Lecter’s 2nd Course: Another Clarice
He-e-e-e-e’s back!
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, everybody’s favorite cannibal, comes out of retirement in Hannibal , a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs so gory and
gruesome it makes the original seem like a preschooler’s bedtime story. His
fondness for human livers garnished with fava beans has been replaced by a
passion for brains freshly removed from the cranium and lightly sautéed.
Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for licking his lips at
the sight of a blood clot, is once again the fiendish chef, his own tongue
planted firmly in cheek as he jokingly promises “the next course is to die
for.” Jodie Foster, who also won an Oscar, does not return as fearless rookie
F.B.I. agent Clarice Starling. She turned down the sequel after reading the
script, declaring it too disgusting, and was replaced by Julianne Moore. Ms.
Foster is not called the smartest actress in Hollywood for nothing. When you’re
right, you’re right- Hannibal is
pretty sick stuff. It is also pointless, more contrived and less original than The Silence of the Lambs . (So was the
book by Thomas Harris.) Having said all of that, I must admit I still found it
obscenely riveting, like watching a suicide in slow motion.
It’s been 10 years since Hannibal the Cannibal escaped from
that maximum-security asylum for the criminally insane, and 10 years since he
made Agent Starling a media star. In the interim, she’s gone down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the
F.B.I. agent who has shot and killed more criminals than anyone else-a label
that has landed her in a lot of hot water with her superiors in the F.B.I. and
the Justice Department. But in the decade since her special relationship with
the world’s most lethal monster led to the capture of serial killer and master
wacko Jame Gumb, she has never forgotten Hannibal. He, in turn, has never
stopped obsessing about her. As the program notes to Hannibal teasingly suggest, “He is still her most terrifying
nightmare. She is still his fondest fantasy.” Ah, love. Boris Karloff and Elsa
Lanchester couldn’t explain it in The
Bride of Frankenstein , so how can I?
Hannibal is about
the effects of that special, twisted interaction. When this film opens,
Starling is under fire for aggressive use of force in crime busts after gunning
down a lady drug czar holding a baby in her arms. Fired and disgraced, her
career in ruins, Starling focuses her energy on tracking down Hannibal. She has
to stand in line. Another archfiend wants
to reach the insane Hannibal first. He is the sixth and only surviving victim
of the cannibal’s carnage, a disfigured billionaire named Mason Verger, whose
face was eaten away by Hannibal and who has devoted his life to seeking revenge.
(Gary Oldman adds another memorable portrait to his gallery of weirdos, this
time mutilated and defaced beyond recognition, like a cross between John Hurt’s
Elephant Man and Jim Carrey’s Grinch.) “He’s always with me,” he mutters,
gumming his words through a rubber hole in his scarred face where a mouth
should be, “like a bad habit.”
The object of all this affection, meanwhile, is discovered
in the plush, unguarded gilt of Florence, where he works as a museum curator
among the Tuscan frescoes and delivers brilliant lectures about Italian
history, with gleeful emphasis on disembowelments and hangings. But you can’t
keep a good villain honest and stress-free long. Skulking through the shadows
of Florence after dark in a long black overcoat like Jack the Ripper, Hannibal
soon longs for the good old days and once again wants to “taste the enemy.” The
enemies on his trail include an ambitious
Italian detective (Giancarlo Giannini), who seeks the $3 million reward
for his capture; a gaggle of Sardinian gangsters employed by Verger; a corrupt
Justice Department honcho (Ray Liotta) looking for his own 10 minutes of
tabloid fame; and Clarice herself. The rest of the movie catalogs the
diabolical ways Dr. Lecter disposes of them, one by one, in savage, bloodcurdling
tortures. I wouldn’t call Hannibal
the perfect date movie.
While Anthony Hopkins fails to find anything fresh in Lecter
beyond clicking his teeth and staring into his victims’ eyes with soothing
words, like a dentist before he reaches for the drill, Julianne Moore makes
Clarice an entirely new creation. The similarities between her and Jodie Foster
are closer than you might think. They’re the same kind of dedicated
risk-takers-accomplished, cool, sharply focused, attractive and vulnerable, but
with a hard edge that warns “Don’t mess with me.” Ms. Moore says she accepted
the challenge despite Ms. Foster’s association with the role because she wanted
to work with Mr. Hopkins. Unfortunately, they appear in separate sections of
the film and don’t meet face to face until the final scenes. Without the
introspective direction of Jonathan Demme, they’re pretty much on their own.
Mr. Demme, who won historic acclaim for The Silence of the Lambs , has been replaced by Ridley Scott, who is
more interested in blood and horror than character and plot. He doesn’t seem
comfortable with people talking and analyzing, and the scenes in the forensics
lab that were so important in the first film now feel like the director’s
passing time nervously to fill in gaps. He’s really in his element when people
are being thrown to a horde of flesh-eating wild boars, with close-ups of heads
chewed and arms ripped out of their sockets.
David Mamet and Steven
Zaillian ( Schindler’s List ) are the
two scriptwriters. They’re not amateurs, but somewhere along the way the
decision was made to throw the movie to sensationalism and the hell with logic.
(We don’t believe for a minute that even a crack agent like Clarice would
handcuff herself to a human demon with a talent for ripping off a woman’s face
with his bare fangs.) The plot is forced, and the finale is so unsatisfactory
it almost seems played for laughs. The last 10 minutes, which critics are
begged not to reveal, are so nauseating and over the top they defy description
anyway. Giggling nervously in moments of suspense comes naturally to audiences
who don’t know whether to laugh or scream, but this time the slaughterhouse
brutality is so depraved it’s preposterous.
On the plus side, there
is Ms. Moore’s unruffled calm, the beautiful cinematography (Italy has never
looked more alluring) and an interesting comment on how America turns serial
killers into celebrities (Lecter’s copy of The
Joy of Cooking sells for $16,000 at auction). Dark and unsavory stuff, even
for cannibals, Hannibal may not repeat
the overwhelming success of its 1991 predecessor, but it won’t go unnoticed,
either. Bring smelling salts.
Are You Stalking Me?
Panic , a plodding
independent film that has been making the rounds of the festival circuit, is
worth seeing simply for William H. Macy’s portrayal of an unobtrusive,
nondescript, perfectly ordinary man who seems normal and dull in every way
except his work. He gets paid to kill people. Married, and the father of a
6-year-old son, he was taught to be a gun for hire at an early age by his
tyrannical father (Donald Sutherland), but now he’s in a rut. He wants to
retire and leave the family business. A passive hit man who has never stopped
to question how passionless and routine his life is, he’s desperate to escape
his father’s evil control, but doesn’t know how. So he turns to an analyst
(John Ritter) for help, only to discover that his next victim is the shrink
himself. Panic sets in, for
understandable reasons.
Like most debut films made by writer-directors weaned on
television, Panic has no sense of
timing or pace, and the dialogue provided by Henry Bromell ( Chicago Hope ) is so banal I feel
compelled to share an example with you:
“Are you stalking me?”
“No, why would I be stalking you?”
“Because you’re screwy.”
“You have nice feet.”
“Wanna come in?”
The interesting thing is the way it shows the business of
murder as a job as boring as accounting. Professional gun merchants sell
weapons from their car trunks while they discuss their H.M.O.’s, and
“contracts” are as casual a lunch topic as the merits of the Lexus versus the
BMW. The excellent cast includes Tracey Ullman, Barbara Bain and Neve Campbell,
and it’s a pleasure to watch Mr. Macy work out the nuances in such an agonized
role, but after Analyze This , Grosse Pointe Blank and The Sopranos , the idea of killers in
therapy has grown stale. This one isn’t played for laughs, but should have
been.
Two Words: Dianne
Reeves
One question I am always
asked: Who is the next Billie, Sarah, Ella, Carmen or Lena? I can now answer in
two words: Dianne Reeves. She sings and swings like all of them put together.
Sultry, savvy, unique, adventurous, with a range that flies off the Richter,
she’s the hottest thing in jazz. On Valentine’s Day, she’ll prove it once again
with a one-of-a-kind concert at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall at 8 p.m. to
celebrate the release of her spectacular new Blue Note CD, The Calling-Celebrating Sarah Vaughan .
The CD is quite the most volcanic eruption of music I have
heard in a very long time, a compilation of songs recorded in the past by
“Sassy” herself, in which Ms. Reeves puts her own spin on lush ballads like “If
You Could See Me Now,” “Key Largo” and “Speak Low,” as well as blazing big-band
blowouts like “Lullaby of Birdland” and “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You” (on which
she is joined in a swinging vocal duet by jazz trumpeter Clark Terry). She’s
accompanied by a 42-piece orchestra that shifts effortlessly from throbbing
strings to a Count Basie blast, and the arrangements are out of this world.
The three-octave range
Ms. Reeves displays on the salsa-tinged Brazilian classic “Obsession” is like
nothing you’ve ever heard before, and she miraculously makes the tiresome “Send
in the Clowns” sound like a fresh discovery, underscoring the familiar melody
with pastel echoes that embrace the joy of jazz. Using pauses and spaces the
way Bill Evans traded eights on the keyboard, she can sing out the words on “I
Remember Sarah” in saxophone-like torrents, or lag behind the beat in order to
stretch key words or syllables into emphatic notes with Sisyphus-like defiance,
reshaping the melody while holding and bending notes long beyond the bar in her
richest contralto tones.
Elegant, supple, graceful, sensually ripe and phrasing with
ecstasy, she gives me what Ethel Waters used to call “the mean shivers.” Her
power to meld the sheer, happening rapture of jazz and the romantic sweep of
popular singing literally erupts on every miraculous cut on this new CD. All of
this, and more, makes for the perfect valentine on Feb. 14, and who needs
another box of Godiva anyway?
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