Had Lecter and Stark pair up and become a couple. That’s how it ended, with them spotted years later at an opera by Barney, the male nurse who attended to Lecter while he was in the asylum. It wend so against character. Obviously Thomas Harris fell in love with Lecter and wanted to redeem him. Throughout the book the people chasing Lecter were shown to be worse than Lecter, or at least quite shady themselves, and worthy of the eventual death Lecter would visit upon them. Except Clarice, or course. It was just dumb.
It wasn’t dumb-- it was disturbing, as it was meant to be. Because good is good, and evil is evil, right? The whole subtext of the book was that everyone was fucking Clarice over-- including the FBI. Lecter’s the only person who truly respected her and treated her as an equal.
Lecter’s the only person who truly respected her and treated her as an equal.
How does drugs and hypnosis become respect?
That’s what bothered me more about the ending than the pairing. The fact that she was repeatedly drugged and brainwashed into it. Man alive, talk about beating up your female lead. Maybe she’s an honorary contestant in the Women In Refridgerator’s Trend.
Man, I could go on all-day about how Hannibal was quite possibly the worst book I’ve read in 2001.
oh uhm, 'ang on a minute. Is Red Dragon a Manhunter remake of sorts?[/quote]
They are both adaptations of the book, Red Dragon. Manhunter wasn’t called Red Dragon apparently because Dino DeLaurentis hated the Dragon name after releasing the Year of the Dragon bomb.
They are actually very similar, and good adaptations. The recent movie focuses more on Hannibal, not surprisingly, and “restores” the book’s ending. In Manhunter, director Michael Mann opted for a less cliched ending (but which is somewhat laughable in its own way). Manhunter is definitely an “80s” movie though - in terms of its visual style, music, etc., it’s pretty dated. Manhunter also focused more on the investigation than on the “Dragon” character and his motivations – you never actually even see the Dragon tatoo or the painting, although those scenes were filmed.
That all said, Manhunter is a much better movie. It’s a better movie than all of the other “Hannibal” movies, even though Michael Mann was just coming out of his Miami Vice phase, and was a pretty neophyte feature film director. But he had style.
After reading numerous reviews, most of them praising Manhunter like it was classic cinema, I’m left confused. After Silence I rented Manhunter. I liked the story, I liked Cox as Lecter, I liked Noonan as Dolherhyde, but I didn’t like Petersen as the lead, the direction, the horrible-horrible soundtrack or… really… the movie.
So it’s been weird reading how Red Dragon is being so unfavorably compared to what I thought was a fairly forgettable movie in the first place. Maybe I need to see Manhunter again? It’s been 10 years, at least.
In some countries, that’s considered psychiatric treatment. Guess who’s a psychiatrist? Oh yeah, Hannibal Lecter.
All this fear and loathing because people disagreed with the ending. It’s ridiculous. You can keep your precious buttoned-collar hand-choppin’ Clarice Starling-- I prefer the one who was able to meet Hannibal halfway. Isn’t the ultimate goal of any officer of the law not to punish, but to rehabilitate?
It’s one of the worst books I’ve ever read, period.[/quote]
Completely agree. In fact, although I think the movie, Hannibal, was truly terrible – it’s my vitriol towards the book that makes me want to bury the movie as well.
There are two scenes were Fiennes is naked (they’re not gratuitous “hey I’m naked, here are my 'nads” scenes), but they kind of make sense, though I wished they had Dollarhyde put on some shorts before running throughout his house.
You get glimpses of them but they don’t spring it in your face for minutes at a time or anything like that. They’re about as gratuitous as, say, on Cinemax adult flicks.
At first he did that. I really doubt that years later Clarice was still drugged and hypnotized. The implication was that she was with him because she wanted to be. She even sent a letter to a friend saying she was ok, etc.
I’d have to re-read it …
([size=6]I WILL NOT DO SO THOUGH[/size])
… but as I recall, she wrote that letter because she was brainwashed by then. My memory was that she certainly was no longer Clarice Starling by the time she wrote that letter and so I sort of assumed the good Doctor would continue to drug and hypnotize her whenever her true personality emerged.
I find it amusing how frightened people are by the concept of Clarice voluntarily joining (and reforming) Lecter. The fact that people do reject it with such ardor and vitriol makes it even more compelling as far as I’m concerned. The guy has been riffing on the general theme of “those who pursue monsters become monsters” from the first goddamn book-- and you’re shocked?
The only scene in the book that clearly showed she was drugged was when they were eating the brain of the guy who was still alive. The final scene occurred years later when Starling was alert enough to spot Barney many rows away in a crowded opera house. Could a drugged person be that cognitive, especially considering that Barney wasn’t a major character? No. She wasn’t drugged or hypnotized at that point.
Ah, cool. Thanks for the feedback! Now, I wanna go see it even more.
Manhunter (like Romeo Is Bleeding) is one of my all-time favorites and thats when I first saw Peterson (now on CSI) on screen. Been following his films ever since.
I like Michael Mann too. Have you been following his return to TV series, Homicide Robbery Division? Brilliant!! And its got Heat alumni, Tom Sizemore as the lead.
The book treatment is more like coercion than traditional psychiatric treatment.
All this fear and loathing because people disagreed with the ending.
I dunno about other people, but it’s more than the ending for me. Everything beforehand was terrible too. The pigs. The airplane food. The Italian detective. Lesbian bodybuilding sister. Having a stun gun shoved onto your nads and then having an eel eat you. It’s not like Hannibal was a great book ruined by a bad ending; it was a terrible book that got kicked in the eyes by the bad ending.
The ending would have annoy me less if that element of coercion wasn’t in the beginning. But the idea of “pursuers of monsters become monsters as well” doesn’t make up for the terrible prose before it.
