A true gastronomic delight ... with a sense of humor!

I believe we may all admit that Sir Anthony Hopkins owns the Hannibal Lecter rôle. His ability to convey an almost infinite palette of shades of meaning while keeping his delivery almost to a perfect matter-of-fact tone is amazing. And really, really creepy.

Jodie Foster could have owned the Clarice Starling rôle, but has now been given a run for her money by Julianne Moore. Moore brings a soupçon more vulnerability to the part and makes us care a lot about what happens to her. And quite a lot does.

It seems to me that a key to understanding the film is knowing who the villain is. No, not Lecter, who’s certainly nasty. No, not Verger, who’s even nastier. It’s Paul Krendler, played with a lot of Good Ol’ Boy viciousness by Ray Liotta. Krendler’s ongoing plot to reduce Starling to his vision of woman-as-thing easily makes him the most disgusting character in the film. Which is why his ultimate fate is enormously satisfying.

The film opens with a combined FBI/local drug operation that goes bad because a local guy can’t accept Starling’s leadership and ignores an order to stand down. Krendler sees to it that major blame is laid at Starling’s doorstep. She’s required to turn in her badge and gun pending a hearing – and it’s clear which way Krendler intends that hearing to go. She decides to devote her new spare time to learning more about Hannibal and (she hopes) hunting him down. She procures some unexpected source materials and at about this time also gets a letter from the creepy doctor.

Actually, the first person we actually encounter in the film is the very, very wealthy and very, very messed-up Mason Verger (played with wonderfully subdued venom by a superb actor, Gary Oldman). He is a rarity: a surviving victim of Hannibal the Cannibal’s attentions – a predatory pedophile whom Lecter tricked into (among other things) self-mutilation of his face. He’s spent years in frustrated plotting for revenge and is currently having a gang of vicious wild boars trained for the purpose. We also meet Verger’s much-abused physician, Dr. Cordell Doemling (played with greatly restrained frustration by Zeljko Ivanek. That Slovenian actor has done a lot of medium-important rôles in a good many films over the last decade.

Despite all we learn about Hannibal in “Silence of the Lambs”, we learn something new and interesting in “Hannibal”. Namely, he only preys on people he considers rude, obnoxious, or awful. Not that this entirely excuses his little hobby, but at least we find out that he doesn’t eat (or kill) just anybody. We find him this time in Firenze (Florence), Italy, where (under an assumed name) he’s temporary head of a prestigious library of mediaeval materials, hoping for a permanent appointment. He has already met a police inspector, Rinaldo Pazzi. Pazzi is portrayed with a sort of rotten elegance by the obviously talented Giancarlo Gianinni, doing the same sort of marvelous job of understatement that the great Michael Gambon once did with Inspector Maigret in 1991. Gianinni has appeared mostly in Italian films, but SF fans may recognize him has having been most effective as Shaddam IV in the SciFi Channel “Dune” not too long ago.

Pazzi accidentally discovers that the mediaeval specialist is actually the notorious Dr. Lecter, who’s finally made it to the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list – something he’s very smug about. Rather than doing his duty, he puts himself up for a $3 million reward being offered by Verger for the privilege of capturing Lecter himself and talking him off to do manifold nasty things to him, including feeding him to the boars of course. (Very clever and imaginative touch. Ivan Grozniy – Ivan the Terrible – only got around to using a pit full of his pet wolves.)

Lecter quickly divines that Pazzi is up to no good. As part of showing the decision-makers that he has the academic cajones to handle the library, he gives a lecture in which he cleverly weaves, as related, the themes of avarice, hanging, and disembowelment. Of course we already know that Pazzi’s sin is avarice, and we also learn that an ancestor of his had been hanged from the balcony of the same building 500 years ago. Everyone leaves the lecture hall and the library except Pazzi and Lecter. The latter has already made preparations for this. He has a nice anesthetic with which to subdue Pazzi, who wakes up to find himself in a (partially?) motorized wheelchair, bound and gagged, and with a rope around his neck. Lecter extorts a confession and some information from Pazzi and then hoists him up in preparation of shoving him off the balcony. He asks Pazzi what it’s to be, “bowels in or bowels out?” Want to guess which way he goes?

This sequence is one of the most (darkly) humorous in the film. The way in which Lecter sets up the context for Pazzi’s murder is worthy of any of the finest shaggy-dog stories in the world. The savvy viewer will chuckle over this one for a long time.

Nevertheless, Lecter’s cover is blown because the FBI – and Starling – know where he is. Any escape plans he might have, however, are put at naught because Verger’s goons manage to kidnap him. At Verger’s mansion he’s bound into a mechanized dolly with his arms strapped onto a horizontal cross-bar. His fate, essentially, is to have the soles of his feet cut off and then after a few hours to be fed to the boars. By feeding time, however, Starling has figured out where Lecter is and has gotten in. She manages to save Lecter, but is shot herself in a fairly frantic gun battle. At this point, with the boars held back only by a fairly flimsy wooden gate, Cordell (Verger never refers to him by his last name) wheels Verger in. Verger orders Cordell to shoot Lecter, who is standing in the boar pit holding the wounded Starling in his arms. Cordell hesitates. The boars break in and attack Verger’s wounded goons. Lecter, with his usual precision of analysis, reads the frustrated doctor’s mind and tells him he can always dump Verger in the pit and blame Lecter. Which, almost unhestitatingly, he does.
Cheers, applause, and light laughter as the boars think about it for a moment and then do the right thing.

At a riverside or bayside house (hard to tell which), Lecter treats Starling’s shoulder wound. At a hospital, we see Lecter slip in and make off with a wheelchair, a rotary saw, and other surgical stuff. Starling finally comes to in an upstairs room and makes her way downstairs. She hears the rotary saw and Lecter saying, “This won’t hurt a bit”. Well, well … he’s got good ol’ boy Krendler – well-strapped into the wheelchair. We can allow ourselves 2 chuckles, one of satisfaction and one of anticipation.

We come now to the “Iron Chef” portion of the film. Iron Chef Lecter is preparing a broth with shallots and other things. Challenger Chef FBI, however, is working on a raid, since Sous-Chef Starling has used a phone in the house to contact 911. With only 10 minutes left, Judge Krendler (who seems unusually sedate – or sedated) samples the broth and doesn’t like it. Now we learn what Iron Chef Lecter has been using the rotary saw for, as he pops off the top of Judge Krendler’s head, removes and sauteés a bit of his prefrontal cortex, and feeds it to him. Judge Krendler pronounces it delicious. Sous-Chef Starling makes some inarticulate strangling noises. Iron Chef takes Judge Krendler back into the kitchen – no doubt Chairman Kaga will call a foul. Challenger Chef FBI arries, but by this time Iron Chef Lecter has disappeared and Judge Krendler seems to be missing a nice serving – um, chunk – of his cerebral cortex. What’s amazing is that this seems to have had some effect on him.

A sincere hunt for Lecter fails to turn up anything. Judging by her covert glances at a seemingly empty boat apparently drifting on the water off-shore, Starling seems to know something she’s keeping to herself. It’s a good joke on the latter when we realize that Lecter had treated her better than the FBI had.

Finally, at the end, we find Lecter on a flight to god-knows-where. He’s brought his own home-packed meal. An inquisitive lad sitting next to him asks about it. He’s shown the caviar, the figs, and so on but when he asks about one container, he’s told he wouldn’t like it. He’s then offered a bite of whichever item he’d like. Guess which one he chooses? Why it’s a generous portion of Krendler’s cortex! An interesting child, Lecter observes, cackle-cackle.

The plot-line development of “Hannibal” is one of its great strengths, one that give due emphasis to the fabulous graveyard humor of the piece. But there are other strong aspects. The production, especially the sequence in Firenze, is strongly atmospheric, reinforcing the mood of the words and actions. Of course, the music of Hans Zimmer was a big help as well.

I believe it’s also fair to say that the film benefits greatly from its deliberate understatement of the gore demanded by the plot. Much of what happens in that department is already so outré that we really don’t need the shock value that is so pervasive in “Silence of the Lambs”. The murder of Pazzi, for instance, takes place at night, so that a pile of intestines hitting the street might as well be wet laundry (except we know what it’s supposed to be) – and in any event the scene shifts almost the moment it hits the ground).

Far from being the weak sister among the 3 Hannibal Lecter [more or less] films, “Hannibal” is an important and equal member of the family.