Hannibal (2013) Is a Macabre and Underappreciated Stroke of Brilliance
Hannibal is too dark for many viewers, but earns a proud spot for me as one of the greatest TV shows of all time
Anthony Hopkins may always go down as the face of Hannibal Lecter. Despite the three others who played him since 1986’s oft-overshadowed Manhunter, it’s the dead-eyed, smooth-talking, and mercurial Hopkins who will likely forever hold the title of Hannibal in the eyes of the masses.
But to be brilliant isn’t to leave no room for improvement. Just because the Beatles are considered all-time greats doesn’t mean that contemporary musicians can’t still bring something new and different to modern covers of those same classics.
2013’s Hannibal borrows from the strokes of brilliance within each of the iterations that featured that titular cannibal, from Michael Mann’s and Ridley Scott’s to Jonathan Demme’s, Brett Ratner’s, and the Peter Webber-directed take on the character. But despite borrowing creative cues from those stories that predated it, Bryan Fuller brings enough to the table in his stab at the story that even the staunchest vegans might find their appetites whetted. It builds enough of an identity for itself to stand proudly on its own.
Instead of spending most of his time in confinement, as is the case in three of the five movies featuring Hannibal, the insidiously measured man-eater is allowed to roam free. It also tells a less disjointed and more drawn-out story of Lecter’s time in Italy.
It even finds inspiration in the events of Hannibal Rising and its mangled concept of a dashing young Hannibal. Where that Webber-directed 2007 adaptation fell flat wasn’t in its concept, but in its execution and tepid embodiment of that eponymous killer. Gaspard Ulliel put in an admirable effort yet failed to recapture that terrible, strategic foresight that made both prior attempts at the character feel so formidable.
After a lineage of three separate Lecters and nearly a decade lapsed without a movie or series featuring that infamous psychopath, Hannibal (2013) entered the world with a legacy to fill and wrongs to right. Where Hopkins’ imagining of Lecter is brash, mocking, chilling, theatrical, and almost gleeful, Mikkelsen’s is both commanding and understated. He’s suave, elegant, polished, aristocratic, and even-kilter. He has far more dignity and grace than to lean in toward a victim and dramatically bite their face off. Instead, he’ll capriciously toy with his prey, spending weeks making elaborate meals out of them in a way that would put most 3-Star Michelin restaurants to shame.
His Hannibal is so remarkably restrained and cordial that his rare moments of savagery are given the opportunity to truly shine. The exposition of his character is a perfectly slow-building suspense. We begin to see more and more into the depth of his cunning and cruelty as the plot unfolds.
Where Hopkins’ Lecter is an obvious creep, Mikkelsen achieves something with his attempt at the character that may even feel endearing. The words that leave his mouth are latticed with culture, poetry, metaphors, and loaded double entendres.
He’s an antihero many will fail to resist rooting for — even as he does objectively heinous things. He harnesses a mesmerism that borders on hypnotic, and I can think of no other show so singularly carried by a lone actor.
I believe that it’s a career-defining role for Mikkelsen, and one that makes me wonder why, in so many of his most recognizable movie appearances, his characters have routinely been relegated to little more than caricatures and dimensionless villains.
Hannibal’s Hugh Dancy, Lawrence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, Eddie Izzard, Raúl Esperanza, and Gillian Anderson each deliver standout performances. But in every instance that he enters the room, it’s Mikkelsen’s Lecter that instills the scene with gravity and pathos. His intrigue, dialogue, and effortless delivery of lines make his screen time so magnetic that the scenes without him often come across feeling like incidental lulls in the plot.
The show isn’t flawless by any stretch. Some parts can be criticized as overly dark and sinister. The most gruesome scenes can fairly be called gratuitous. The spread of serial killers within the greater Baltimore area that the show depicts is — generously — unrealistic. But in a show that centers around “Hannibal The Cannibal” and an FBI trying to figure out why so many people keep getting murdered, savaged, and consumed under such strange circumstances, there’s not much in the show that doesn’t reasonably come with the territory.
Throughout the three-season runtime, the bleak and ambiguous imagery can sometimes feel droning and likely even alienating for some viewers. But it’s also that macabre art direction that culminates in one of the most stylistically unique shows ever brought to TV.
Season 1 features a slow-rolling exposition that ends with a twist on the Hannibal story that’s so well executed almost any fan of the originals will appreciate it. It’s a show that strikes a perfect balance between loyalty to the source material and reinvention. Some lines are lifted directly from prior Hannibal iterations, but other plot arcs are handled so differently that it’s all but impossible to predict where they’re headed next.
Season 2 is marked by some of the most perfect jumps in time and non-linear storytelling that I’ve ever seen, and its conclusion delivers on 13 episodes worth of build-up with a marksman’s precision. The season-long game of cat and mouse is downright unnerving.
Season 3 varies significantly in tone and features Hannibal at his most savage yet. Taking a new cinematic direction from seasons prior, it’s more impressionistic, dreamy, surreal, and even less linear. In its most disorienting moments, it creates the feeling we can’t trust our own eyes. But at its best, it represents the show at its most viscerally brilliant.
The finale doesn’t quite live up to the promise of greatness some had hoped to see fulfilled. Since its ending, rumors about a 4th season have quietly swirled among the show’s cult following. Though plans are yet to be made, fans have found a spurious cause for hope in the two lead actors’ interest in reprising their roles and their open speculation about possible paths forward for their characters.
While a 4th season may never come to fruition, the three seasons of Hannibal that we received are an equal parts spellbinding and nightmare-inducing gift that much of the world doesn’t know they ever even received.