After The Red Dragon (dir. Brett Ratner), Silence of the Lambs (1990 dir. Jonathan Demmy) and Hannibal (2001, dir. Ridley Scott), the indefatigable Thomas Harris presented the audience with more than just another frightening story about the adventures the legendary maniac. He presented the “beginning” of Hannibal Lecter, his “ascent”.
Main characters
Harris was conceived by director Peter Webber, who never managed to skyrocket up the career ladder, although it seemed that he could not find a better push on the path to success. Gaspard Ulliel was invited to the role of beginner Hannibal. The actor got the role in the film “Hannibal: Ascent” after a long debate between the authors of the project, who among others considered the candidatures of Macaulay Culkin, Rupert Friend, Tom Sturridge, Hugh Dancy, Tom Payne, Hayden Christensen and Dominic Cooper. In the end, preference was given to Gaspar, the actor at that time not popular, because of his amazing external similarity with the young Hannibal. The role of his beloved, or rather lady, was invited by the spectacular Gong Li, which the viewer could see in the films “The Curse of the Golden Flower” and “Memoirs of a Geisha”. Now, Hannibal Lector (Ascension) has become her on-screen companion. Actors who played secondary roles looked more faded compared to the title characters.
Cause
There is an opinion that the reason for the literary and cinematic prehistory of “Silence of the Lambs”, “Red Dragon” and “Hannibal” was the thirst for profit that possessed the producer Dino De Laurentiis and the fiction writer Thomas Harris. Moreover, it was a pity to betray the story of a beautifully promoted “brand”. Moreover, the movie "Hannibal: Ascent" turned out pretty decently served. By the way, already in "Hannibal" the history of the "difficult" Lecter childhood was outlined. Director Peter Webber, a well-known narrow circle of film gourmets for the debut Girl with a Pearl Earring, managed to remove a decent film with the direct participation of cameraman Ben Davis. Many critics and viewers consider it the painting "Hannibal: Ascent." The actor, who played the role of the young Lecter (Ulliel), an ardent admirer of skateboards, Milan Kundera and Jeanne Moreau, showed himself from the best side. Although it’s hard for fans of a terrible story to imagine that the canonical psychopath Anthony Hopkins grew out of this pretty shy young man.
It all started with revenge?
“Hannibal: Ascension” is a film, the reviews of which are diametrically opposed. Critics accused Harris of simply reporting in this story and reducing it to primitive psychoanalysis. According to them, with a similar childhood trauma, every second would end up with cannibalism.
So, trying to deepen, expand and develop the already existing mythology of Lecter, the author finally and irrevocably debunked it in the film “Hannibal: Ascension”. The actors, whose photos were decorated with the film's advertising posters, state the opposite. However, all are unanimous in only one thing - the unsuccessful choice of the advertising slogan, which reads: "It all began with revenge." After all, someone, and the legendary Lecter, in his perfectly thought-out atrocities, should have been guided by other motives, and not by a vulgar vendetta. Perhaps that is why the picture "Hannibal: Ascent" Anthony Hopkins appreciated very restrained.
The subject of free creativity
The paradoxical fact is that while Lecter did not have a biographical background explaining the reasons and sources, he was a free subject (despite a frequent stay in prisons) subject to his own perverted creativity, requiring only food for the mind and “culinary delights” for the body . Despite the fact that in “Silence of the Lambs” (as the actors of the film “Hannibal: Ascent” admit), the best part of the cannibalistic saga, Lecter was defeated, in the final he remained free from the threads of the past, which, like a web, connect people, making them puppet puppets. His main mistake was the creation of a fundamentally false in essence, although not without some distinctly noticed details, psychological portrait of the main opponent - Clarissa Starling and her relationship with family members.
Monstrous Victim
Hannibal Lecter, who for three parts appeared before the viewer in all his "ripened" intellectual splendor, was not a product of the development of any family tree, its crown. He was a bunch of the living present, a spontaneous, but sovereign person, towering above the frightened or smug surrounding. Now the created image has faded, the picture has changed, turned upside down in the film “Hannibal: Ascent”. Actor Gaspard Ulliel conveys to the beholder the image of an almost kind shepherd of lambs frozen in horror and meek trembling, who himself is only a victim of monstrous circumstances, a sentimental guy with strong and sincere family affection.
Cannibalistic Performances
To the great regret and disappointment of the fans of the saga, due to the haste of Thomas Harris, it turned out that all the exquisite cannibalistic performances and theatrical psychological experiments from previous novels are not a splash of the brilliant artistic nature of the main protagonist of the 20th century, but simply the result of the machinations of collaborators from Lithuania who, by coincidence, ate the younger sister of the main character, a girl whom Hannibal Lector (“Ascension”) loved with all his heart.
Actors, Harris and Webber, unwittingly, overthrew one of the most prominent "heroes of our time." Having equipped Hannibal with a biographical history, they placed her in a strange anti-historical space. The audience after watching a lot of questions. What kind of Lecter family is this, where did they come from in occupied Lithuania in 1944, where did their family estate come from? How did a Lithuanian marauder with a German surname Dortlich manage to become a Soviet internal affairs officer in Kaunas after the war? How does young Hannibal end up in France? But it turns out where the awesome mask came from, which was much later worn on the hero of Hopkins. This is an element of the military uniforms of the samurai, and to this extent young Japanese Hannibal was trained in this military art by a beautiful Japanese woman, who mournes for her relatives and friends who died in Hiroshima.
Is a maniac an object of compassion?
The most terrible shortcoming of the film “Hannibal: Ascent” (the actor Ulliel is not guilty of anything, Webber is blamed for everything) is considered to be the transformation of the canonical figure of a maniac-cannibal into an object of compassion. According to the director, the young Hannibal does not kill for the sake of pure art and a perverted worldview. He takes revenge on the bad guys - accomplices of the Nazi regime and traffickers. Murder in revenge, as usual, has a distinct smack of morality, and morality, as you know, is not the best companion for a cannibal killer.
Life story as an excuse
Of course, revising the film “Hannibal: Ascent”, the actors and roles of which were chosen by the creators in good faith, the viewer will note the brilliant play of Gaspar Ulliel, and Rhys Ifans, who played the role of the main antagonist of the central character Vladis Grutas, and directorial tricks like a web with a fat spider, the prelude , and the red fog enveloping the cabin in which Hannibal first tasted the humans. Despite some mistakes, still director Peter Webber is one of those directors who put their soul into each of their projects. But this does not justify the authors of the picture in the eyes of a somewhat puzzled viewer. Even after watching the film “Hannibal: Ascent”, the photos from the shootings of which scare with its realism, the wider audience prefers to consider Lecter as gratuitous, baseless, incomprehensible and spontaneous.
I wanted more
A sophisticated viewer, a fan of the genre, near the end of the timing of the picture begins to seem that perhaps a much greater effect, and a slightly different version of Ascension would have made sense. Having presented to the audience the bucolic, conflict-free story of the young prodigy's upbringing: a cloudless childhood, adolescence and early youth surrounded by loving and beloved relatives, loyal friends, pure first love and no brutal eating of the younger sister, the creators could only win. But at the culmination moment, a few seconds before the final credits, even if in the eyes of the ideal guy suddenly unclear where an unkind spark came from. Then the effect would surely be much stronger and discouraging.