so here than ever before,
is just not strong enough to carry the picture. French actor Gaspard
Ulliel (Brotherhood of the Wolf, A Very Long
Engagement) makes a go of it. Even though he looks and behaves
the part – more so as Hannibal's madness reveals itself –
unfortunate comparisons with Sir Anthony Hopkins in the role happen
spontaneously and can't be avoided. Those are big shoes for any actor to
fill: Hopkins won an Academy Award for his legendary portrayal in Jonathan
Demme's adaptation. More than that, Hannibal Lecter M.D. became part of
popular culture thanks to Silence of the Lambs.
The narrative structure of Hannibal Rising does not
help its cause, either. In the book, even aged eight, Hannibal is shown to
be a precocious, cultured, and highly intelligent boy who relishes private
tuition and soaks up the natural wonders of the world around him (sounds
like your typical Digital Retribution reader). His affection for and
protectiveness of his sister is also evident. When Hannibal's life and
sanity implodes, the story retains the poignant bitterness of a tragedy,
regardless of how predictable the lazy plotting is. In contrast, the movie
never has a chance to lay this vital foundation convincingly. In the rush
to establish the setting, Hannibal is almost depicted as a normal, though
quirky, child who gets along with his sister and then runs foul of
circumstances out of his control. After the war, he becomes a mute, making
the audience think of him as mentally retarded. This jars with the young
adult version of Hannibal, who is supposed to be smart and educated,
projecting a well-mannered urbane presence. The book, because of the way
it can relay psychological traits, makes this transition more
successfully. It would have been interesting if Thomas Harris told the
origins of Hannibal's psychosis from two different – though
complementary – perspectives, one for the novel and one for the
film. Then again, with the likes of Dino DeLaurentiis looking over your
shoulder, I doubt any writer could have pulled that stunt off. After all,
uncle Dino doesn't quite fit anyone's idea of a literary muse.
 Promoted as a basic thriller with macabre twists, Hannibal
Rising does work purely on those terms. That includes an ending
which was borrowed from a dozen Hollywood money spinners. Sadly, the movie
only achieves the maniacal frission the audience expected during the final
moments of the climax. Too little, too late. Or as horror comic
illustrator friends of mine are fond of saying, "that's where the movie should have started". The killings are vicious without going
outside mainstream boundaries. In the best sequence, one chap who incurs
Hannibal's wrath sees a drawing of his own severed head sitting on a plate
moments before it gets sliced off. How ghoulish! The tasty special make-up
and visual effects were handled by Waldo Mason (Alien vs
Predator, Doom, Event Horizon)
and Framestore CFC (Superman Returns, Underworld, Blade II) respectively. That
said, don't expect to see little Mischa gutted and skewered and spinning on
a rotisserie with an apple in her mouth. Actually, this brings up another
failing of the movie. The carnage at the lodge isn't as horrifying as
depicted in the novel: mother on fire, brains of his tutor on the ground,
and so on. Therefore it's harder to accept young Hannibal's jump from post
traumatic stress to murderous insanity. An interesting sidenote concerns
the casting of Li Gong as the widow who lost relatives at Hiroshima. Genre
students will remember her as the foetus-munching beauty therapist in Dumplings.
With Ridley Scott's adaptation of Hannibal at best a
moderate success, and Red Dragon (2002) a surprisingly
good rehash thanks to Hopkins and screenwriter Ted Tally, members of the
anthropophagic socialite's original fan club – in other words, those
who were mesmerised by the paperback edition of Red
Dragon (1981) two decades ago – would agree that the good
doctor continues to live and breathe most vividly within the pages of
Thomas Harris' memory palaces. If you count yourself among this group,
read the novel first, then track down the movie for curiosity's sake only,
since it doesn't offer much to chew on besides mechanical
storytelling.
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