Even more about the bad stuff: “Hannibal” revisited

After this big chunk of my last posts I was resolved not to push it into the new year, but I GOT pushed. I took up “Hannibal” again, just because I thought that it was the right month. (I am getting more and more convinced that the bleak seriousness of November deserves horror, and, since last year, one of my least favourite months of the year - not because of the weather but because of the increasing menace of Christmas - has temporarily become one of my favourites.) But when I finally took up “Hannibal” it was definitely “pre-Christmas” (cookies and snowmen and so on …) and I wasn’t in the mood anymore. And, as there was still “House of Cards” (which I always watch from the beginning when there is a new season) it took me until Mid-December to finish “Hannibal”. So, I just watched it “on principle”, without conviction. I even firmly expected that I wouldn’t enjoy it like I did seeing it the first time, and maybe there is no comparison. But I don’t really remember the surprise and the genuine enjoyment, and maybe, this time, something EVEN BETTER happened. So, I HAVE to write this.

Seeing it this time, I CONSCIOUSLY expected something. I expected not just that I wouldn’t enjoy it anymore but kind of dreaded that I wouldn’t understand anymore why I had enjoyed it so much. Sometimes I find it really weird how much I DISTRUST myself as a reader – though I know that a good deal of distrust is always in order because, as I have observed, significant reading CHANGES ME AS A READER. It always changes WHO I am as a reader. I knew this but never as I do now.

So, I wasn’t really looking forward to watching the series again, but I thought I should do it nonetheless, probably to see if I was right. And I reckoned that at least some of the beauty would still be there. What I couldn’t have predicted was how much more beautiful it would become by finally UNDERSTANDING it. THIS is what I didn’t expect at all: that there was still something crucial in there that I hadn’t (fully) understood, and that finally understanding it would make such a difference. What had happened while I neither watched it nor thought about it - except for moments to remember the “climactic” beauty – was that Hannibal’s fragile teacup had quietly come together, and I could watch and understand EVERYTHING in its TRUE beauty. (Very bad sentence which I keep because it has the advantage of being absolutely exact …)

I think, what makes the series so exceptional is that it takes an almost insane amount of patience to make the cup come together. One reason for this is that, to do this, we actually have to deal with ALL these people. In my opinion, it is one of the major advantages of series that there is so much time to develop ALL the characters and provide them with a human interest story. One of my absolute favourite moments of “Doctor Who” is in the Christmas special of the 6th series when somebody says about somebody else that they are not important, and Matt Smith as the Doctor remarks ruminantly: “Interesting – I have never met anybody who was not important!” So, in series there is, like in real life, room for everybody to become important if they want to, (and are played by the right actor with the potential to make them special …) But in “Hannibal” it is even more crucial than usual to treat everybody as equally important because practically everybody gets their own “becoming” in the end – (though, in some cases (Dr. Chilton!), “undoing” is probably more like it). And all these becomings are somehow tied to Hannibal. And only if we understand this structure, and read it (potentially) completely, the cup will come together in this way. As I missed the point when I first watched it, my reading was incomplete and what I read was mostly bullshit - as what I wrote was. I was absolutely right though about one thing: the importance of “participation”. But my concept of participation had still been incomplete. It isn’t just that it is ME who has to make the cup come together. To put it together LIKE THIS, “beautifully”, without any visible crack and blemish, it really is important HOW and IN WHAT EXACTLY I participate.

This structure of individual “becomings” was also, I think, what made the series so special for actors – judging by the amount of meaningful commentary. From one of the commentaries I inferred that they chose the actors more according to the potential of working with them in this way – rather then who would fit the type one might expect from the book. And THIS, I think, became the formula of success for this series. Because - I am almost sorry to say - the series is REALLY NOT about what is displayed on the surface. As, I think, I suspected from the beginning, it is about significant relationships between people which, in my opinion, don’t become less important because they are strange and “exotic” (at best!), but more so. In my experience, the “perverse” context doesn’t diminish but highlight the universal aspects of these relationships. This is, of course, difficult to “prove”, especially where it gets most important: in the relationship between Hannibal and Will Graham. So, I’ll begin with a less “demanding” example. The love story between Francis Dolarhyde and Reba McClane might be the best, most moving love story I have ever “read” (including the ones I invented myself!) just because of the beautiful simplicity of the fact that she gives him pie and he gives her the most precious and sophisticated gift anybody could possibly give her in return. And who can honestly say that something like this isn’t what they would like more than anything?! And, in fact, something like this - just still more extreme and “conscious” - applies to Hannibal and Will Graham. The highest form of love we can reach and receive is certainly not to be used to fill one of the many needs and deficiencies in another person’s live but, as it is called in the bible, to be “recognized” as absolutely special, and fully accepted as the person we are. What “we” would do, or not do, to get this is, in fact, the big question …

And there is so much meaning contained in these relationships that it is impossible to take it all in “at one bite”. Interestingly, my strategy of not taking anything people say in the series, or what is suggested about them, at face value proved right and wrong at the same time. It took an insane amount of (active) reading to explore the full semantic potential of what is happening and said. And “deferring” the process of drawing conclusions obviously bought me time to evaluate everything and finally come to a much more complete understanding than I would have just jumping to conclusions. Examples will follow …

Watching the series again, I was more “detached”, less driven by predilections (for actors), or fears, or moral concerns. This means I had more time to “read” and appreciate all the characters and, through the characters, detected a lot more meaningful context. Of course I was totally pleased to notice EVEN MORE how special Richard Armitage made the Red Dragon, and enjoyed to discover even more layers of acting that he put on this character. But for other characters I obviously had never found the time nor patience to deal with them in their own right and analyze their “becoming”. For example, I NOTICED the fundamental change in Alana Bloom between the second and third series as something I have never seen happen quite in this way. (In fact, I have seen it in REAL LIFE – when people I hadn’t met for twenty years and remembered as alive had changed into something like dead matter.) I noticed it, and admired it, but I didn’t really think about what it might MEAN. This time I actually traced when and how exactly she gets changed – from a bright (and innocent!) child into a knowing adult. What has changed her world is mirrored completely in the changed expression of the person she has become. And this - though it is not as spectacular as some of the other “stunts” in the series – is certainly some of the most significant acting I have seen. How significant it became – especially where the aspect of “growing up” is concerned – to understand the meaning of these relationships on its deepest level will be developed further. Not understanding the complete context Hannibal “gives” these characters, I mainly saw it as a destruction. We might not be able to control the manner we get changed in real life, but we decide how we deal with change. Without doubt Alana gets changed by trauma, but, if we look closely, we can see that she is finally changed into knowing who she is, and, KNOWING WHAT SHE WANTS, she is even able to find happiness. Though it might not LOOK like “happiness” at all … Appearances are deceiving in “Hannibal”. The “bone structure” of each character or relationship will be laid bare in the end.

I remember that, at some point during my last reading, I consciously turned my back on Hannibal and focused on Will Graham. And I am not sure why I did it. I thought it was because I felt uneasy about him – afraid of getting under his influence - but I think this was just a pretext. I even wrote, as I remember, that the things other people like about Hannibal didn’t impress me at all – which also might have been partially “self-protection”. In fact, I think it was that I got bored with Hannibal, not because of becoming bored with Mads Mikkelsen’s acting – which I still admired – but somehow not understanding the “fuss” everybody is making about him. I didn’t understand it, or him! – and why should I? (Seeing “The Silence of the Lambs” on Halloween made me think: I still don’t like Anthony Hopkins as an actor, but he is certainly good. At least he makes Hannibal genuinely SCARY. Making Hannibal so very civil and sophisticated in the series partly took the “spike” out of him.)

But, and this realization probably helped as well, Hannibal in the series isn’t AT ALL about what the Hannibal of “The Silence of the Lambs” is about. The reason I turned my back on Hannibal was probably that I couldn’t get anything out of him anymore at this point. But this was not because Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal doesn’t keep what he “promises”, rather that I was unable to understand him. OF COURSE he beat me, as he does (almost) everybody else! The most important thing I got out of watching Alana Bloom getting changed by Hannibal was the realization that Hannibal is in fact the KEY to understanding the series, and that all my attempts of “breaking in” through one back door or the other had to be futile.

There is nothing to indicate that Hannibal is pleased with Alana’s “becoming”, but I inferred from a different context that he might have been. I was fascinated from the beginning by how much Richard Armitage succeeded at showing the child in Francis Dolarhyde – making him appear genuinely dangerous and vicious at the same time. But, I think, only by looking at what happens to Alana did I realize why this is so crucial for the narrative, assisted by the precision of Mads Mikkelsen’s “commentary” of Hannibal on Francis Dolarhyde. I think he is totally fascinated and moved by the singularity and beauty of this becoming but nonetheless FAR from taking Francis seriously. But this is of course what Francis wants – not even to have a MEANINGFUL relationship with Hannibal (which is what Hannibal himself aspires to with other people, in his own, crooked way!) but to be recognized by him as what he thinks he is and to be taken seriously. I really noticed for the first time that he has IMAGINARY conversations with Hannibal all the time, respectively what this means. I should have done so before, especially as I might be the world champion of imaginary conversations as there is practically no opportunity for me to talk to people about things I really care about. So, even though I do my best to make them interesting, I observe that people in imaginary conversations tend to tell me what I want to hear. And this is of course how I should have noticed that Francis Dolarhyde’s “sessions” with Hannibal are imaginary IN THE FIRST PLACE, which I didn’t! Sometimes, I must admit, I can be quite thick … No good therapist would do this. If this applies to Hannibal is of course open to debate. As Hannibal is extremely intelligent, and dedicated to his “vocation” in his own way, he is at least TRYING to be a good therapist. We have to give him that. And if he was a real friend to Francis Dolarhyde he wouldn’t do this either. On the other hand, grown-up people KNOW that there is something wrong with imaginary conversations (- even if they like to have them …) Francis Dolarhyde clearly doesn’t.

In truth, Hannibal wouldn’t dream of taking Francis seriously, the way he is taking Will Graham, Abigail Hobbes, and Alana Bloom seriously (- AFTER he has changed them!) I imagine he is secretly smiling at Doctor Chilton trying to tell him that he is overshadowed by the Dragon. There is in fact at least one moment where he allows himself the smallest of condescending smiles. As Ralph Fiennes is the world champion of the (human) bad stuff, and Michael Fassbender of “pioneering” unknown human territory, Mads Mikkelsen is undisputed champion of the minimalist expression (with maximum effect). He didn’t need to do more for me to get the full statement after what I had already observed about Francis Dolarhyde. And then there is his beautiful sentence right at the end which I always forget to memorize about Francis Dolarhyde still dreaming his “beautiful child’s dream”. Maybe it is a kind thought that he dies dreaming, with his eyes open … It might not be the worst ending for him, but Hannibal certainly wouldn’t see it like this. He wouldn’t deem it dignified, after having lived wide awake and painfully conscious of himself all his life – exactly “the same in his own act and valour as he is in desire”. And he certainly prefers to die IN THE TRUTH of his relationship with Will Graham. It is in fact a fitting conclusion that he doesn’t die alone.

There was one other thing which I realized about Francis Dolarhyde for the first time. Of course I NOTICED it before because Richard Armitage gave special emphasis to this moment where Francis experiences Reba as a LIVING woman during and after their first intimate encounter, but I thought that this is just about the fact that he has never had sex with a living woman before. It probably is, but the depth of the epiphany when he is feeling her heart and recognizes her as a living being indicates something else. I think it means that he doesn’t usually recognize other people as living beings and that, up to this point, there hasn’t really been a living being in his live apart from himself. So, he doesn’t lie, neither to himself nor to others, when he speaks of “changing” people instead of killing them. As impossible this is to understand, killing is, for him, rather an innocent occupation. Hannibal isn’t “innocent” when he is killing. He is conscious of killing and enjoys it BECAUSE it is killing. He enjoys the moment of killing as a climactic moment because he knows very well that the person he is about to kill is alive and, after he has killed her or him, they are dead. This is the TRUTH about killing as a “relationship” between the killer and the victim. And, for Hannibal, killing (and eating) the other person can be part of a significant relationship, or even something that makes a relationship finally significant. And the truth about human relationships certainly is a major issue for him. As it is for me - I just didn’t want to go there where Hannibal is concerned. But this time I did, and maybe it wasn’t chance that I noticed for the first time that there is a repetition of “participating” in the third series when Bedelia DuMaurier “accuses” Will Graham of participating in Hannibal’s crimes.

I think, the “difficulty” of understanding Hannibal mainly results from the fact that he is supposed to be a psychopath. And “we” don’t want to understand psychopaths, respectively take them seriously. I am not so sure that Hannibal is, in fact, a psychopath, though he seems to apply this concept to himself. Maybe it gives him some kind of security in determining what he is – and, as a psychiatrist, he should know. But, in my opinion, a psychopath is somebody with a serious and potentially harmful deficiency in his relationship with himself and/or other people – the kind I just described about Francis Dolarhyde. Hannibal might be accused of many things, but certainly not of being DEFICIENT.

(The difference to real psychopaths – and why the series is, of course, mostly “bullshit” - is in both cases that psychopaths in real life are usually dull and unattractive, and mostly harmless. The only one I have known was one of the most unattractive and least interesting human beings I have ever met – though it isn’t unlikely that he had the same impression of me. Thinking about him now, I am intrigued by the realization that I have in fact known one of these strange beings and am asking myself if not almost everybody has (maybe thinking about “our” respective bosses might help …) In truth, psychopaths are what we really don’t want anything to do with – though the content of bestselling novels and major feature films suggest otherwise. I don’t think I would ever have recalled this guy if not this moving scene I described about Francis Dolarhyde had COMPELLED me to a deeper understanding of what a psychopath is, probably for the first time. I suppose I could have figured it out for myself IF I HAD WANTED TO, but I didn’t. And hours of tv footage on Anders Behring Breivik had zero effect in this respect, so there might be something to what I wrote about fiction and beauty and clever “shortcuts” … The most beautiful thing about “Hannibal” might even be that, unlike “Hollywood”, they took these issues seriously, kind of transcending the bullshit as well as the beauty towards the “real issue”.)

Whatever Hannibal’s own assessment of psychopaths, basically, he doesn’t think of Francis Dolarhyde as very special. Set aside the singularity and perfection of his becoming (which Hannibal doesn’t even SEE. Nobody but the audience ever sees his secret life with the dragon!), he is a very common brand of psychopath. And Hannibal, as a psychiatrist specializing in this field, realizes this without doubt and finds it ridiculous that other people are making so much of him just because of his spectacular murders. (Murder, as such, isn’t what intrigues Hannibal!) And this comparison, and “non”-relationship with Francis Dolarhyde left me with the strange conclusion that Hannibal is probably NOT a psychopath. I may say, WHERE I AM CONCERNED, he is not a psychopath because I wouldn’t understand him – I mean, CATEGORICALLY, as I couldn’t understand what it is like to be Francis Dolarhyde anymore than I can understand what it is like to be a bat … To cut a long strand of speculations short: if Hannibal WAS a psychopath I would never have CONSENTED to PARTICIPATE.

I think it is even somewhere in the series (Will Graham says it!): “Who wants to eat with the devil needs a long spoon.” I think the same rule applies to psychopaths. Having already seen Francis Dolarhyde in his attic with the dragon I would never have given him anything from my kitchen, or bowl of fruit, or whatever (– even though he is played by Richard Armitage! Strictly speaking, I am probably lying, as Richard Armitage was the reason I watched the series in the first place. As a rule, I don’t use a spoon with psychopaths, I usually keep my fingers (and cutlery) entirely out of this kind of text …) My personal theory is that Hannibal isn’t a psychopath because he is not somehow “less” than a normal human being, but more. And this is what makes him REALLY dangerous. He has something I definitely aspire to, and which is totally uncompromising honesty and truthfulness where his relationships with other people are concerned. As this is something definitely top of my list, I cannot but admire and envy Hannibal for having somehow got completely “past” the bullshit. But the way he got there matters as well, and I don’t think I realized for the first time that, as with every great thing, there is a big prize tag attached.

And - though I am afraid there is already more waiting in the pipeline – this is definitely all about the “bad stuff” for THIS year …