Scan and Pan
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Hannibal Rising
The film opens in 1944, as a young Hannibal and his wealthy family flee their castle in war-torn Lithuania for the safety of a remote lodge. After his entire family, except for his sister Mischa, is killed in the crossfire of a battle between a Soviet tank and a German plane, several militiamen led by a Nazi collaborator find the lodge and hold the children captive. Eight years later, a teenaged Lecter, haunted by his memories, runs away from an orphanage to find his uncle in France. His uncle is dead, but his aunt, a beautiful Japanese woman, takes him in. Lecter becomes a promising medical student, but when he discovers the whereabouts of his former captors he vows to take revenge on them.
Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring) directs a plodding affair that doesn't know if it's a period drama, a revenge thriller, or a police procedural. It tries to be too many things, and consequently fails at all of them, although there are a few scenes that work reasonably well, but they're too few in number. Thomas Harris wrote the screenplay based on his own novel, but it's rather lifeless and lacks depth of characterization, not to mention being packed with cliches. The nuances of Silence of the Lambs are wholly missing, and one gets the sense that Harris is simply trying to wring every last dollar out of the character. And in a post-Saw, post-Hostel era, the supposedly imaginative ways Lecter kills his victims really aren't so imaginative.
For a film that wants to explain what transformed a young Hannibal Lecter into the charismatic monster that audiences love, its portrayal of the title character is surprisingly one dimensional. Worse, his victims are cardboard cutout villains who deserve their fates. Lecter is strongest as a character when he's the scary man in a cage and we know he must be kept in that cage because he delights in killing the guilty and innocent alike. A righteous avenger, he's not. We should feel attracted by his charisma but never feel sympathy for him. More to the point, the mystery of Lecter has been taken away. Some things are just more frightening when you don't know what they are or how they came to be. In Silence of the Lambs, Lecter diagnosed himself as "evil". We simply don't need a better explanation.
The film does have excellent production values. Cinematographer Ben Davis (Layer Cake) uses soft, moody lighting that's beautiful in a painterly way, but it's also too pretty for the story at times. Production designer Allan Starski (The Pianist, Oliver Twist) recreates war-torn Lithuania and early 1950s France in the Czech Republic, and his interior sets capture the personalities of their inhabitants. The score by Ilan Eshkeri (Layer Cake) and Shigeru Umebayashi (Curse of the Golden Flower) is sweeping and dramatic, but it's a wasted effort here.
Anthony Hopkins set the bar high for actors portraying Hannibal Lecter. Gaspard Ulliel, however, is absolutely wooden in the role. The film's other flaws could have possibly been overcome by a strong performance, but Ulliel is just another heavy stone around its neck. He's sullen rather than scary, and sneers rather than intimidates. It would have been difficult to find a young actor who could compare to Hopkins in his prime, but that's not an excuse for finding a charmless mannequin to play the young Lecter. Aaron Thomas fares much better as the eight-year-old Lecter in the opening scenes. Gong Li is solid as Lecter's Japanese aunt, but her character as written by Harris is very unbelievable. Rhys Ifans as the Nazi collaborator Grutas just needs a mustache to twirl to make him the complete embodiment of a stock villain. Dominic West (The Wire) is the only actor who stands out, as a French police inspector who suspects that Lecter is a murderer.
The people who thought this film was a good idea deserve to have their livers eaten with fava beans and a nice Chianti. Not recommended.
Can a good Hannibal Lecter film be made without Anthony Hopkins (or even Brian Cox)? On the evidence of this film, the answer is a resounding no.
The film opens in 1944, as a young Hannibal and his wealthy family flee their castle in war-torn Lithuania for the safety of a remote lodge. After his entire family, except for his sister Mischa, is killed in the crossfire of a battle between a Soviet tank and a German plane, several militiamen led by a Nazi collaborator find the lodge and hold the children captive. Eight years later, a teenaged Lecter, haunted by his memories, runs away from an orphanage to find his uncle in France. His uncle is dead, but his aunt, a beautiful Japanese woman, takes him in. Lecter becomes a promising medical student, but when he discovers the whereabouts of his former captors he vows to take revenge on them.
Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring) directs a plodding affair that doesn't know if it's a period drama, a revenge thriller, or a police procedural. It tries to be too many things, and consequently fails at all of them, although there are a few scenes that work reasonably well, but they're too few in number. Thomas Harris wrote the screenplay based on his own novel, but it's rather lifeless and lacks depth of characterization, not to mention being packed with cliches. The nuances of Silence of the Lambs are wholly missing, and one gets the sense that Harris is simply trying to wring every last dollar out of the character. And in a post-Saw, post-Hostel era, the supposedly imaginative ways Lecter kills his victims really aren't so imaginative.
For a film that wants to explain what transformed a young Hannibal Lecter into the charismatic monster that audiences love, its portrayal of the title character is surprisingly one dimensional. Worse, his victims are cardboard cutout villains who deserve their fates. Lecter is strongest as a character when he's the scary man in a cage and we know he must be kept in that cage because he delights in killing the guilty and innocent alike. A righteous avenger, he's not. We should feel attracted by his charisma but never feel sympathy for him. More to the point, the mystery of Lecter has been taken away. Some things are just more frightening when you don't know what they are or how they came to be. In Silence of the Lambs, Lecter diagnosed himself as "evil". We simply don't need a better explanation.
The film does have excellent production values. Cinematographer Ben Davis (Layer Cake) uses soft, moody lighting that's beautiful in a painterly way, but it's also too pretty for the story at times. Production designer Allan Starski (The Pianist, Oliver Twist) recreates war-torn Lithuania and early 1950s France in the Czech Republic, and his interior sets capture the personalities of their inhabitants. The score by Ilan Eshkeri (Layer Cake) and Shigeru Umebayashi (Curse of the Golden Flower) is sweeping and dramatic, but it's a wasted effort here.
Anthony Hopkins set the bar high for actors portraying Hannibal Lecter. Gaspard Ulliel, however, is absolutely wooden in the role. The film's other flaws could have possibly been overcome by a strong performance, but Ulliel is just another heavy stone around its neck. He's sullen rather than scary, and sneers rather than intimidates. It would have been difficult to find a young actor who could compare to Hopkins in his prime, but that's not an excuse for finding a charmless mannequin to play the young Lecter. Aaron Thomas fares much better as the eight-year-old Lecter in the opening scenes. Gong Li is solid as Lecter's Japanese aunt, but her character as written by Harris is very unbelievable. Rhys Ifans as the Nazi collaborator Grutas just needs a mustache to twirl to make him the complete embodiment of a stock villain. Dominic West (The Wire) is the only actor who stands out, as a French police inspector who suspects that Lecter is a murderer.
The people who thought this film was a good idea deserve to have their livers eaten with fava beans and a nice Chianti. Not recommended.
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