our subject isn't cool, but he fakes it anyway
это какой-то кошмар, как я плохо себя чувствую. ппц. так надоели эти качели((
снова обзор, его в том числе могут почитать те, кому 3 сезон не очень понравился, тут много критики.
ключевая фраза про 3 сезон, по-моему: ... felt like the show was trying to do everything it thought it could get away with on broadcast television
TV.COM
THE FINAL COURSE
Hannibal Series Finale Review: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
читать дальшеPrior to watching "The Wrath of the Lamb," I was fully prepared to pay only lip service to the finale. My reasoning behind this was twofold. First, I was planning to focus a bit on Season 3 as a whole since I hadn’t been reviewing the show all season, and now that it was at an end, it was time to take stock of the season’s experimental nature and consider how well that experiment ultimately worked. Second, I felt like the main thrust of this review—after considering Season 3—should be to address Hannibal as a series, as a unique, weird, odd-defying, and awe-inspiring piece of broadcast television and what a loss it is for the TV landscape that it’s gone for if not for a while, than for good.
After watching "The Wrath of the Lamb," it's pretty clear I can't completely gloss over the episode. Certainly I intended to address the episode when discussing Season 3 as a whole since, by and large, the episode suffered from the same issues that circulated through much of this season—underdeveloped in spots, rushed in others, and yet somehow stuffed—and so there's those parts of the episode to consider. Then there's the episode's various cliffhangers (oh, they fell over a cliff; I SEE YOU, HANNIBAL), like Bedelia's little dinner party for three and Alana absconding to who knows where to keep herself, Margot, and the Verger Heir safe from Hannibal, that now amount to little more than thought exercises or prompts for the fan fiction, at least until/if the show makes a miraculous return. (I would read the Bedelia one.)
Truly, though, it was really only everything after Dolarhyde effortlessly demolished the prisoner transport that caused me to e-mail my editors and say, "Well, I have no idea what the fuck to do with this." I told Cory a similar thing, and then said that, like with my review of "Primavera," maybe I would find what the fuck to do with the end of the this episode and, sadly, the series, in the writing process.
But should I?
Some part of me thinks that a confused, slack-jawed, somewhat politely less-than-enthused reaction to this finale may be the best possible reaction. Some part of me is amused at how the show took the end of the novel Red Dragon and totally made it its own, substituting Hannibal for Molly in a final confrontation with the Dragon, a final remix of its source material.
Some part of me relished the show fully embracing its increasingly overt queerness in the end, complete with Will and Hannibal finally consummating their relationship by murdering someone together and hugging afterwards. Some other part of me appreciated the show’s commitment to its gothic and camp impulses with these two lovers embracing one another as they plunged to a watery grave as a song that would befit the end of a 1980s psychosexual thriller played (a song written specifically for the episode no less).
And, yet, here I am, still not convinced—admittedly by my own self—that I liked "The Wrath of the Lamb." Okay, I actually thought it was a mess. Having conflicting thoughts/feelings/impulses/responses about art is good, I think, but it’s hard to also be comfortable with that when the art under question is something that you know you already love. In a lot of ways, maybe the best comparison for this is Will, watching Francis set up his camera to watch Hannibal's becoming. Will was likely pulled between love and hate, not quite sure what to do, weighing options in a detached state—I love how calm he is, holding his wine—and then Francis forced a response by stabbing Will in the face.
The show, likewise, forced a response from me, albeit nothing as serious as a knife to the face. The biggest is simply that the story of the Red Dragon should not have been a 6-episode arc. But because it was, its conclusion felt too rushed, leading to the sense that I felt like it was a mess. I have no doubt that this was the intended end point for Season 3, and that's fine! I love the idea of this as the conclusion for Season 3, and even as the conclusion to the show itself! Oddly, it stayed in line with the filmic adaptations of Red Dragon in giving Will Graham a (stretching the meaning of the phrase) happy ending.
However, for a show that has been rightly heralded for its steady and often times harrowing psychological build-up—be it was Will’s deteriorating mental state in the face of violence in Season 1 or the question of Will's loyalties in Season 2—Season 3 simply didn't have the room to fully explore why Will would put himself back into a position to be tempted to stay with Hannibal or to kill him. Admittedly, much of this, at least plot-wise, was Hannibal's doing (after all, he has agency in the world). He was counting on Francis ruining Molly for Will, thus driving Will back to him. But the struggle for Will was short-changed, if it even actually existed. Will saw Molly transformed and there were no other recourses. I needed more than that. It's an emotional shortcut in a show that has generally avoided emotional shortcuts, especially when it comes to Will. [В общем-то я тут согласна, в точки зрения именно сюжетного хода 3 сезон очень странный, но я это прощаю им т.к. это такой.. очевидный эксперимент. А Уилл, мне кажется, про себя всё понял, когда он через океан попилил за Ганнибалом. Молли была последней надеждой на что-то типа Maybe if I ignore it it'll go away. Уилл, помимо прочего, явно вошел во вкус, манипулируя Ганнибалом, почувствовав, что у Уилла есть все ресурсы, чтобы причинить тому боль. Возможно, отчасти поэтому ему не удалось убить Ганнибала - ведь будем честны, смерть - неудовлетворительная месть.]
Which brings us to the core problem of Season 3. Whether it was the fact that the show's writers realized they didn't have enough story for Italy to be a whole season onto itself, or if everyone suspected this was likely the end of the road for Hannibal and they wanted a send-off that would work as a season finale as well as a series finale (while also telling its version of Thomas Harris' Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter novel), the divided season did neither story arc any favors. [Мне кажется, лично мне поэтому этот конец настолько убил мозг. Потому что он очевидно написан так, чтобы быть крутым окончанием и сериала, и просто сезона, то есть это такой очень неоднозначный знак препинания...] Italy's free-flowing art film style was a delightful thing to see on TV, but stumbled when it had to wrap itself up. The Red Dragon side of the season likewise chugged along fine until the end, when characters had to become stupid and desperate to justify the backbending necessary to get Will and Hannibal to the cliffside cabin.
I look at both stories, and I can't help but see the truncations and contortions. On the one hand, I'm rather glad that Italy ended when it did because otherwise we might've ventured even deeper into MischaLand and nothing good happens there. On the other hand, perhaps "Digestivo" might have felt more fully realized as a capper to that story as opposed to a horror house filled with fantastic but sort of hollow scares. Also, I would've loved much more time with Bedelia (who wouldn't?). With the Red Dragon arc, there was not only the subdued exploration of Will's actions and mental state, but, despite spending a plenty of time with him, Dolarhyde's deeper psychological traumas weren't given as full a hearing as they ought to have received, to say nothing of answering the basic question of how he was selecting the families. [Тут тоже согласна, и здесь конечно они очень удачно выбрали Армитеджа, который проработал роль невероятно хорошо. Но конечно да, особенно если ты не знаешь предыдущие экранизации и сам канон, не очень понятно, чем Дракон так уж принципиально отличается от прдыдущих маньяков, которых они ловили за 1-2 эпизода. Это я к тому ещё, что вы не думайте, что если я так восторгаюсь и защищаю Фуллера, то это значит, что я не вижу. Вижу. Просто у меня нынче такое плохое эмоциональное состояние, что мне очень не хочется концентрироваться на критике того, что я люблю, и особенно слышать это от других. У меня отдельная травма по этой части)))] It's sort of implied with his job at a film lab, but the show didn't want to deal directly with that now dated idea from the novel.
Even with those frustrating and out-of-character errors, I did not hate Season 3. I'm not sure I could because, well, I do love the show, and it's earned so much goodwill from me that short of becoming completely incoherent I doubt I would hate it. I loved the Italian side, not just for the aforementioned art cinema stuff, but also because it dove head first into an exploration of what Will and Hannibal really meant to one another, especially what Hannibal meant to Will. I called it "bold" two episodes into the season, and I still think that it was. I also think that this season would like the audience to maybe ignore the time jump in a way and keep Will frozen in a state of forgiving Hannibal/wanting to understand him/wanting to love him, as if his life with Molly were just a dream that was easily awoken from. If we do that, then a lot of my issues with Season 3 would just melt away. Even Hannibal's line about needing to eat Will to forgive him fell aside as Hannibal made sure to mention how his compassion got in the way of his desire to devour the profiler.
Then there was just the fact that the first half of the season really wasn't afraid to be weird. I've said on multiple occasions that it often felt like the show was trying to do everything it thought it could get away with on broadcast television, and it turned out to be bizarre digressions to Latvia, starting to saw open a man's skull, a pig as a human fetus surrogate... and basically everything save for a nude Mads Mikkelsen strapped up in a pigsty because in the States we are fine with wanton acts of violence and implied human childbirth by pig, but balk at a man's bare bottom Saturday nights at 10pm. It was, in short, Hannibal uncut into seven insane, darkly funny and introspective episodes. Perhaps a little too pure in the long run, but still something special.
I ended up liking the Red Dragon half of the season less than the Italian half, but I think I shoulder some of that blame. My expectations for Hannibal's treatment of this story were likely far too high, and they were also not properly adjusted for the structure of this season. I was likely always going to be disappointed by it on the whole because of this, and my frustrations with it probably stem, at least in part, from this. The show can take on some of the blame as well, but I do think it's only right to acknowledge my own baggage going into it.
That being said, most of my pleasures in this half of the season really came from the performances. I've already discussed Richard Armitage, Rutina Wesley, and Raúl Esparza's work this season so I won't rehash that save to say they were all very, very good, and Armitage, especially, had to do a lot of heavy lifting to make sure the Francis stuff worked at all, and he did that.
Above them, though, it was really Hugh Dancy. He's been great all season, but he found a whole new level for Will in this arc. This Will was confident, deeply aware of being played, and also playing games. But Dancy also balanced with it a Will that was deeply torn explaining himself to both Walter and then Molly. Again, I think the show may've wanted us to think of a Will frozen after Italy, but Dancy's performance didn't really allow for that. He created a changed man in full control of his emotions after letting other people's emotions define him for so long. Small, subtle looks and reactions—just re-watch everything in the hospital in "...And the Beast from the Sea" and you'll see it—to that brittle anger whenever he has to talk to Jack. He's making eye contact and he's not hiding behind glasses. It's a different Will Graham, and Dancy made damn sure that was really clear. [Да да да да да!! Это так круто. Вот кстати только уже за это можно любить сериалы как феномен.]
Like many, when I heard about Hannibal being made into a TV series—even with Bryan Fuller at the helm—I thought it was just the dumbest and worst and most cynical idea imaginable. "Ooooh, serial killers are really big on TV right now! Let's grab this iconic one from the late '80s and early '90s and build a show around him!" It just seemed like the crassest, most capitalistic bit of intellectual property exploitation one could imagine, especially after Hannibal Rising seemed to have driven a stake very deep into the heart of the franchise.
I don't think anyone has been happier to be so very wrong than I was, or anyone else that had similar sentiments. Hannibal ended up being deeply unique and borderline impossible as a show that aired on broadcast TV in the United States, and it would have even seemed a bit out of place on basic cable during some of its stretches. It arrived at a point in which NBC was willing to try anything to regain its footing and at a time when the broadcast TV business was entering into such disarray that the show's financial situation of international deals and, later, streaming rights, made it a sound business choice (for a while, anyway). Hannibal was as much a product of television's industrial environment over the past three years as it was Bryan Fuller and his team's narrative and aesthetic sensibilities.
These were sensibilities defined by Fuller, David Slade and, most importantly, the show's director of photography James Hawkinson. The show's had its fair share of great directors cycle in and out to be sure, but Hawkinson was there to make sure their visions worked within Hannibal's overall aesthetic of saturated colors, delicate gradations of light and shadow, and baroque horror. Without him, there'd be no unifying sense of artistic perspective, no template for the weekly directors to come in and play upon while still making sure the show was always Hannibal. [amen]
In additional to the visuals of the photography, there was the costuming by Christopher Hargadon and the food design by Janice Poon. Both created feasts for the eyes, metaphorically and literally in Poon's case. Hargadon's costuming would not only tell us plenty about the characters, it would make us pretty damn envious of the characters' closets (I basically want every sweater and button-down Will Graham owns). Poon had to make make Hannibal's dishes look delectable and squirm-inducing at the same time, and I can't think of a single time that didn't happen.
Complementing the aesthetics was Brian Retizell's scoring and sound work. Largely a solo act, Reitzell gave Hannibal a soundtrack unlike any show on TV. Relying on out of the ordinary instruments (and plenty of ordinary ones), he'd swerve between subtle and cacophonous soundscapes that sometimes could barely hear and other times wish you could simply unhear, but in a good way because of the sound-image associations that it would create (seriously, the sounds of bending straws and plastic are now forever associated with shoving an ear down a man's throat for me). But he could do "conventionally" beautiful things, like "Bloodfeast" from "Mizumono" or the music during the tiger scene in "... And the Woman Clothed in Sun."
Hannibal, more than some TV shows, really wanted to bring its visual and aural aesthetics to the forefront. It was not only a way to cut through the clutter and chatter of television's presumed lack of style—hence the turn to the useless and demeaning "cinematic" descriptor for stylish shows—but they proved to be the perfect way to express characters' thoughts and interior worlds. That's something very important when you have characters talking a lot during screwed up therapy sessions.
For the sake of time and space, I'm going to pass on delving too deep into the show's acting and writing in any depth, mostly because you can find it discussed in much more serious detail in other reviews I've written and in discussions we've had in the comments. I never paid as much attention to aesthetics as I should in weekly reviews so that's why the special attention now. Obviously, Hannibal had a crackerjack cast that has been more than up to the task of handling complex and complicated material with seemingly effortless ease week in and week out, particularly, of course, Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen. Without them at the show's center, Hannibal would've just been a very pretty show instead of a very pretty show that was also a deeply emotional one.
And I think that's what I want to close this review on, this idea of Hannibal as deeply emotional. Plenty of scripted fictional shows are emotional, either at their core or just occasionally, when the show wants to do something particularly special (non-fiction shows, from newscasts to cooking shows to home shopping segments to reality TV are, likewise, emotional, but that's a whole other discussion), but Hannibal was obsessed with emotions. Its characters talked about theirs. The show gave those emotions visualizations. It lived in its characters' heads as much as it lived outside of them, exploring the psychic tolls of violence and, ultimately, love.
The relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter may be one of the defining TV romances of our time, a baroque spin on the will-they-won't-they formula. Will and Hannibal were friends and then potential partners that had a very nasty break-up and then, at the end, a reconciliation (however convoluted). These are two men who struggled to share themselves with others and found, in each other, someone to finally open up to, someone who could understand and accept them. Hannibal challenged our notions of what sort of love we can accept. Love between two men? Pretty easy. Love between an overly empathetic profiler and a manipulative cannibalistic serial killer? Perhaps a little harder to get on board with since we want Will to be safe and happy instead of happy and potentially eating Bedelia's leg with Hannibal.
All the same, there was something very special about a show that slowly developed a male romance that didn't need to be read into by fans (Kirk and Spock) or routinely mocked in bits of pitiful gay panic (Sherlock). Hannibal played things as if it were the most natural thing in the world for these two people to love one another, and it achieved that by making sure everything else was bizarre, grotesque and often horrifying. As a result, we'd be encouraged to latch onto the one thing that seemed, in its own way, stable.
I'm going to miss this show.
снова обзор, его в том числе могут почитать те, кому 3 сезон не очень понравился, тут много критики.
ключевая фраза про 3 сезон, по-моему: ... felt like the show was trying to do everything it thought it could get away with on broadcast television
TV.COM
THE FINAL COURSE
Hannibal Series Finale Review: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
читать дальшеPrior to watching "The Wrath of the Lamb," I was fully prepared to pay only lip service to the finale. My reasoning behind this was twofold. First, I was planning to focus a bit on Season 3 as a whole since I hadn’t been reviewing the show all season, and now that it was at an end, it was time to take stock of the season’s experimental nature and consider how well that experiment ultimately worked. Second, I felt like the main thrust of this review—after considering Season 3—should be to address Hannibal as a series, as a unique, weird, odd-defying, and awe-inspiring piece of broadcast television and what a loss it is for the TV landscape that it’s gone for if not for a while, than for good.
After watching "The Wrath of the Lamb," it's pretty clear I can't completely gloss over the episode. Certainly I intended to address the episode when discussing Season 3 as a whole since, by and large, the episode suffered from the same issues that circulated through much of this season—underdeveloped in spots, rushed in others, and yet somehow stuffed—and so there's those parts of the episode to consider. Then there's the episode's various cliffhangers (oh, they fell over a cliff; I SEE YOU, HANNIBAL), like Bedelia's little dinner party for three and Alana absconding to who knows where to keep herself, Margot, and the Verger Heir safe from Hannibal, that now amount to little more than thought exercises or prompts for the fan fiction, at least until/if the show makes a miraculous return. (I would read the Bedelia one.)
Truly, though, it was really only everything after Dolarhyde effortlessly demolished the prisoner transport that caused me to e-mail my editors and say, "Well, I have no idea what the fuck to do with this." I told Cory a similar thing, and then said that, like with my review of "Primavera," maybe I would find what the fuck to do with the end of the this episode and, sadly, the series, in the writing process.
But should I?
Some part of me thinks that a confused, slack-jawed, somewhat politely less-than-enthused reaction to this finale may be the best possible reaction. Some part of me is amused at how the show took the end of the novel Red Dragon and totally made it its own, substituting Hannibal for Molly in a final confrontation with the Dragon, a final remix of its source material.
Some part of me relished the show fully embracing its increasingly overt queerness in the end, complete with Will and Hannibal finally consummating their relationship by murdering someone together and hugging afterwards. Some other part of me appreciated the show’s commitment to its gothic and camp impulses with these two lovers embracing one another as they plunged to a watery grave as a song that would befit the end of a 1980s psychosexual thriller played (a song written specifically for the episode no less).
And, yet, here I am, still not convinced—admittedly by my own self—that I liked "The Wrath of the Lamb." Okay, I actually thought it was a mess. Having conflicting thoughts/feelings/impulses/responses about art is good, I think, but it’s hard to also be comfortable with that when the art under question is something that you know you already love. In a lot of ways, maybe the best comparison for this is Will, watching Francis set up his camera to watch Hannibal's becoming. Will was likely pulled between love and hate, not quite sure what to do, weighing options in a detached state—I love how calm he is, holding his wine—and then Francis forced a response by stabbing Will in the face.
The show, likewise, forced a response from me, albeit nothing as serious as a knife to the face. The biggest is simply that the story of the Red Dragon should not have been a 6-episode arc. But because it was, its conclusion felt too rushed, leading to the sense that I felt like it was a mess. I have no doubt that this was the intended end point for Season 3, and that's fine! I love the idea of this as the conclusion for Season 3, and even as the conclusion to the show itself! Oddly, it stayed in line with the filmic adaptations of Red Dragon in giving Will Graham a (stretching the meaning of the phrase) happy ending.
However, for a show that has been rightly heralded for its steady and often times harrowing psychological build-up—be it was Will’s deteriorating mental state in the face of violence in Season 1 or the question of Will's loyalties in Season 2—Season 3 simply didn't have the room to fully explore why Will would put himself back into a position to be tempted to stay with Hannibal or to kill him. Admittedly, much of this, at least plot-wise, was Hannibal's doing (after all, he has agency in the world). He was counting on Francis ruining Molly for Will, thus driving Will back to him. But the struggle for Will was short-changed, if it even actually existed. Will saw Molly transformed and there were no other recourses. I needed more than that. It's an emotional shortcut in a show that has generally avoided emotional shortcuts, especially when it comes to Will. [В общем-то я тут согласна, в точки зрения именно сюжетного хода 3 сезон очень странный, но я это прощаю им т.к. это такой.. очевидный эксперимент. А Уилл, мне кажется, про себя всё понял, когда он через океан попилил за Ганнибалом. Молли была последней надеждой на что-то типа Maybe if I ignore it it'll go away. Уилл, помимо прочего, явно вошел во вкус, манипулируя Ганнибалом, почувствовав, что у Уилла есть все ресурсы, чтобы причинить тому боль. Возможно, отчасти поэтому ему не удалось убить Ганнибала - ведь будем честны, смерть - неудовлетворительная месть.]
Which brings us to the core problem of Season 3. Whether it was the fact that the show's writers realized they didn't have enough story for Italy to be a whole season onto itself, or if everyone suspected this was likely the end of the road for Hannibal and they wanted a send-off that would work as a season finale as well as a series finale (while also telling its version of Thomas Harris' Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter novel), the divided season did neither story arc any favors. [Мне кажется, лично мне поэтому этот конец настолько убил мозг. Потому что он очевидно написан так, чтобы быть крутым окончанием и сериала, и просто сезона, то есть это такой очень неоднозначный знак препинания...] Italy's free-flowing art film style was a delightful thing to see on TV, but stumbled when it had to wrap itself up. The Red Dragon side of the season likewise chugged along fine until the end, when characters had to become stupid and desperate to justify the backbending necessary to get Will and Hannibal to the cliffside cabin.
I look at both stories, and I can't help but see the truncations and contortions. On the one hand, I'm rather glad that Italy ended when it did because otherwise we might've ventured even deeper into MischaLand and nothing good happens there. On the other hand, perhaps "Digestivo" might have felt more fully realized as a capper to that story as opposed to a horror house filled with fantastic but sort of hollow scares. Also, I would've loved much more time with Bedelia (who wouldn't?). With the Red Dragon arc, there was not only the subdued exploration of Will's actions and mental state, but, despite spending a plenty of time with him, Dolarhyde's deeper psychological traumas weren't given as full a hearing as they ought to have received, to say nothing of answering the basic question of how he was selecting the families. [Тут тоже согласна, и здесь конечно они очень удачно выбрали Армитеджа, который проработал роль невероятно хорошо. Но конечно да, особенно если ты не знаешь предыдущие экранизации и сам канон, не очень понятно, чем Дракон так уж принципиально отличается от прдыдущих маньяков, которых они ловили за 1-2 эпизода. Это я к тому ещё, что вы не думайте, что если я так восторгаюсь и защищаю Фуллера, то это значит, что я не вижу. Вижу. Просто у меня нынче такое плохое эмоциональное состояние, что мне очень не хочется концентрироваться на критике того, что я люблю, и особенно слышать это от других. У меня отдельная травма по этой части)))] It's sort of implied with his job at a film lab, but the show didn't want to deal directly with that now dated idea from the novel.
Even with those frustrating and out-of-character errors, I did not hate Season 3. I'm not sure I could because, well, I do love the show, and it's earned so much goodwill from me that short of becoming completely incoherent I doubt I would hate it. I loved the Italian side, not just for the aforementioned art cinema stuff, but also because it dove head first into an exploration of what Will and Hannibal really meant to one another, especially what Hannibal meant to Will. I called it "bold" two episodes into the season, and I still think that it was. I also think that this season would like the audience to maybe ignore the time jump in a way and keep Will frozen in a state of forgiving Hannibal/wanting to understand him/wanting to love him, as if his life with Molly were just a dream that was easily awoken from. If we do that, then a lot of my issues with Season 3 would just melt away. Even Hannibal's line about needing to eat Will to forgive him fell aside as Hannibal made sure to mention how his compassion got in the way of his desire to devour the profiler.
Then there was just the fact that the first half of the season really wasn't afraid to be weird. I've said on multiple occasions that it often felt like the show was trying to do everything it thought it could get away with on broadcast television, and it turned out to be bizarre digressions to Latvia, starting to saw open a man's skull, a pig as a human fetus surrogate... and basically everything save for a nude Mads Mikkelsen strapped up in a pigsty because in the States we are fine with wanton acts of violence and implied human childbirth by pig, but balk at a man's bare bottom Saturday nights at 10pm. It was, in short, Hannibal uncut into seven insane, darkly funny and introspective episodes. Perhaps a little too pure in the long run, but still something special.
I ended up liking the Red Dragon half of the season less than the Italian half, but I think I shoulder some of that blame. My expectations for Hannibal's treatment of this story were likely far too high, and they were also not properly adjusted for the structure of this season. I was likely always going to be disappointed by it on the whole because of this, and my frustrations with it probably stem, at least in part, from this. The show can take on some of the blame as well, but I do think it's only right to acknowledge my own baggage going into it.
That being said, most of my pleasures in this half of the season really came from the performances. I've already discussed Richard Armitage, Rutina Wesley, and Raúl Esparza's work this season so I won't rehash that save to say they were all very, very good, and Armitage, especially, had to do a lot of heavy lifting to make sure the Francis stuff worked at all, and he did that.
Above them, though, it was really Hugh Dancy. He's been great all season, but he found a whole new level for Will in this arc. This Will was confident, deeply aware of being played, and also playing games. But Dancy also balanced with it a Will that was deeply torn explaining himself to both Walter and then Molly. Again, I think the show may've wanted us to think of a Will frozen after Italy, but Dancy's performance didn't really allow for that. He created a changed man in full control of his emotions after letting other people's emotions define him for so long. Small, subtle looks and reactions—just re-watch everything in the hospital in "...And the Beast from the Sea" and you'll see it—to that brittle anger whenever he has to talk to Jack. He's making eye contact and he's not hiding behind glasses. It's a different Will Graham, and Dancy made damn sure that was really clear. [Да да да да да!! Это так круто. Вот кстати только уже за это можно любить сериалы как феномен.]
Like many, when I heard about Hannibal being made into a TV series—even with Bryan Fuller at the helm—I thought it was just the dumbest and worst and most cynical idea imaginable. "Ooooh, serial killers are really big on TV right now! Let's grab this iconic one from the late '80s and early '90s and build a show around him!" It just seemed like the crassest, most capitalistic bit of intellectual property exploitation one could imagine, especially after Hannibal Rising seemed to have driven a stake very deep into the heart of the franchise.
I don't think anyone has been happier to be so very wrong than I was, or anyone else that had similar sentiments. Hannibal ended up being deeply unique and borderline impossible as a show that aired on broadcast TV in the United States, and it would have even seemed a bit out of place on basic cable during some of its stretches. It arrived at a point in which NBC was willing to try anything to regain its footing and at a time when the broadcast TV business was entering into such disarray that the show's financial situation of international deals and, later, streaming rights, made it a sound business choice (for a while, anyway). Hannibal was as much a product of television's industrial environment over the past three years as it was Bryan Fuller and his team's narrative and aesthetic sensibilities.
These were sensibilities defined by Fuller, David Slade and, most importantly, the show's director of photography James Hawkinson. The show's had its fair share of great directors cycle in and out to be sure, but Hawkinson was there to make sure their visions worked within Hannibal's overall aesthetic of saturated colors, delicate gradations of light and shadow, and baroque horror. Without him, there'd be no unifying sense of artistic perspective, no template for the weekly directors to come in and play upon while still making sure the show was always Hannibal. [amen]
In additional to the visuals of the photography, there was the costuming by Christopher Hargadon and the food design by Janice Poon. Both created feasts for the eyes, metaphorically and literally in Poon's case. Hargadon's costuming would not only tell us plenty about the characters, it would make us pretty damn envious of the characters' closets (I basically want every sweater and button-down Will Graham owns). Poon had to make make Hannibal's dishes look delectable and squirm-inducing at the same time, and I can't think of a single time that didn't happen.
Complementing the aesthetics was Brian Retizell's scoring and sound work. Largely a solo act, Reitzell gave Hannibal a soundtrack unlike any show on TV. Relying on out of the ordinary instruments (and plenty of ordinary ones), he'd swerve between subtle and cacophonous soundscapes that sometimes could barely hear and other times wish you could simply unhear, but in a good way because of the sound-image associations that it would create (seriously, the sounds of bending straws and plastic are now forever associated with shoving an ear down a man's throat for me). But he could do "conventionally" beautiful things, like "Bloodfeast" from "Mizumono" or the music during the tiger scene in "... And the Woman Clothed in Sun."
Hannibal, more than some TV shows, really wanted to bring its visual and aural aesthetics to the forefront. It was not only a way to cut through the clutter and chatter of television's presumed lack of style—hence the turn to the useless and demeaning "cinematic" descriptor for stylish shows—but they proved to be the perfect way to express characters' thoughts and interior worlds. That's something very important when you have characters talking a lot during screwed up therapy sessions.
For the sake of time and space, I'm going to pass on delving too deep into the show's acting and writing in any depth, mostly because you can find it discussed in much more serious detail in other reviews I've written and in discussions we've had in the comments. I never paid as much attention to aesthetics as I should in weekly reviews so that's why the special attention now. Obviously, Hannibal had a crackerjack cast that has been more than up to the task of handling complex and complicated material with seemingly effortless ease week in and week out, particularly, of course, Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen. Without them at the show's center, Hannibal would've just been a very pretty show instead of a very pretty show that was also a deeply emotional one.
And I think that's what I want to close this review on, this idea of Hannibal as deeply emotional. Plenty of scripted fictional shows are emotional, either at their core or just occasionally, when the show wants to do something particularly special (non-fiction shows, from newscasts to cooking shows to home shopping segments to reality TV are, likewise, emotional, but that's a whole other discussion), but Hannibal was obsessed with emotions. Its characters talked about theirs. The show gave those emotions visualizations. It lived in its characters' heads as much as it lived outside of them, exploring the psychic tolls of violence and, ultimately, love.
The relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter may be one of the defining TV romances of our time, a baroque spin on the will-they-won't-they formula. Will and Hannibal were friends and then potential partners that had a very nasty break-up and then, at the end, a reconciliation (however convoluted). These are two men who struggled to share themselves with others and found, in each other, someone to finally open up to, someone who could understand and accept them. Hannibal challenged our notions of what sort of love we can accept. Love between two men? Pretty easy. Love between an overly empathetic profiler and a manipulative cannibalistic serial killer? Perhaps a little harder to get on board with since we want Will to be safe and happy instead of happy and potentially eating Bedelia's leg with Hannibal.
All the same, there was something very special about a show that slowly developed a male romance that didn't need to be read into by fans (Kirk and Spock) or routinely mocked in bits of pitiful gay panic (Sherlock). Hannibal played things as if it were the most natural thing in the world for these two people to love one another, and it achieved that by making sure everything else was bizarre, grotesque and often horrifying. As a result, we'd be encouraged to latch onto the one thing that seemed, in its own way, stable.
I'm going to miss this show.
@темы: олени
