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Hmm... I'm of two minds about it, really. On the one hand, the ending in the novel is audacious and unexpected, and turns the series on its head. In a somewhat backwards way I can admire what he was trying to do: confound his audience's expectations and severely piss them off at the same time - and he seems to have succeeded in doing both. On the other... well, in a lot of respects, Hannibal the novel felt to me like Thomas Harris playing an elaborate joke on his readers. I'm told he was horrified by the way the public took to Lecter, championing him as an anti-hero and equating him with horror villains like Freddy Kruger and Michael Myers. There's a theory going round that Hannibal was an attempt on his part to deliberately sabotage the series and, while I'm not sure how much I believe that, I definitely think that there was an element of that in the novel's ending.

I'm all for shocking the reader/audience, but I'm less fond of it when it feels like cheap manipulation, and that's definitely how the ending felt to me. It was almost as if Harris was saying "So, you like this character Clarice? You think she's a straight arrow? You think she's incorruptible? Well HA! Look what I'm going to do to your beloved heroine!" Clarice appeals to me because she has these qualities, not so much from a feminist perspective (I absolutely share your view of radical feminism, incidentally, although I do think that the more moderate elements of the movement have their merits) but because the idea of an non-corrupt character alone in a corrupt world is a powerful one. As such, there are really only two ways in which I can buy her becoming Lecter's lover:

(1) Clarice undergoes a genuine change of heart and forsakes her principles.
(2) Lecter brainwashes her, drugs her, alters her mind in some way.

Theory (1) doesn't work for me because it goes against everything we know about Clarice and what she stands for. Theory (2) doesn't really work either, because I doubt that Lecter, who has his own rigid principles and sense of incorruptibility, would go down the route of forcibly bending her to his will, let alone settling for a lobotomised version of her. He has too much respect for her, frankly. (I think the masterstroke as regards pitting these characters against each other is concerned is that they are so similar in terms of intelligence and ethics, yet at the same time completely incompatible.) For Harris' ending to work, in my opinion you have to demean either Lecter or Clarice, if not both of them.

That's why I'm impressed by what Ridley Scott managed to do with his ending. He managed to maintain the integrity of both characters, let Lecter go free and provide a sense of closure. In my opinion, that can't have been an easy task. Plus, we have the colossal sacrifice of Lecter maiming himself rather than Clarice, which I think shows both his respect and love for her in a far more powerful manner than having him run off for her.

I'm afraid I haven't read Hannibal Rising yet, although it must have been years ago that you sent it to me. I did see the film, though, and I found it absolutely hilarious once I was able to force myself to forget that it was supposed to be about Lecter. I'll get round to the book eventually, I suspect, but the film was more than enough for the time being.

(Posted on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 12:46 PM)

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this film, Foxy. I've laid out in my review why I think the film is so terrific, and I feel that Hopkins' portrayal of Lecter in this is 100% appropriate to the tone of the material. Furthermore, I don't see him as in any way a caricature in this. His appearance in Red Dragon, on the other hand - that was just pitiful. There's a big difference between black humour (in Hannibal) and simply gurning for the camera and repeating a tired routine (as he did in Red Dragon).

I should probably have made it clear, incidentally, that I think The Silence of the Lambs is a terrific film and perhaps the best example of its genre, at least of that "wave" of serial killer films. I just think that Hannibal, which is so different that it's incredibly hard to compare them, is better. It's more daring, more imaginative, better shot, has better music. To me, it's simply a step up in every way. I consider it a masterpiece and I genuinely hope more people come round see it as such. That said, I've always been drawn to horror more than the rigid confines of the police procedural, so I admit there's a bit of personal bias involved.

By the way, the Steven Zaillian script (the one Ridley Scott commissioned and the one that was actually shot) was written long after Jodie Foster (and Jonathan Demme) had passed on it. If she read any version, it was presumably David Mamet's, which was very different, departing greatly from the novel, and in my opinion wasn't all that good. (You can read it here if you have the patience to slog through his idiosyncratic style of writing.)

(Posted on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 7:02 PM)