The avalanche of publicity for Hannibal has made it the most widely anticipated film of the season. Small wonder: Only the bravest of moviemakers would dare to carry on the story of Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, told with such stunning effect 10 years ago in Silence of the Lambs.
That these stories are meant to be more than horror-cum-detectivetales is evident from the names of the protagonists. It's not toolit-crit to point out that "Hannibal" calls to mind the brutallytriumphal ruler and "Lecter" (lecturer) the pontifical voice, while"Clarice" is a reworking of Clarissa, the morally unsullied heroine inSamuel Richardson's eponymous eighteenth-century novel--a characterfatefully entangled with a man at once her protector and the cause ofher destruction. Such lofty references could be pure pretense, ofcourse, but the conceit actually works. Silence of the Lambs introduces its audience to a face of evil previously unimagined. Just as ambitiously, Hannibal endows it with a perversely calibrated moral compass.
From the first moment he appears on the screen in Silence of theLambs, Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) commands attention as the personification of evil. He doesn't have to do anything--his appearance tells all. He's standing in his sealed prison cell, motionless, separated by a wall of glass from his justifiably fearful captors. With his arms at his side and his legs slightly spread, his eyes searching out prey and his nostrils twitching at the hint of danger (or the faint scent of perfume), he's a predator momentarily at rest. This astonishing character--the brilliant and arrogant psychiatrist with a mind that can twist the heart of things; the beast with a seemingly insatiable desire for human flesh (ideally accompanied by a fine Chianti); the over-the-top, almost foppish creature who delights in tormenting his would-be adversaries--propels a Gothic masterpiece.
The pivotal cat-and-mouse game in Silence of the Lambs is between Lecter and Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), an FBI rookie who combines a passion for justice and Girl Scout idealism with raging ambition. Starling has been sent by her superiors to seduce the man known as Hannibal the Cannibal into helping the FBI track down another carnivorous killer known, because he skins his victims, as Buffalo Bill. Lecter, who is demonstrably capable of driving a fellow prisoner to swallow his own tongue, initially toys with Starling's mind ("you're not more than one generation from poor white trash"). Ultimately, though, he's captivated by her integrity.
Starling gives the demon the respect he believes is his due. In turn,Lecter gives her the clue that enables her to succeed where hersuperiors have failed--in puzzling out Buffalo Bill's identity--even ashe frees himself, cunningly picking the lock on his own handcuffs andthen, in the most viscerally powerful scene in the film, literallydevouring the face of a prison guard. In this odd reciprocity, there's ahint of Beauty and the Beast, though the tale has just begun--there's only the merest sense that Lecter and Starling might each transform the other.
Hannibal picks up the story nine years later. Lecter (Anthony Hopkins once again), still on the loose, has made his way to Florence, where he has refashioned himself as a curator at the Palazzo Capponi and a masterful lecturer on Italian Renaissance art. Starling (Julianne Moore), still an FBI agent, has been around the block many times, yet despite everything she has witnessed, her commitment to justice remains intact. It's no easy feat to sing both songs of innocence and songs of experience. As countless representations of Heaven attest, purity, however commendable, is ultimately boring in its depiction; and besides, it strains credulity to reconcile purity with the fact of having killed more criminals in the line of duty than any other woman in the bureau. Moore pulls it off, though. Her Starling is a straight-ahead agent with a Manichaean view of the world who can also weep when she kills a female drug lord, a mother who's holding her infant while shooting a mac-10 at Starling. The Clarice Starling who emerges is not merely older and wiser than in Silence of the Lambs. She's also a more nuanced character.
At this juncture, the twisted morality play is launched--notBeauty and the Beast, with its unnerving possibilities of metamorphosis, but a tale of virtues and vices. Starling's superiors, it turns out, have long resented her successes. When an operation Starling has led goes badly awry, they seize the opportunity and punish her unjustly. In her fall from grace, she's assigned the apparently hopeless task of tracking down Lecter, who's also being hunted by a creepy character named Mason Verger (Gary Oldman). Verger's a pedophile; many years earlier, Lecter, as his psychiatrist, had induced him to disfigure his own face. This despoiler of innocence, now the physically hideous embodiment of sin (by comparison, the Elephant Man is Tom Cruise), is powered by the quest for vengeance. Verger has buckets of money, and with the connivance of rented hands at the Justice Department, he plots to use Starling as his tool to hook Lecter. Suddenly Lecter's back on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list and Verger has offered a $3-million reward for his capture.
Meanwhile, in Florence, Detective Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini), a bentcop who's investigating the mysterious disappearance of Lecter'scuratorial predecessor, sees the FBI list and recognizes Lecter'spicture. As a policeman, he's expected to inform the FBI, but instead hebecomes a bounty hunter.
Lecter's survivalist instincts remain as good as ever. When he'shunted, he kills. Yet with infinitely more freedom of maneuver than hehad in prison, he chooses to match the punishment he metes out to theparticular moral failings of his enemies. In Silence of theLambs, he's unadulterated evil. Now there's a perverse moral consistency wedded to his fiendishness.
In this inferno, Lecter can consign his victims to their propercircle in Hell. So it is with Detective Pazzi. Four centuries earlier,one of Pazzi's ancestors was publicly hanged from a balcony of thepalazzo, and Lecter inflicts precisely the same fate upon the policeman.Death by hanging, Lecter the art historian lectures, is the pricetraditionally paid for the sin of avarice. "Bowels in or bowels out?" heasks Pazzi, sadistically and almost whimsically, the instant beforestringing him up from the balcony.
To each according to his sins: Behind every planned act of violencethat Hannibal Lecter commits lies a twisted notion of justice (as wellas his patented delight in turning people into supper). Thesumptuousness of director Ridley Scott's film--the painterly quality ofthe photography, the operatic score, the lushly extravagant settings--isof a piece with Lecter's code, which places great value on a maniacalaesthetic civility.
The ultimate degradation is reserved for Justice Department lawyerPaul Krendler (Ray Liotta), Verger's rented gun, who wants both theglory of capturing Lecter and the satisfaction of destroying Starling'scareer. In a scene far more graphic than anything in Silence of theLambs, Lecter delivers a punishment for Krendler's wretched treatment of Starling that's reminiscent of Julie Taymor's gorgeously gruesome Titus (also starring Anthony Hopkins). There, in an act of rough justice, Titus prepares a meal from the corpses of two murderous princes and serves it to their mother. Lecter goes one step further, serving Krendler up to himself. Not only does this punishment fit the crime; in the boorishness it evokes from its victim, the punishment illustrates the crime.
Although by any conventional moral calculus the imperfections ofHannibal Lecter's pursuers don't justify their murders, the perfidies ofthe hunters invite the audience's complicity in Lecter's acts. No one'smourning any of these deaths. Clarice Starling is a different matterentirely. From the moment that Lecter learns she's back on the case, hecircles around her, goads her with cell phone calls and ornately writtenletters, tantalizes her, eludes her. He has no appetite for killing her,though. Instead he tries to undermine her commitment to by-the-bookjustice by pointing out, in Tokyo Rose-style, the ethical bankruptcy ofthe system in which she works, a world where the strength of her beliefsmakes her a despised figure. But Lecter, whose powers of persuasion areusually irresistible, fails to sway Starling. As an embodiment ofvirtue, her unwavering intention is to bring Lecter to justice. Indeed,she has shown that she's willing to risk letting him go free rather thanbe complicit in his murder.
With her life literally in his hands, Lecter attempts one finalmanipulation: "If you loved me, you'd stop [trying to arrest me]."
"Not in a thousand years!" she replies.
"That's my girl!" says Lecter. This utter incorruptibility compelshim to an act of astonishing self-sacrifice, a gift to someonewho--unlike all those whom he has remorselessly destroyed--has no placein his self-constructed inferno. Lecter's deed is both a testament toand a way to secure the continuing bond between himself and Starling. Aswell, it is a--dare one use the word?--gallant homage to her virtue.
