Zombos Says: Fair
Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
If you meet me, have some
courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some
taste
Use all your well-learned
politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste
from the song by The Rolling
Stones
How does one give sympathy to the devil? That’s the challenge Thomas Harris faced when writing his background story on the birth of one of the most riveting fictional human monsters, Hannibal Lecter.
Of course, the first question to ask is why do it? Giving tea and sympathy to a consummately evil character that sends shivers down your spine with just that look and just that smile is quite an accomplishment. Why ruin
it? When the Borg where humanized in Star Trek The Next Generation, the franchise lost a perfectly frightening bunch of monsters with no redeeming social values, and future stories lacked the visceral fear of resistance
is futile, prepare to be assimilated.
Not only do we learn how Hannibal becomes a cannibal—blame it on a traumatic life experience—we have to hear it through Thomas Harris’ flowery-mouth dialog appropriate for literature, not a movie. For a laconic character that’s short on words but long on cuisine, this is not a good thing; a known unknown-evil is more worrisome and scary than a known known-evil (to coin a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld).
Director Peter Webber ponderously poses every scene with self-conscious importance. This slows the pace throughout, and scenes where Hannibal begins to succumb to his guilt and insanity are lackluster because of
it. James A. Michener-styled background tableaux abound. With near-risible martial arts aunt’s (Li Gong) offerings to ancestral samurai, and a poorly thought through revelatory exposition capped by Hannibal crying “you ate my sister!” I imagine popcorn bounced off theater screens everywhere as audiences chuckled.
Adding to this undercooked souffle, Hannibal Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) postures in every scene as if he’s doing a Vogue layout for Hannibal Lecter fashions. His ominous leering and malicious grinning doesn’t evoke any of the uncanny calmness of Anthony Hopkins more menacing portrayal. The look of this movie is given more importance than its substance.
Great care is taken to preserve this fashionably slick look, making everything ce chic when it should be
ugly and revolting. Hannibal’s growing insanity, growing thirst for revenge, looks so beautiful, like seeing his life story captured in a photo shoot for Vogue or Elle.
It’s Word War II, and young Hannibal, and his younger sister, are fleeing the Nazi’s. Their parents thought they had a safe haven in the woods, but that turns out to be a magnet for more atrocities. Tragedy strikes and both parents are killed. He and his sister must face the long, cold winter alone in a hostile environment. Mercenaries looking for food and a warm place to hide endanger the children. Food is scarce. Starvation sets in and hungry eyes stare at the children. The hunger is too much and it’s now a quick cheek pinch here, an arm tug there to find which, boy or girl, has more meat on their bones. Hannibal’s sister loses. He’s helpless as she’s brought outside to be slaughtered.
Eight years later. Hannibal has lost everything, including his dignity, as his home is converted into an orphanage for bully-boys that grow tired of his nightmare-induced screams. Soon he’s off to Paris to see his aunt, Lady
Murasaki Shikibu, who prays to her ancestors’ samurai-suited shrine, and teaches Hannibal the fine art of hitting people with a stick while wearing copious padding. Hannibal admires her long and sharp Katana and enjoys rubbing it with clove oil to keep it sparkling.
An encounter with a fat butcher at the local market sets him down the non-vegetarian road of self-destruction. He takes time away from his medical school training to return to his crumbling home to retrieve the dog tags of the vile men who ate his little sister. He tracks them down one by one, making tasty dishes of cheeks and mushrooms, Emeril Legasse style. Either beheading them, or drowning them, or munching on them, there’s little revulsion generated. There is no suspense and no hint of that complex mix of Hannibal’s genius and madness.
As the bodies pile up, along with Hannibal’s growing culinary prowess, Inspector Popil (Dominic West) is hot on his trail. With insightful observations like “It’s vanilla. He reacts to nothing. It’s monstrous,” when viewing Hannibal’s polygraph test, and “What is he now? There’s not a word for it yet. For lack of a better word, we’ll call him a monster,” I had no doubt the inspector would fail to get his man.
In the final confrontation between the man who led the mercenaries to consume Hannibal’s little sister and the revenge-consumed Hannibal, the meeting is passionless. But it looks good.
Hannibal Rising is presented like one of those plastic fake food displays you see in Japanese restaurants.
They look almost good enough to eat. Almost. But plastic is plastic.