"Hannibal: Climbing": an actor performing the main role. Reviews of the movie

After the Red Dragon (2000, directed by Brett Ratner), The Silence of the Lambs (1990 directed by Jonathan Demme) and Hannibal (2001, directed by Ridley Scott), the indefatigable Thomas Harris presented the audience not just another frightening story of adventures The legendary maniac. He presented the "beginning" of Hannibal Lecter, his "ascent".

Main characters

Harris's idea was realized by director Peter Webber, who never managed to soar up the career ladder, though it seemed that there was no better impetus for success. Gaspar Oulle was invited to the role of the beginner Hannibal . The role in the film "Hannibal: Climbing" the actor received after much controversy by the authors of the project, who among others considered the nominees Macaulay Culkin, Rupert Fränn, Tom Sturridge, Hugh Dancy, Tom Paine, Hayden Christensen and Dominique Cooper. Preference in the end was given to Gaspar, the actor at that time not popular, because of his surprising external similarity with the young Hannibal. For the role of his lover, or rather, Mrs., was invited spectacular Gong Li, which the viewer could contemplate in the paintings "The Curse of the Golden Flower" and "Memoirs of Geisha." Now her screen companion was Hannibal Lecturer ("Ascension"). Actors who played secondary roles, looked more pale compared to the title characters.

Cause

There is an opinion that the reason for the emergence of the literary and cinematographic prehistory of "Silence of the Lambs", "Red Dragon" and "Hannibal" was the desire for profit, which was taken over by producer Dino De Laurentius and novelist Thomas Harris. And it was a pity to betray the history of the well-promoted "brand". Especially since the movie "Hannibal: Climbing" turned out to be pretty well serviced. By the way, already in "Hannibal" was scheduled the story of "difficult" Lecter childhood. Directed by Peter Webber, a well-known narrow circle of film-makers on the debut of "The Girl with the Pearl Earring", managed with the direct participation of the operator Ben Davis to remove a worthy tape. Many critics and spectators consider it a painting "Hannibal: Climbing". The actor, who played the role of young Lecter (Ulli), - an ardent admirer of the skateboard, Milan Kundera and Jeanne Moreau, proved to be the best. Although fans of a terrible story is pretty hard to imagine that this cute shy boy grew up the canonical psychopath Anthony Hopkins.

It all started with revenge?

"Hannibal: Climbing" is a film whose reviews are diametrically opposed. Critics accused Harris of the fact that he simply fell into this story and reduced everything to primitive psychoanalysis. According to them, with a similar trauma to children, one in two would eventually end up with cannibalism.

So, trying to deepen, expand and develop the already existed mythology of Lecter, the author definitively and irrevocably debunked her in the picture "Hannibal: Rise." Actors, whose photos were decorated with advertising posters of the film, claim the opposite. However, all are unanimous in only one - an unsuccessful choice of the advertising slogan, which says: "Everything started with revenge". After all, someone, and the legendary Lecter in his thoughtful atrocities had to be guided by other motives, and not by the vulgar vendetta. Maybe that's why the picture of Hannibal: Climbing Anthony Hopkins appreciated very restrained.

Subject of free creativity

The paradoxical fact is that while Lecter did not have a biographical background explaining the causes and origins, he was before the viewer free (despite frequent stay in prisons) by the subject of his own perverted creativity, who needed only food for the mind and "culinary delights" for the body . Despite the fact that in the "Silence of the Lambs" (as recognized by the actors of the film "Hannibal: Climbing"), the best part of the cannibal saga, Lecter was defeated, in the finale he remained free from the threads of the past, which, like cobwebs, bind people, making Them dolls-puppets. His main mistake was the creation in the root of the incorrect in essence, though not completely devoid of certain precisely noted details, the psychological portrait of the main enemy - Clarissa Starling and her relationships with family members.

The victim of monstrous circumstances

Hannibal Lecter, represented in three parts before the viewer in all his "matured" intellectual splendor, was not the product of the development of some genealogical tree, its crown. He was a clot of a living present, a spontaneous but sovereign man, towering above the frightened or complacent associates. Now the created image has faded, the picture has changed, turned over in the film "Hannibal: Rise". Actor Gaspard Ulliel brings to the beholder the image of an almost good shepherd of frozen lambs frozen in terror and uncomplaining trembling, who himself is only a victim of monstrous circumstances, a sentimental guy with strong and sincere family attachments.

Cannibalistic performances

To the great regret and disappointment of the fans of the saga, because of the haste of Thomas Harris, it turned out that all the refined cannibalistic performances and theatrical psychological experiments from the previous novels are not a splash of the genius artistic nature of the main protagonist of the 20th century, but simply the result of the machinations of collaborators from Lithuania , Which, by coincidence, was eaten by the younger sister of the main character, a girl who was loved with all her heart by Hannibal Lecturer ("Ascent").

Actors, Harris and Webber, unwittingly, overthrew one of the most striking "heroes of our time." Providing Hannibal with a biographical history, they placed her in a strange, unpisthistorical space. After viewing, a lot of questions arise for viewers. What is this Lecter family, where did they come from in occupied Lithuania in 1944, from where do they have a family estate? How did the Lithuanian marauder, who had the German surname Dortlich, managed to become a Soviet interior officer in Kaunas after the war? How does young Hannibal appear in France? But it turns out, where did the frightening mask come from, which was later put on the hero Hopkins. This is an element of the military outfit of the samurai, and this military art was taught to some extent by the young Hannibal by a beautiful Japanese woman, grieving for the loved ones who died in Hiroshima.

A maniac is an object of compassion?

The most terrible defect of the film "Hannibal: Rise" (actor Ulliu is not to blame for anything, blame everything on Webber) is the transformation of the canonical figure of the maniac-cannibal into an object of compassion. According to the idea of the director, the young Hannibal does not kill for the sake of pure art and a perverted worldview. He avenges the bad guys - accomplices of the Nazi regime and traffickers. Murders of revenge, as usual, have a distinctly pronounced taste of morality, and morality, as you know, is not the best companion for the killer cannibal.

The history of life as an excuse

Of course, revising the film "Hannibal: Climbing", the actors and roles of which are picked up by the creators in good faith, the spectator will note both the brilliant game of Gaspar Uellya, and Rhys Aiphans, who played the main antagonist of the central character Vladis Grutas, and the director's tricks like a spider web with a fat spider ahead of the film , And a red fog enveloping the cabin, in which Hannibal first tasted humans. Despite some mistakes, after all, director Peter Webber is one of those directors who put their souls into each of their projects. But this does not justify the authors of the picture in the eyes of a somewhat puzzled spectator. Even after watching the film "Hannibal: Climbing," the photos from the filming of which are scared by their realism, the wide audience likes to consider Lecter groundless, baseless, incomprehensible and spontaneous.

I wanted more

To the sophisticated spectator, a fan of the genre, closer to the end of the timekeeping of the picture, it seems that, perhaps, there is a much greater effect, and a slightly different version of Ascension would have a meaning. By presenting to the spectator a bucolic, conflict-free story of the education of a young child prodigy: cloudless childhood, adolescence and early youth surrounded by loving and beloved relatives, devoted friends, pure first love and no brutal eating of the younger sister, the creators could only win. But at the climax, a few seconds before the final credits, even in the eyes of an ideal guy, a spark appeared suddenly to blur. Then the effect would certainly be much stronger and discouraging.