Newspaper Page Text
<
jpwqW
EASTSIDE let us cater DOWNTOWN
706-613-1001 your next event 706-543-8552
256 £ Clayton St
(706)549-0166 Open Mon-Sat 12pm-2am
WWWJUlCOODLOUNCE.COM
unBUCKunG
THE BIBLE BELT
OnE DRII1K
AT A TIME
Open at noon Oailg • Free PS2 Games
Build your Own Bloody Mary Bar
\BmoJuMQ welcome, oh tine outdooi potioi f
PLEASE DRHTK RESPOnSBiy.
TACO
STAND
3 Great Locations!
NHIedge Bve. • Powntown • eastside
HANNIBAL
HANNIBAL RISING (R) Let’s hope Hannibal
Rising does not start a new page-to-screen trend.
Released a mere two months after its hardcover
brother, currently sitting at number five on
the New York Times Bestseller List, the movie
Hannibal Rising, with a script adapted by the
novel's own author, Thomas Harris, is like cel
luloid CliffsNotes. Why take the time out of your
busy schedule to read the book when the exact
same story is available in a digestible, abridged
version you can finish in two hours? Well, Harris
is primarily a novelist. Hannibal Rising marks
the first time the Mississippi native has tried his
hand at screenwriting, even though all four of
his previous novels (Black Sunday, Red Dragon,
The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal) have ben
made into movies. While he could do a worse job
of bringing the origins of literature's most detec
table cannibal psychiatrist to the big screen, his
novel is far superior. The film is barely buoyed by
obvious expository exchanges, unclear motiva
tions and jagged transitions. Still, Harris' promise
to reveal what occurrences could be so horrific as
REHEATED
Maybe teeter's descent into less appealing se
rial killerdom is due more to a change in function
than in form. When Harris first debuted Lecter,
he may have been imprisoned, but he remained
the most dangerous man alive. FBI Agents Will
Graham and Clarice Starling may have been
actively pursuing the Tooth Fairy and Buffalo
Bill, but it was Hannibal Lecter who was hunt
ing them. "If only he were to escape," I shiver-
ingly thought while reading Red Dragon and The
Silence of the Lambs. Yet when Lecter waltzed
out into the Tennessee night, I quivered with
fear for the last time. Hannibal Lecter has re
placed Freddy Krueger as the modern boogeyman
America loves to love. Ever since uttering one of
cinema's most delicious, climactic bon mots ("I'm
having an old friend for dinner"), he's become a
vigilante anti-hero. In Hannibal and especially
Hannibal Rising, Lecter's victims have taken an
increasingly guilty slant. Hannibal Rising's war
criminals, led by Hotting Hills Rhys Ifans, deserve
every distasteful plate of cold revenge on which
Lecter serves them. By choosing to focus his last
Gaspard Ulliel
to birth the seductive monster that is Hannibal
Lecter proves far too mesmeric to neither read
nor watch. However, the author paints himself
into a difficult dramatic corner. Lecter is not
Wolverine, needing an intricate backstory involv
ing Canada to explain his psychopathy, and no
origin story he could devise could horrifyingly
justify the cannibalism, barbarism and sympathy
as well as that which we fans imagine.
As such, it comes as no shock that Lecter
was borne of the gruesome Eastern Front, caught
between the brutality of the Nazis and the indif
ference of the Soviets. Witnessing the death of
his entire family—his father, his mother, and
most scarringly, his baby sister Mischa—killed
any humanity that may have existed in the
medical/ artistic genius, played in the film by
Gaspard Ulliel (a French actor known mainly for
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement).
The third screen Lecter, Ulliel has a large man
dible mask to fill. Anthony Hopkins only needed
a little over 16 minutes of Lambs' screen time
to etch himself into the pop cultural collective
forever, and Manhunter's Brian Cox was no creepy
slouch either. Ulliel's main problem is how obvi
ously evil and unappealing he makes Lecter.
Hopkins and Cox wooed the audience, turning all
who watched them into those lonely women who
obsess over and marry incarcerated serial killers.
I wouldn't go near Ulliel's young medical student.
(Resembling Christopher Lambert, with his high
forehead and long, sharp nose, as he does, Ulliel
would make a better young Connor MacLeod.
Now Highlander Rising, that's a prequel I'd pay
to see.)
two novels on Hannibal Lecter, as opposed to the
mentees whose minds he twists for his ill inten
tions and sociopathic amusements, Harris has
pimped his character out like a franchise whore.
Hannibal Rising director Peter Webber (Girl
with a Peal Earring) only abets in the robbery
of Hannibal Lecter's menace. He ladles the
scary sauce on too Thick, coating the film in
heavy, glutenous scenes that overwhelm any
residual tension. The film is an improvement over
Hannibal, whose operatic hiqh notes—so effec
tive in print—could not be hit by Ridley Scott,
but ranks below both versions of Red Dragon in
the Lecter pantheon. Though neither Manhunter
(Michael Mann's artistic vision stands supreme)
nor Red Dragon can even touch the hem of The
Silence of the Lambs ladyskin robe, both prequels
were terrifying. Of course, multiple Oscar-win-
ner Silence was not only the most frightening
film of the 1990s, but one of the decade's most
important, ranking up there with Pulp Fiction and
Scream. Jonathan Demme's now classic thriller
introduced the world to its most terrifying thera
pist, a man as comfortable eating you as listen
ing to your pathetic whining. Hannibal Rising
producer Dino De Laurentiis has already intimat
ed a future invitation to Lecter's dinner table. If
so, I hope Harris is on the guest list (and Frankie
Faison, too). Though Hannibal's ghastly muscle
may be degenerating, so long asJiis creator is
the cause, we are assured a competent degenera
tion. Freddy Krueger could only dream of dying
such a painful, high-quality death.
Drew Wheeler
18 FLAGPOLE.COM • FEBRUARY 14,2007 NEWS & FEATURES I ARTS & EVENTS I MOVIES I MUSIC I COMICS & ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS