Hannibal Rises on Screen

Before the recent winter holiday season, I was excited about the return of Hannibal Lecter, both in bookstores, in the form of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Rising, and in film, with the then-pending release of a Rising adaptation, starring Gaspard Ulliel as the young Lecter.Well, Hannibal Rising, the movie, opens this weekend on both sides of the Atlantic, and I, for one, look forward to seeing what Harris has accomplished with the screenplay, and what director Peter Weber has done in portraying the events and characters from Harris’ fifth Hannibal outing on the big screen. However, some British film critics already have their long knives out.

From the London Times:

The director, Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring), adopts a grainy tone, perhaps to offset the baroque flourishes accompanying the sadistic, grisly murders that pepper a by-the-numbers revenge plot. The French actor Gaspard Ulliel glowers as Hannibal, Gong Li’s aunt mostly smoulders and Rhys Ifans is all bug-eyed evil as the chief villain.

The more Harris has milked his creation, the more ludicrous Hannibal has become, the mystique of inexplicable monstrousness diminished with each appearance. Here it’s hard not to snigger as the teenage killer strums a lute while awaiting a killer. ...

From The Guardian:

Young Hannibal tracks down the Nazis in postwar Europe for some revenge munchies, busting into their various lairs like a very nasty Milk Tray man. How much more interesting--and scary--to have given Hannibal a perfectly happy boyhood with not the smallest occasion for anger or violence.

When asked by the Web site Movies Online whether he tried to emulate Anthony Hopkins in the Lecter role, Ulliel replied:

Before the [screen] test, before the auditions, yeah. Obviously, I watched Silence of the Lambs the day before and I observed Anthony Hopkins but when I prepared the role before shooting the film, the idea was not to imitate or copy Anthony Hopkins. This was not very interesting for me. I don’t think I’m able to imitate him. He’s so amazing in those films. He’s a very big actor. So I was kind of free to create my own Hannibal Lecter and I tried to work on my own with some readings and other films. Obviously, I knew that the audience would want or expect some similarities with Anthony Hopkins so one part of my preparation for the role was just to observe him and try to pick a few details from his performance and mix it with my own recipe to build my own character.

But let’s leave the last word to the trade paper Variety:

A killer career is launched in “Hannibal Rising,” which explains how the character most famously played by Anthony Hopkins became the cunning cannibal of later repute. With first-time scenarist Thomas Harris adapting his own novel, and “Girl With a Pearl Earring’s” Peter Webber the somewhat unlikely directorial choice, this upmarket slasher is a well-produced but slow-moving thriller that never quite roars to life. Biz in most territories should be at least initially robust, though brand recognition will probably carry pic into midrange numbers of “Red Dragon” as opposed to the B.O. bonanzas of superior “Silence of the Lambs” and “Hannibal.”

We shall see. I’m off to the theater, with a bucket of fava beans instead of popcorn. It seems only appropriate.

READ MORE: “Hannibal Rising Commercial, Rejected for Super Bowl, Available Online,” by Jessica Barnes (Cinematical).