Feasting on Scraps

Hannibal Rising picks the character's bones dry.

by Shaun Brady

Authors can't always be trusted as the best caretakers of their own inventions. Thomas Harris is a case study, having gradually allowed Hannibal Lecter to evolve from vivid supporting villain to cartoonish anti-hero over the course of four novels. Like any other audience member, Harris fell under the spell of Anthony Hopkins' portrayal, whose appetite for scenery rivaled (and, perhaps, surpassed) Lecter's for flesh.

YOUNG BLOOD: Gaspard Ulliel as Hannibal Lecter. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

By turning to the dreaded realm of the prequel, Harris loses the vital services of Hopkins, though even he would have found little to savor in the author's nigh-unspeakable dialogue. As a novel, Hannibal Rising reads like a deadline-beating screenplay novelization, which, given its appearance a mere two months prior to the film, it likely was. Fortunately, Harris' first stab at a screenplay jettisons much that was superfluous in the book, from the tangential subplot about the Lecter family's art treasures to some truly unfilmable exchanges. (Though considering how unintentionally laugh-inducing the film remains, it's a shame that he didn't retain the scene of a mute young Hannibal communicating to his therapist via vocal fart noises.)

The fatal flaw in both novel and film, amplified from Hannibal, is that Harris seems not to understand the character he created. Until Hopkins cemented Lecter's place in the pantheon of screen villains, Harris understood that monsters thrive in the shadows. Since then, he's made the same mistake that so many less reputable horror franchises have, turning an erudite figure of evil into a wise-cracking superstar.

Hannibal Rising reads like a fan fiction origin story, imaging the most elaborate scenario possible within the character's geographical and temporal limits, intent on finding a Psych 101 direct correlation between past and future. Suddenly, Lecter is the scion of a noble Lithuanian family, his family caught in the crossfire on the Russian front, driven mad and sworn to vengeance after his little sister follows a waning supply of birds and squirrels down the voracious throats of a band of self-serving Nazi collaborators.

Hannibal's initial forays into murder and human shish kebab, then, are made perfectly justifiable, the young medical student a cross between Dirty Harry and Simon Wiesenthal. It also distorts Lecter's Nietzschean superiority complex into a distaste — make that dislike — for bullies.

In the process, Harris turns Lecter into a vengeful, cannibalistic James Bond, complete with makeshift weaponry, witty bons mots, and exotic love interest in the person of his widowed Japanese aunt, played by Gong Li. Inexplicably named for the author of the 11th-century novel The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki is a kimono stuffed with colonialist ideas of Oriental otherness, speaking virtually in haiku and turned on by her nephew's murderous ways. She's forced to breathily intone greetings like "You smell of smoke and blood."

If Harris hadn't already rendered the young Lecter unrecognizable, the job would have been nicely accomplished by star Gaspard Ulliel, who licks his chops with demonic relish but never, in look or manner, evokes Hopkins. That central disconnect may put paid to a series that has swallowed itself whole.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Hannibal Rising

Directed by Peter Webber

An MGM release