Picking up the story of Dr Hannibal Lecter, ten year have elapsed since our introduction to FBI special agent Clarice Starling. Clarice, this time, is played by Julianne Moore who, to her credit with the, at times, terrible characterisation material, manages to make a very fine stab at Agent Starling's role. Early in the movie we find her leading a botched up FBI raid and the only thing that saves her is the high powered machinations of one Mason Verger who, in cahoots with her nemesis; Paul Krendler, manoeuvres to have her put back on Hannibal's trail, for his own ends.
Her old "friend" Dr Hannibal Lecter, now in Florence, is being hunted by multimillionaire Verger, the only one of his victims to survive, albeit as horribly mutilated cripple. There is a scene in the book, (omitted from the film presumably for PC purposes), which serves to illustrate just how nasty and twisted the character of Verger is. In the scene Verger "borrows" young children from the local orphanage to play in his mansion (shades of Great Expectation's Miss Havisham perhaps?) and whilst there, verbally torments them to them to the point of tears, which he carefully has collected and used to make his Martini's with. Whilst the role of Verger, appearance wise in any case, is carried off very well by Gary Oldman with his Elephant Man esque make up, the truly nasty and malevolent aspects of his character which Harris took such pains to illustrate in the novel, never really come across in the movie and it tends to overtly depend on his horrific appearance to convey this to us, and therefore largely fails.
Right from the start however, it is quite apparent that if anything is to salvage this story it will be Anthony Hopkins reprising his role as one of the most chilling characters ever put on screen. To his credit Hopkins does indeed mould the material he has been given this time, but even he cannot give a liberated Hannibal the terrifying aura of the man in the mask or behind the bullet proof glass of ten years ago. Indeed, in trying to pinpoint what exactly it was with Hannibal that just didn't seem the same, it occurred to me that it was this aspect of Lecter in Silence that actually made him so terrifying. It has often been said, in both drama and sex, that what is insinuated and suggested rather than what is actually shown is often much more effective. In Silence, Hannibal was, for the most part, a character with an off screen history, related by himself or third parties, and his menace was made up to a large degree of our drip fed knowledge of these facts and the potential he had to re-offend. In Hannibal however, Dr Lecter mingles freely amongst the unaware populace of Florence and manages to refrain from eating any of them. Indeed, posing as a Dr Fell, an expert in Dante and an impeccably cultured aficionado of the arts, Hannibal is, outwardly at least, the very epitome of a civilised gentleman.
Another aspect of Lecter's character, dealt with quite effectively in Silence and laid out extensively in the book of Hannibal, is his serenity and how effective he is in removing himself from reality when necessary. Therefore, when he told Clarice in Silence that he wanted a room with a view, he was, within his own mind, actually in Florence and it was this total mind control (The same mind control that could make him credible to the paramedics in Silence, when even his monitored heartbeat doesn't sell him out) that also added to his chilling persona. Again, disappointingly this aspect doesn't transfer to the film here and we are left instead with a materialistic Hannibal, rather than the one who's mind control was so powerful that it could not only have him achieve whatever he wanted but he could also get others (man and beast alike) to also do his bidding. So, whilst in Silence we never see the scene in which his neighbour in an adjoining cell, who has offended Starling, is essentially taunted to death, here the director Scott feels it necessary to show us Hannibal's earlier compelling of Verger to self-mutilation, along with other gruesome and graphically detailed aspects of the book.
We also encounter a Florentine detective called Rinaldo Pazzi who is attempting to deliver Hannibal to Verger to claim the $3m reward for himself. Much of the initial action in the movie therefore centers on Italy, particularly on Florence where Pazzi is trying to entrap Hannibal.
So, with the characters and the locale of the movie established, what of the plot? This is where Hannibal fails miserably, resorting to gratuitous and graphic shock factor in an attempt to entertain and grip us. Indeed some of the scenes border on parody, which had moviegoers on the verge of giggles rather than revulsion.
Admittedly I emerged from this movie hungry rather than satisfied on a number of levels. Much of the mystique of Hannibal was gone, to be replaced by the image of an eccentric but incredibly coherent and attuned, ageing doctor with a love of the quality things in life and just once slight indiscretion, namely his penchant for human flesh. Ironically I would put this movie in the same category as Babette's Feast, Big Night and The Cook The Wife the Thief and her Lover rather than within the realms of horror. It is, in part, a movie about gourmet food and classical taste, all be it definitely in the most extreme. I have to admit it left me disappointed, but then from the book I didn't really expect anything better. I've actually grown to admire Dr Hannibal Lecter some more and can't seem to fear him as much as I used to and that is possibly the most thing I lost in the viewing of this movie.
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