Small problem; when Lector was out in the real world before being imprisioned, he spent quite a bit of time killing and eating people, and there is nothing in Hannibal that led me to believe that he would stop doing so.
Shakespeare, one of the biggest problems I had with the book and movie Hannibal was the sick hero worship of Hannibal Lector. In Harris’ earlier books Hannibal was a fascinating character. In Hannibal he was a Batman villain.
Harris’ justification of Hannibal was sickening elitism at it’s worst. He goes out of his way to make the victims horrible people, but it is clear that he considers their worst crimes to be bad taste and fashion sense.
The whole book left me with a sick feeling, and not in a good way as the earlier books did.
Oh, I agree that Hannibel sucked rocks. I’m sure Foster agreed. Harris had written a great female lead, a balance between masculine and feminine, aggression and patience, logic and emotion in Silence. Then he completely destroyed her.
So the FBI had turned on her for political reasons. Shit happens. Where was her overriding sense of justice? What had the victims and families of the victims done to deserve her contempt? My boss turns me into a scapegoat and that is justification for me to free Jeffrey Dahmer? Huh? Sterling can’t trust the FBI so she puts her trust in a man who eats people’s brains?
ARRRRGH!
grendel, Lecter is devoid of any remorse, which certainly renders him unfit for hero worship by me.
And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone practice what I would call hero worship of Lecter – when we watch the largest jungle beast destroy its prey, we aren’t necessarily worshipping it.
In addition to people who offended his strange moral code, his victims included people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s what a lack of remorse makes possible.
Perhaps because I dress in t-shirts and jeans, I always felt that the chosen victims’ bad taste/fashion sense was a symptom of other failings, not a reason in its own right. Note that unless they stood in the way of his survival, Lecter never killed bumbling chumps who happened to cross his path (e.g., the mother of the brat on the plane to the US). He did kill deer poacher Donnie Barber, a chump we’re probably better off without.
One person’s good sick feeling is another’s bad sick feeling.
PunditLisa, that’s some pretty major shit that happened – Starling would have at least gone to prison for life, unable to convince anyone of what had happened. And where did she express contempt for the victims and their families? The only victim she had any direct contact with wrecked her life. I don’t know what I’d do if my boss consigned me to the horrible fate awaiting a cop in prison, but I would have a hard time refusing someone who slipped me the key to my cell. I would probably also take a good second look at their morals.
She did not intend to ‘free Jeffrey Dahmer’ – she intended to bring Lecter to justice - read her thoughts just before the raid.
After the raid (in which Lecter saved her life, from a team that included law enforcement personnel) she seems to have looked at her options differently.
And I would like to state lastly that despite my rantings, your posts have pretty much answered my OP – I just wanted to offer my contrary opinions.
Originally posted by F. U. Shakespeare
[spoiler]She awakens in Lecter’s luxurious home. He has provided everything for her, and is not restraining her in any way. But he is subjecting her to extensive psychotherapy, involving ritual re-enactment, counseling and drugs. The effect is to remove the inhibitions that she has acquired, thus allowing her true personality to emerge. * As Tristan says, she is an ‘alpha’, like Lecter.
Also, very important: by this point in the plot, the government has increased the scapegoating heat: they have declared that Clarice has willingly run away with Lecter, framing the ex-FBI agent for murder. (This was done by Krendler at the behest of the billionaire, who wanted to disrupt her pursuit of Lecter).
At the much-touted dinner featuring Paul Krendler’s brain, she is a willing participant (unlike in the movie).
The book ends with Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter becoming a devoted couple sharing a luxurious, law-abiding lifetime together.[/spoiler]
Gotta disagree with you there.
[spoiler]Starling has clearly been brainwashed, and is anything but a willing participant. Her true personality hasn’t been released, it’s been buried. In addition to the psychotropic drugs, there is a reference to Lecter talking to her in a room that is darkened except for a single point of light–ie, he’s hypnotizing her. Later, he plucks a bow string, which twangs with a particular musical note, using this as the trigger to release Starling’s true personality if she ever hears this particular note. At the dinner, Hannibal makes a statement/asks a question and Starlings reply is referred to as being correct, but a bit slow. This indicates that Hannibal had programmed a specific reply to his questions statements.
In short, Lecter has done the most awful thing to an independant spirit like Starling that he could by subsuming her personality beneath that of the ideal subservient wife.[/spoiler]
SPOILERS
Lecter isn’t so much taking away Starling’s personality as he’s recreating the illusion that Starling is his deceased sister, Mischa. She ends up being the surrogate Mischa. That’s the reason Lecter is so fascinated with Starling. At one point Lecter says, “’And so I came to believe,’ Dr. Lecter was saying, ‘that there had to be a place in the world for Mischa, a prime place vacated for her, and I came to think, Clarice, that the best place in the world was yours.’”
SPOILERS PRINTED-
I think that in planting the “releasing trigger” musical note, Lecter also gave her the capacity to release herself any time she wanted.
While the Mom on the plane definitely qualified herself as Hannibal-chow by poking his sandwich, her bratty son redeemed himself by actually expressing compassion to Hannibal when he had his trauma-flashback nightmare.
The worst failure of the movie was its excising the Margot Verger subplot.
I agree. I don’t think they made Mason…evil enough for the movie, they just made him come off as goofy. It’s like they were saying, “Mason is the bad guy…wait, no, Hannibal is…no, wait, Mason is 'cause he’s after Hannibal! Wait…no…Paul Krendler is! Wait…no…Pazi is!”
I think the movie did make a reference that Mason was a child molester, but it would have been far more effective if the movie showed him actually being evil like drinking the tears of the children he mentally tortures.
I don’t think Hannibal was quite the book Silence of the Lambs was, but I can appreciate what Harris was trying to do, even in the ending.
When Lecter is characterizing Buffalo Bill in Silence, he explains his motivation in two words: “he covets”. You could do the same for Lecter: “he consumes”. In Hannibal, he does so figuratively and literally. In the final scene he consumes Krendler alive, but that’s nothing compared to what he does to Clarice. He consumes her personality. He opens up her head (not completely unlike Krendler), takes out what he doesn’t like, and puts in what he does. It would have been less horrifying if he had simply killed her and eaten her, because he steals much more than simply her life. It’s the worst possible ending for Starling.
Could someone spoil the movie ending for me? I hated the book’s resolution so much that I refused to see the movie.
Who else would like to see Harris write a final book with Will Graham coming out of retirement one more time to catch Lecter? He could also save Starling, though she’ll probably be institutionalized for quite a while to recover from what Lecter did to her.
Before Hannibal came out, I was hoping the third book would follow that plot, since I never thought Clarice was quite good enough to outmaneuver Dr. Lecter. It turned out, in the first half of Hannibal, she actually seemed capable of the capture, but bad luck and office politics can overcome that level of competence, apparently.
SPOILERS
After eating Krendler’s brains, the police are about to show up. Starling handcuffs Lecter to herself so that he can’t get away. He takes a meat cleaver (I think) and chops his hand off and gets away. The last scene shows him on a plane. A little boy goes to him and asks what he’s eating, as he’s prepared his own lunch. In a little container is a piece of Krendler’s brain. The little boy says he would like to try some as he hates the airline’s food, and Lecter gives him a slice, saying it’s good to try new things.
I’ve seen all three movies but haven’t read any of the books. Was this -
in the movies? I don’t remember it. Can someone spoil it for me and explain what horrors little Hannibal went through?
Spoiler on Hannibal’s horrors:
During World War II, a young Hannibal saw his little sister killed and eaten by starving deserters.
Miss Foster was a very good friend of mine at the time, we drifted after many years, but she did tell me that she wanted the character of Clarice to come out as a lesbian, and write in a relationship with her then lover, but was rejected by all involved. The overall opinion was that between the gay overtones, and adding lesbianism was just too over the top.
I’m sure.
Brainssss…
Part of the problem was that early drafts of the script had Hannibal’s parents consumed by zombies. Foster felt this was tacky.
Hannibal gives her a deep kiss which she rebuffs (biting him perhaps?)- he grins & says “That’s my girl” but finds she has also handcuffed Lecter to the refrigerator door. She goes to greet the authorities who are closing in. When they get there, they see the cuffs with his hand attached hanging from the fridge door.
I know it’s a zombie, but since it’s bumped anyway:
I don’t think Hopkins was attracted by returning to the role or the script so much as the paycheck; he was separated from his wife of more than a quarter century, and almost everything he had was community property since probably 99% of his earnings had been since their marriage. Hannibal gave him the coin to pay for a fat divorce settlement and still have something left. Red Dragon then probably set him up for life.
Did you bump a zombie just to make a zombie joke, or did something get deleted along the way?