Okay, I just saw the movie this afternoon, and I’ve got a question in terms of the openning. More in terms of it’s adaptation from the book. Throughout the movie, Hannibal keeps asking Will “How did you catch me?” But from what I picked up, IT WAS COMPLETE DUMB LUCK!!! He had no clue it was Hannibal until ten seconds before Hannibal stabbed him in the gut! He went over to Hannibal’s to confer about new information, decided he was tired and needed to get some sleep, then took a glance at a cooking book, suddenly pieced it together, then gets gutted. Yet, Hannibal still considers himself “outsmarted”.
So, in the book, did this sequence occure the same way? I always figured that Will’s apprehension of Hannibal would have involved a bit more, um…intelligence.
Also, more for general curiosity, do they make reference in Hannibal that he kills Will once he gets out of prison, or was it someone else?
At the end of SOTL he’s on the phone with Clarise when he says “I’m having an old friend for dinner…” Cut to Chilton leaving a plane. In Hannibal Chilton was mentioned as having disappeared, if I remember correctly.
Yes, it was a bit different in the book. Graham is in Lecter’s office and notices an old drawing of a “Wound Man”, an old medical diagram showing various types of wounds on a single person.
It turns out one of the victims Graham was investigating was made to resemble that drawing. Graham puts two and two together just as Hannibal sneaks up on him and does a number on him with a knife.
Similar, but different than the film. The book made it seem more like Graham had a combination of luck and presence of thought.
It made more sense in the original movie Manhunter. There was a scene where Graham was talking to his step-son about what he did and what had happened to him. He had gone to Lectors office, not his house and was looking at some books that Lector had in his bookcase, when he saw one devoted to war wounds, and he suddenly realized that Lector was the serial killer he was after, as all of the victims had these types of wounds. Graham had gone down the hall to use the phone to call the police when Lector attacked him. It made mores sense in Manhunter then in Red Dragon.
From what I’ve been told recently (it was much too long ago for me that I read Red Dragon to remember myself) the entire opening sequence in the Red Dragon movie was invented for the film to set up the subsequent events and to give Lecter more screen time.
I’m told that there was only a reference in the original novel that Will Graham had captured Lecter, but gave no details as to how he did that, exactly. The story about the Symphony Board dinner party is told in the Silence of the Lambs book, I believe, but was not used in the movie, as it was only a reference to events that had occured before Clarice went to visit the good Doctor.
Nevertheless, I thought it worked well in this movie. It set up that Will Graham had conferred with Lecter the esteemed psychiatrist to catch serial killers (albeit Lecter himself, in this case) before Lecter was discovered, it gave a plausible explanation for Graham catching on to Lecter without Lecter having done something really stupid to warrant it (the wisdom of leaving those books lying around his office notwithstanding), and set up both Graham’s subsequent need to seek Lecter’s advice from prison, and Lecter’s particular interest in Graham and his family afterwards.
OK, I guess Gassendi and WSLer remember a bit better than I do (I had written my post before I saw either of theirs). Maybe I shouldn’t trust everything I’m told!
I saw it yesterday. Graham had come to decide that the serial killer was a cannibal and was eating the various parts people had cut out of them surgically. He was asking Lector to rethink this with him, and then started asking Lector why this hadn’t occurred to him. At this point Lector is convinced that Graham is either toying with him or is about to flash onto the truth. Gramham says he is very close, an insight is just out of his mind’s reach. Lector excuses himself, and then Graham wanders over to a bookshelf and opens an antique French cookbook that is bookmarked to a page that shows preparation for various organ meats (presumably from legally edible animals, but my French is not so good), Graham stares at it stupidly for a while, and then just a split second after he figures it out and starts turning around Lector stabs him.
In the later scenes Lector is constantly asking Graham, or taunting him: “how did you catch me”, kind of mocking him for not having the insight into being able to catch the Red Dragon and still frustrated into trying to figure out what he had done wrong so long ago. Answer: just dumb luck.
I thought that the whole point was that Graham, what with his special “insight” and all, was on the edge of becoming a killer himself. In Manhunter, Hannibal baits him with this as he runs from his cell. Also, the ending of this movie is especially disturbing, what with Graham’s visit to the couple’s house…
Graham keeps seeking out Hannibal because he has a dark sort of kinship with him, and an unhealthy attraction to that dark part of himself. He could have probably figured out everything on his own. I think this holds for both films, though it is obviously a stronger theme in Manhunter .
Yes, Peloquin, I gathered from the novel Red Dragon that Graham was on the edge of insanity himself.
Notice he does not capture serial killers, he figures things out about them. Hence spending time alone at the crime scene, watching the films of the family.
Actually, in **Manhunter, & ** both the book and movie versions of Red Dragon it is clearly stated that Graham spent time in a mental hospital after Lectors attack, most likely because he had a breakdown of some kind.
I recall from the novel that Will saw a book on Hannibal’s shelf and realized the book had drawings in it similar to the wounds on some of the victims. He also says something to the effect that when he saw the book he knew right away that it was Hannibal; it just clicked in his head without any direct process, which is a big part of Will’s special talent.
It also said that Hannibal knew when Will figured it out and gave him a colostomy (sp?) with a linoleum knife.
While I liked how the movie stuck more closely to the plot of the book than did Manhunter, I really wish they had been able to give us more of Will’s thought process. The couple of scenes when they let us see how Will thought, particularly the scene in the hotel room when he’s surrounded by the pictures and evidence, were very creepy and gave us more of a feel for the Will of the novel. More of Will talking to himself and getting those little flashes as he did so would have been a help if done correctly.
Had it been filmed more that way, the audience would have understood Will’s simultaneous reluctance and drive to get involved. It terrifies him, but it’s also a jones.
Also, there should have been more interaction between Will and Molly. Their downward spiral as Will loses himself in the case and the killer were a great subtheme in the novel. That, and any time Mary Louise Parker is on the screen, I’m a happy man.
Lastly, I remember a passing line from the book SotL that Will became a hopeless drunk in Fla. after the Red Dragon events.
Sorry, but my copy of SotL is boxed away in the garage, and I’m not going to go digging it out. If I remember correctly, it’s in the first quarter of the book and Crawford is debating with himself the wisdom/appropriateness of sending Starling in to deal with Hannibal. He has a pang of conscience because of what happened with Will.
As I said, it’s only a passing mention. It only stuck in my head because I liked Will so much in Red Dragon.
In the RD novel, as has been pointed out, it’s made more abundantly clear that Lecter’s constant litany of “how did you catch me” is performed more to get at Graham and his affinity for getting inside the mind of the killer. Lecter taunts Graham with the possibility that they are exactly the same, and this is why Graham was able to catch him. There’s a spookiness about Graham in the novel that never translates to the screen, particularly in an exchange between Dr. Bloom and Crawford in which Bloom admits that Graham is particularly adept at reading other people, and that he’s afraid Graham would see that Bloom was trying to study him. This places Graham mentally on the same plane as Lecter, in his ability to see through his interrogators.
At the end of the novel, as Graham recuperates in the hospital after Dolarhyde carves up his face, he recalls visiting Shiloh shortly after shooting Hobbs (the event, I think, which drove him a little nuts), and seeing a snake mutilated by a passing car, going into its death throes on the road. Graham picks it up, cracks it like a whip, and splatters its brains into a pond. The rest of the novel goes into some depth about nature–the Green Machine–and its denial of the kind of morality that human beings place on life and our place in the world. My perception at the end of RD is that Graham realizes Lecter is right–“Shiloh doesn’t care”–that he is exactly like Lecter and it’s only the thin veil of civilization that separates them and, perhaps more precisely, the perception of their actions. Does anyone else have a take on this?
<<My perception at the end of RD is that Graham realizes Lecter is right–“Shiloh doesn’t care”–that he is exactly like Lecter and it’s only the thin veil of civilization that separates them and, perhaps more precisely, the perception of their actions. Does anyone else have a take on this?>>
This is exactly what I thought (I have not seen the movie…I just read the book) There is one chapter that ends with Lecter calling after Will (who is walking away from him) that, (something like) “you know why Will? Because we are exactly the same” and the door at the facility slams. Will knew (and Hanibal and us readers) that this is a trueish statement.
I think this also goes along with Lecter knowing just from Will’s eyes going over the bookshelf to “wound man” that he knows…and Will just knowing
In the movie, after Graham is attacked, we are shown a montage of press clippings concerning Lecter’s trial and Graham’s recovery. I’m pretty sure one of the press clippings said something like “Hero Cop in Loony Bin!!”
Will is crazy and has much in common with Lector, but he is good and Lector is evil. I don’t know if they chose they orientation.
I think Shiloh doesn’t care about whether you are good or evil, living or dead, or what happens to you. Life happens, whether you and your family are killed and sit in a circle with mirror eyes, or you are run over by a truck.
