our subject isn't cool, but he fakes it anyway
An Elegy for ‘Hannibal,’ TV’s Most Twisted Love Story
Warning: There are spoilers for the season three finale of “Hannibal” in this article.
читать дальшеWe are left to gaze into the abyss and wonder, but we shouldn’t gaze too long.
Finally, “murder husbands” Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter have quite literally taken the plunge together, a culmination of three seasons’ worth of bloody bromance, deadly mind games and haute cannibal cuisine. If “Hannibal” must end with strong notes of gothic romance, Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, and Siouxsie Sioux wailing over the soundtrack, so be it.
This was a weird series, perhaps the weirdest on network television since David Lynch‘s “Twin Peaks” rose and fell 25 years ago, and a strangely heartfelt one, too, despite all the murder and gore. The show, run by Bryan Fuller, paid for its eccentricities in the ratings, too. Earlier this year, NBC said it would no longer carry it after its 13-episode third season ended, leading to so-far-unrequited hopes by its cult followers, aka “Fannibals,” that it would be picked up by another outlet.
Odds of that happening are looking even slimmer now, as stars Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen have other projects lined up. Dancy will star as a cult leader in “Parenthood” show runner Jason Katims‘s Hulu’s series “The Way,” while Mikkelsen has a role in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” due next year, and is reportedly in the running to play a villain opposite Benedict Cumberbatch in Marvel Studios’ “Dr. Strange.” Fuller, meanwhile, will be one of the show runners for a series based on Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods.”
Even though “Hannibal,” based on Thomas Harris’s novels, was funded mostly by overseas entities — a quality that enabled it to stay on the air for as long as it did since NBC didn’t have to foot that much of the bill — its viewership became too anemic to sustain. Yet, Fuller and his creative team never tried to make the show appeal to mainstream viewers. In fact, the show grew more bizarre, esoteric and disturbing with each episode, all the way through its staggering ending.
When it first aired in the spring of 2013, “Hannibal” relied on the “monster/weirdo of the week” model of a conventional TV crime procedural, although there was clearly something more going on. The imagery, the cryptic psychobabble of the dialogue, the dream logic, its literary pedigree (lots of Milton and Blake): this wasn’t “Law & Order: SVU.”
Rather, in those early days, it was “CSI” as reimagined by the macabre painter Francis Bacon, by way of Lynch, “X-Files” spinoff “Millennium” and Hieronymus Bosch, master of the panorama of horror. (Fittingly, “X-Files” star Gillian Anderson and “Millennium” star Lance Henriksen both had roles on “Hannibal.”) Even the crime-lab scenes, featuring the dark-comedic stylings of Aaron Abrams and “Kids in the Hall” alum Scott Thompson, played like a parody of a cop show. Those first episodes, with their artistically deranged murder tableux, such as a human totem pole and flayed bodies with skin wings, also laid the foundation for the relationship between Will and Hannibal, as well as psychiatrist Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) and FBI boss Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne). The first season’s installments were necessary, but they weren’t the main course.
“Hannibal” was TV’s most twisted love story from the moment Hannibal first aimed his high-powered perception at Will’s “pure empathy,” a blessing and a curse that allows the FBI profiler to fully assume the point of view of pretty much anyone, particularly overly theatrical serial killers. By the time season one ended, the main conflict and connection between Hannibal and Will had taken over every episode and the series’ overall narrative. The show became a protracted descent into the warped psyches of its lead characters: Hannibal’s satanic “memory palace” the more orderly and clear of the two, while Will’s became a fractured playground for his adversary-friend’s delights. Will continually felt more at ease with the act of killing, even as he maintained a strong sense of morality and guilt, and Hannibal kept nudging him.
The final six episodes of the season, and likely the series, provided the ultimate arena for Will and Hannibal to act out their climactic battle and atonement. It was the richest, most well-realized adaptation of Harris’s “Red Dragon” novel yet, even ahead of Michael Mann’s acclaimed 1986 film “Manhunter,” simply because Fuller and his team had six hours to fill and two and a half seasons of character development to build upon.
With a new killer, the William Blake-inspired Red Dragon (Richard Armitage), on the loose, Will is roped back into the profiling game three years after Hannibal was finally put behind the Plexiglass of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. To get the old scent back, he is compelled to enlist the aid of Hannibal, who sees an opportunity to play the Dragon and Will against each other with little regard for the lives of others who were in the way. It all leads to the finale’s gruesome climax on an altar-like cliff overlooking the chaotic Atlantic Ocean. In the end, the Dragon, not Will (who had seen himself as the lamb in this scenario), is sacrificed as Hannibal and Will combine their murderous powers and consummate their love. Will finally embraces the glory of murder, which is all Hannibal ever wanted for him. Death always did overpower sex on “Hannibal.”
As the two bloodied frenemies share a weary, hard-won hug at the edge of the world, there is only one place for them to go: back into the abyss of nullification. Questions remain, of course. Did Will throw himself and Hannibal over the cliff to spare future victims their wrath? Or did he do it as the ultimate sign of love for Hannibal because there would be no greater demonstration of his commitment to killing than such an operatic murder-suicide?
We never see their bodies, so there is just enough ambiguity about their fate to enable a potential “Hannibal” comeback, either as a miniseries or perhaps a movie. Dancy, in an interview with Speakeasy earlier this year, said he was intrigued about Fuller’s idea for a possible fourth season, so there is potential. Yet, this feels like a perfect ending for “Hannibal,” especially when you consider that the show lasted perhaps one or two seasons longer than it should have considering its low ratings. The “Hannibal” audience will only grow during its afterlife, as will opportunities to celebrate it: at conventions, at reunions, and at every time Mikkelsen or Dancy land a choice role in some great new film or TV project.
We were witnesses to this show’s great becoming, and we owe it awe, but it doesn’t owe us anything more.
blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/08/29/an-elegy-for...
+ ‘Hannibal’ Star Richard Armitage on the Horror and Innocence of the Red Dragon >>>> blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/07/24/hannibal-sta...
Warning: There are spoilers for the season three finale of “Hannibal” in this article.
читать дальшеWe are left to gaze into the abyss and wonder, but we shouldn’t gaze too long.
Finally, “murder husbands” Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter have quite literally taken the plunge together, a culmination of three seasons’ worth of bloody bromance, deadly mind games and haute cannibal cuisine. If “Hannibal” must end with strong notes of gothic romance, Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, and Siouxsie Sioux wailing over the soundtrack, so be it.
This was a weird series, perhaps the weirdest on network television since David Lynch‘s “Twin Peaks” rose and fell 25 years ago, and a strangely heartfelt one, too, despite all the murder and gore. The show, run by Bryan Fuller, paid for its eccentricities in the ratings, too. Earlier this year, NBC said it would no longer carry it after its 13-episode third season ended, leading to so-far-unrequited hopes by its cult followers, aka “Fannibals,” that it would be picked up by another outlet.
Odds of that happening are looking even slimmer now, as stars Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen have other projects lined up. Dancy will star as a cult leader in “Parenthood” show runner Jason Katims‘s Hulu’s series “The Way,” while Mikkelsen has a role in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” due next year, and is reportedly in the running to play a villain opposite Benedict Cumberbatch in Marvel Studios’ “Dr. Strange.” Fuller, meanwhile, will be one of the show runners for a series based on Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods.”
Even though “Hannibal,” based on Thomas Harris’s novels, was funded mostly by overseas entities — a quality that enabled it to stay on the air for as long as it did since NBC didn’t have to foot that much of the bill — its viewership became too anemic to sustain. Yet, Fuller and his creative team never tried to make the show appeal to mainstream viewers. In fact, the show grew more bizarre, esoteric and disturbing with each episode, all the way through its staggering ending.
When it first aired in the spring of 2013, “Hannibal” relied on the “monster/weirdo of the week” model of a conventional TV crime procedural, although there was clearly something more going on. The imagery, the cryptic psychobabble of the dialogue, the dream logic, its literary pedigree (lots of Milton and Blake): this wasn’t “Law & Order: SVU.”
Rather, in those early days, it was “CSI” as reimagined by the macabre painter Francis Bacon, by way of Lynch, “X-Files” spinoff “Millennium” and Hieronymus Bosch, master of the panorama of horror. (Fittingly, “X-Files” star Gillian Anderson and “Millennium” star Lance Henriksen both had roles on “Hannibal.”) Even the crime-lab scenes, featuring the dark-comedic stylings of Aaron Abrams and “Kids in the Hall” alum Scott Thompson, played like a parody of a cop show. Those first episodes, with their artistically deranged murder tableux, such as a human totem pole and flayed bodies with skin wings, also laid the foundation for the relationship between Will and Hannibal, as well as psychiatrist Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) and FBI boss Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne). The first season’s installments were necessary, but they weren’t the main course.
“Hannibal” was TV’s most twisted love story from the moment Hannibal first aimed his high-powered perception at Will’s “pure empathy,” a blessing and a curse that allows the FBI profiler to fully assume the point of view of pretty much anyone, particularly overly theatrical serial killers. By the time season one ended, the main conflict and connection between Hannibal and Will had taken over every episode and the series’ overall narrative. The show became a protracted descent into the warped psyches of its lead characters: Hannibal’s satanic “memory palace” the more orderly and clear of the two, while Will’s became a fractured playground for his adversary-friend’s delights. Will continually felt more at ease with the act of killing, even as he maintained a strong sense of morality and guilt, and Hannibal kept nudging him.
The final six episodes of the season, and likely the series, provided the ultimate arena for Will and Hannibal to act out their climactic battle and atonement. It was the richest, most well-realized adaptation of Harris’s “Red Dragon” novel yet, even ahead of Michael Mann’s acclaimed 1986 film “Manhunter,” simply because Fuller and his team had six hours to fill and two and a half seasons of character development to build upon.
With a new killer, the William Blake-inspired Red Dragon (Richard Armitage), on the loose, Will is roped back into the profiling game three years after Hannibal was finally put behind the Plexiglass of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. To get the old scent back, he is compelled to enlist the aid of Hannibal, who sees an opportunity to play the Dragon and Will against each other with little regard for the lives of others who were in the way. It all leads to the finale’s gruesome climax on an altar-like cliff overlooking the chaotic Atlantic Ocean. In the end, the Dragon, not Will (who had seen himself as the lamb in this scenario), is sacrificed as Hannibal and Will combine their murderous powers and consummate their love. Will finally embraces the glory of murder, which is all Hannibal ever wanted for him. Death always did overpower sex on “Hannibal.”
As the two bloodied frenemies share a weary, hard-won hug at the edge of the world, there is only one place for them to go: back into the abyss of nullification. Questions remain, of course. Did Will throw himself and Hannibal over the cliff to spare future victims their wrath? Or did he do it as the ultimate sign of love for Hannibal because there would be no greater demonstration of his commitment to killing than such an operatic murder-suicide?
We never see their bodies, so there is just enough ambiguity about their fate to enable a potential “Hannibal” comeback, either as a miniseries or perhaps a movie. Dancy, in an interview with Speakeasy earlier this year, said he was intrigued about Fuller’s idea for a possible fourth season, so there is potential. Yet, this feels like a perfect ending for “Hannibal,” especially when you consider that the show lasted perhaps one or two seasons longer than it should have considering its low ratings. The “Hannibal” audience will only grow during its afterlife, as will opportunities to celebrate it: at conventions, at reunions, and at every time Mikkelsen or Dancy land a choice role in some great new film or TV project.
We were witnesses to this show’s great becoming, and we owe it awe, but it doesn’t owe us anything more.
blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/08/29/an-elegy-for...
+ ‘Hannibal’ Star Richard Armitage on the Horror and Innocence of the Red Dragon >>>> blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/07/24/hannibal-sta...
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16.09.2015 в 11:13Хорошо сказано.
In the end, the Dragon, not Will (who had seen himself as the lamb in this scenario), is sacrificed as Hannibal and Will combine their murderous powers and consummate their love.
Интересная точка зрения. Я не рассматривала Дракона как ягнёнка, который принёс себя в жертву. "Гнев агнца" мы все ассоциировали с Уиллом.