¡Qué horror! 2013 Candidate #14

¡Qué horror! 2013

Candidate #14

HANNIBAL

(April 2013)

For the record, I love Bryan Fuller’s TV work (though the Mockingbird Lane pilot did leave me wanting), and the show of his I really, truly, and completely loved was Wonderfalls.

So the fact that Caroline Dhavernas is part of the cast of Fuller’s adaptation of Hannibal is all sorts of awesome.

Of course, that’s not the reason why I’ve singled out Hannibal--another TV series (after Les Revenants)--for a ¡Qué horror! candidate slot this year; Dhavernas is many things, but a “horror” she most certainly is not.

Hannibal is here because this is a solid adaptation of Thomas Harris’ serial killer novels featuring Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter.

Ostensibly, Red Dragon is the main source material for the show, a novel which has already been adapted to film twice, in 1986 by Michael Mann under the title Manhunter, and in 2002, by Brett Ratner.

According to Fuller’s roadmap of the show though, Hannibal Season 4 would be the adaptation proper of Red Dragon, while, if the stars align, we may actually see a television adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs,* envisioned as Season 5 of the show, should we get that far.

And if the level of creative quality remains constant (or hopefully, actually increases), then that’s a future I’d very much like to see. 

In Season 1 alone, we’ve got some heavy directorial hitters like David Slade (whose excellent Awake Pilot was one of last season’s TV highlights), Michael Rymer (who solidified his geek cred with his work on Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica), and 75-year-old Peter Medak (who scarred many an audience member with the chilling quiet horror of 1980’s The Changeling).

Then there’s Guillermo Navarro, frequent cinematographer for Guillermo del Toro (including the upcoming Pacific Rim), who won a whole slew of awards--including the Oscar--for his work on El Laberinto del Fauno. Navarro had previously worked with Fuller as DP on the Mockingbird Lane pilot, and here, he directs a trio of episodes (as do both Slade and Rymer, taking a lion’s share of the season between the three of them).

Some Twin Peaks episode helmers are also in here: James Foley (who also brought us the big screen adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross) and Tim Hunter (no, not the Books of Magic kid).

All that livewire creativity and talent behind the camera, and we haven’t even gotten to the excellent cast.

The cold, clinical detachment Mads Mikkelsen brings to his Hannibal is a fine offset to the twitchy, tortured nature of Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham. And, you know, Mikkelsen had to walk in the intimidating footsteps of both Brian Cox and Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Plus, there are those guest star turns:

Gillian Anderson, who enters at the midpoint of the season, under the beautifully unlikely name of Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier;

Fellow Chris Carter alumnus, Lance Henriksen;

And other past Fuller collaborators: Raúl Esparza, Eddie Izzard, Ellen Greene, and Ellen Muth (but that was a pretty evil way to wrap up her guest starring stint, Mr. Fuller, an evil way…).

So with both Dhavernas and Muth having made their appearances, all we need are either Lee Pace or Anna Friel (or both) to enter Hannibal’s world, and we’ll complete the Past Fuller Leads Trifecta.

Hurrah!

In a world where TV procedurals have reached well beyond saturation point, one of the things that saves Hannibal from the potential pitfall of becoming just another one of those “serial killer of the week” shows is the serialized nature of its narrative.

Coming into the show with a general idea of the overarching narrative (from the Harris novels and the previous film adaptations of the material), the audience is hooked. They want to see how the cards fall, they can’t wait for the other shoe to drop, for Graham and company to discover exactly what kind of a monster Lecter really is.

It’s the same approach to story that was successfully utilized in Smallville (at least, for the first few seasons), and more recently, in Bates Motel.
We all know Clark Kent eventually becomes Superman, we all know Norman Bates eventually kills his mother and a whole string of unfortunate motel guests, we all know Hannibal Lecter eventually ends up in the loonybin where he gets to play cat and mouse with Clarice Starling.
Part of the fun lies in watching how we get there.

And thus far, this is some morbid, gruesome “fun.” (Network television is getting away with a lot these days…)

If I could ask for something though, I’d ask for a bit more psychopathology; the show doesn’t really bother to explain the whys of their killers. We meet them fully (mal)formed, without any significant idea of how these sick puppies got so ill, without knowing the twisted road they walked to get here.

It’s almost as if Fuller and company are saying, serial killers really are inexplicable.

It’s almost like they’re saying, there is no “Why.” Serial killers simply are.

And that’s a truly horrifying thought…

* A possibility that both intrigues me (because there were some bits of the novel that were dropped in Jonathan Demme’s adaptation; among them, Jack Crawford’s turmoil, the seeds of which, have already been planted by Fuller and company in Season 1) and terrifies me (because The Silence of the Lambs is one of those brilliant lightning in a bottle moments in cinema, where everything seemed to align exquisitely).

Again, for the record, Demme’s Silence is, thus far, the only Harris film adaptation that I’ve been completely floored by. All the others--from Mann’s Manhunter, through until Peter Webber’s Hannibal Rising--haven’t come even close.

Here’s hoping Fuller’s Hannibal can succeed where all those others failed…

(Hannibal OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2013

Candidate #9

MANIAC

(May 2012)

While Elijah Wood returned to the hobbit thing in An Unexpected Journey, he also revisited the whole serial killer thing in Franck Khalfoun’s redo of William Lustig’s 1980 slasher, Maniac.

Written and produced by Alexandre Aja (with help from frequent collaborators Grégory Levasseur and Maxime Alexandre), this one has some brutally effective kills courtesy of the awesome Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of KNB EFX, plus it’s largely presented to us from the POV of Wood’s Frank Zito, the titular psycho.

As far as content and narrative elements, this is certainly not the most original of this year’s ¡Qué horror! candidates thus far, but it’s got a bunch of things going for it.

There’s that tricky POV cinematography (from the aforementioned Maxime Alexandre), a score by Rob* reminiscent of Georgio Moroder’s work for Paul Schrader’s Cat People remake, and an excellent callback to two of Jonathan Demme’s films. (Note: Playing what has become the signature theme to The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill may not be the smartest choice for a music cue after you’ve just invited a virtual stranger up to your apartment.)

* The Maniac score is available as a limited vinyl release from Mondo with "variant white vinyls randomly inserted."
How awesome is that?!

(Maniac UK quad courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (22)
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

This one—a slightly altered version of a review previously published in 2004 entitled “The Politics of Paranoia”—is being resurrected because whatever the film may be saying is still pretty important.

It’s an election year in the United States. From left (Fahrenheit 9/11 and a host of others) and right (George W. Bush: Faith in the White House and a smaller host of others), documentaries are being released to help spark debate, and hopefully, influence votes. Along with these documentaries are a handful of feature films that tackle political themes or subject matter. There is John Sayles’ Silver City, with Chris Cooper; though quite possibly the highest profile of these batch of films is Jonathan Demme’s remake of the 1962 Frank Sinatra-starrer The Manchurian Candidate, which was, in turn, based on the novel of the same name by Richard Condon.

Updating the Cold War scenario of the original, Denzel Washington is Major Bennett Ezekiel Marco, a Desert Storm veteran who is beginning to doubt the veracity of his memory. Marco’s dreams are telling him that something is not quite right in his head, and the heads of the members of his former unit, among them, Congressman Raymond Prentiss Shaw (Liev Schreiber), poised to become the next Vice President, under the careful, guiding hand of his mother, Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (Meryl Streep).
What Marco uncovers is an apparent conspiracy to position a brainwashed puppet President in the White House, dangling on the strings of Manchurian Global, a “private equity fund” which is described by one character as a “geopolitical extension of policy for every president since Nixon.” (Though I’m sure PoliSci grads out there know exactly what that means, as a mere plebeian, all I got from the context in which the line was delivered was that this was a Very Bad Thing.)

With a cast like this, one expects sterling performances, and none of the principal three disappoint. Washington’s Marco is normally a capable and confident soldier, but when faced with the possibility of being betrayed by his own brain, he is understandably on edge. Schreiber is astoundingly convincing as a charismatic political candidate, secretly chafing at the control his mother has over him. And Streep, of course, is Streep. Her Eleanor Prentiss Shaw is the proverbial power behind the throne, the matriarchal manipulator who will see her son in the White House, no matter the cost.
Sadly, Dean Stockwell and Miguel Ferrer are among the underutilized members of the cast, particularly Stockwell, who does little more than stand around and frown.

Now, as a thriller, The Manchurian Candidate is not as taut as I had hoped it would be (Demme, after all, gave us The Silence of the Lambs). In addition, the plot, in certain instances, gets either a tad predictable, or takes an all-too-convenient turn.
The film does, however, get plus points for technique.
With a script structured in fragments that usually end in a fade to black, Demme successfully emulates the nature of memory: we don’t recall every single detail. We remember things in blocks, in chunks of sight and sound. Also, to heighten the atmosphere of paranoia that runs throughout the film, Demme occasionally uses close-up shots of characters speaking directly to the camera—to us, the off-camera character they are addressing.

Now, if it isn’t quite clear, let me spell out the fact that though The Manchurian Candidate is a thriller, it is not of the characters-chasing-one-another-down-crowded-city-streets-to-a-pounding-techno-beat school, nor does it have any significant plot twists to play mindgames with the audience. Much of the tension and conflict is internal and relational: Marco struggling to maintain his sanity despite the X-Files-like conspiracy he suspects is taking place; Raymond Shaw, caught between his own best intentions, his mother’s ambition, and Marco’s increasingly agitated claims.

Regardless of the film’s pros and cons though, I do think it’s a rather sad statement that in the original 1962 film, the motivation for putting a sleeper in the White House was ideology. Today, just over four decades later, it’s economics. It’s to ensure that the man in the Oval Office will keep the perpetual war running so the people making the money off the conflict continue to do so.
At least when the Chairman played the paranoia game in `62, it was because of a belief in something far larger than a piece of paper with an arbitrarily-assigned value attached to it. Ah, well, the times do change things, don’t they?

So, if you’re going to watch The Manchurian Candidate, see it for three things: the performances, the storytelling technique, and—mind you, this could be paranoia talking—the metastory I suspect is being told: of the horrifying ease with which people can be bought and owned by third parties. That the Manchurian Globals of the real world don’t need anything as sci-fi as subdermal implants nor as James Bond as post-hypnotic commands. All they need is the right amount of money to throw at greedy, weak-willed people, and they’ll have their puppets in place, dancing to the tunes they play, ready and eager to roll over when the order is given.

Parting shot: For fans of Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, Hitchcock pops up here in a minor role, which isn’t the first time Demme has cast a musician in his films: Chris Isaak played a SWAT team leader in The Silence of the Lambs.

(The Manchurian Candidate OS and DVD cover art courtesy of impawards.com.)