Retrospective Film Review

Hannibal (2001) • 20 Years Later

Living in exile, Dr Lecter tries to reconnect with a now disgraced Clarice Starling, and finds himself a target for revenge…

Does Lecter want to fuck her, or kill her, or eat her alive?

This is how Thomas Harris became a literary rock star. 1981’s Red Dragon introduced a fierce style that assaulted the bourgeois audience of crime-fiction like inter-cutting episodes of Columbo with a snuff film. The unflinching confidence to take us back and forth between dry detective paperwork and the unfettered ravings of a killer was hypnotic. Our Poirot was now a cannibal psychiatrist who takes equal pleasure in teaching art history and eating his students: Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter.

Like the madman himself, Hannibal thunders along with confidence on the balancing act between high art and exploitation. Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) delivers a film of impeccably grand style, stymied by trash substance, producing an unintentional appropriation of haute couture.