Lecter vs. Lecter: or, Why I Didn't Care For "The Silence of the Lambs"

Let me begin by uttering four words we've all heard a million times before:

"The book was better."

It's become something of a cliche, hasn't it? Sort of the antidote to "I'll wait 'til the movie comes out." You, the gentle reader, buy a novel, and within a matter of days it becomes your favorite, or at least takes a place among the pantheon of your favorites. You read and re-read it until you know it by heart. Then, one day, usually years later, you see that "they" are making it into a movie. Half of you trembles with anticipation. The other, wiser half, trembles with fear, because you are wondering, if only to yourself:

How bad do you think they'll fuck this up?

Red Dragon was the seminal novel of my formative years. When the sequel, The Silence of the Lambs came out, it disappointed me on only one level: there was no Will Graham. Other than that I thought it a masterpiece, quite on the level with the former book, and arguably better as a pure thriller. Several million other people agreed with me, and so the movie became an inevitability. But this presented me with a problem. Hollywood generally Fs up its interpretations of novels. Not always, of course, but enough so that anyone emotionally invested in one of those novels goes into a flood sweat thinking about what "they" will do to it. And when I saw the movie version of Lambs, I realized that while "they" had not exactly F'd up, they had made some mistakes which Michael Mann, who had handled the movie version of Dragon, had not made. (Mann, for the record, made different mistakes.) I won't go into all of what I think those mistakes are, but I will tackle the two I consider the most egregious.

In Manhunter (a.k.a. Red Dragon), Mann made the choice to cast the veteran Scottish character actor Brian Cox, who is best known to Americans for his work in Braveheart, Rob Roy, and the Bourne films, as Hannibal Lecter. In Lambs, Johnathen Demme chose the better-known Welsh thespian Anthony Hopkins. Both men are superb at their craft, but it was not the actors themselves so much as the interpretations they put on the roles -- most likely in consultation with the directors -- which go to the heart of Hollywood's problem, and mine.

Cox handled the role of Lecter like a straight-pipe exhaust. That is to say, his take on the doctor was very close to the way "Hannibal the Cannibal" is portrayed in the book. In conversation with Will Graham, he betrays no obvious, outward sign of insanity or villainy. If this version of Lecter lived or worked next door to you, it's doubtful you would have thought him odd. Stiff, perhaps; pretentious, certainly; intellectually vain and perhaps unlikeable. But not threatening. He is courteous, if cool, and even when he tries to loosen the screws in Graham's head, he has a certain clinical detachment. Once in a while his sense of humor, dark and subtle, glimmers in our vision; and every now and again, such as when he remarks about how Officer Stewart left the police department with emotional problems "after seeing my basement", the sadism that drives him; but for the most part he remains enigmatic, the unknowable, self-contained Other, unconflicted, bored by his captivity but completely at ease with his own nature, precisely as Harris wrote him in Red Dragon. 

Hopkins' take on Lecter was quite different. From the very first moment we make eye contact with him in his cell in Lambs, it's obvious that there is something deeply wrong with this man. His vocal intonations, facial expressions, unblinking stare, chilling smile and hideous parody of intimacy -- the way he insists on using first names ("Clairisssse"), for example -- all fairly jangle with creep and menace. It's a brilliant and effective portrayal of controlled insanity, far more frightening than Cox's portrayal, but it lacks his subtlety and the subtlety Harris worked so hard to engender in the character. If this Hannibal lived next door to you, and were arrested for murder and cannibalism, how surprised would you be? If you were Will Graham, would it take your empathic gifts and forensic brilliance to capture a man who practically walks around with a sandwich board that reads, I AM A SERIAL KILLER.

One could argue, of course, that Hopkins had no choice but to take the interpretation in a different direction than Cox, against whom he was certainly competing in his own mind. Also, that Hopkins (and Demme) wanted the audience to be scared shitless of Dr. Lecter from the git-go and didn't have any interest in subtley. But for me, the blatancy of it undermined the film. Lecter is too obvious a boogeyman.

Another problem I had with Lambs was the virtual elimination of Jack Crawford from the storyline. His teacher/father/mentor relationship with Clarice Starling is one of the critical story devices in the novel; it serves as a counterweight to the evil influence of Lecter, who also acts, albeit in a different way, as Starling's teacher, father-figure and mentor. Indeed, the whole book is something of a proxy-struggle conducted between Crawford and Lecter, with Clarice acting as intermediary and, in a strange way, pupil, of both men. In Lambs, Crawford is reduced to a mere facilitator of plot; he puts Clarice on the case, and thereafrer largely fades from sight. As a screenwriter of sorts, I can understand the decision to do this from a technical standpoint, but it was a convenience and not a necessity. Cleverer writing, or more economical writing, could have salvaged some of Crawford's moments. No one would argue that Manhunter lacks plot intricacies or larger-than-life characters, but Crawford manages to impose himself in that story despite the presence of Graham, Lounds, Dolarhyde and Lecter. In Lambs, considering the short shrift given to Mr. Gumb in favor of Clarice, Chilton and Lecter, I think Crawford could have been mined more effectively.

Don't misunderstand me. I don't hate Lambs. I don't even dislike it. Hopkins is, to use a phrase from my childhood, one creepy-ass mo-fo. If I may continue my vulgarisms, I don't think Demme fucked up the film at all. But I do think he chose the path of least resistance. Hollywood has a history of shallow interpretations of complex works; part of this is the inevitable result of transferrng an inherently complex medium (the novel) to an inherently simple one (the screen). But Manhunter, whatever its other flaws, does not lack for depth. Lambs may be a more satisfying film, but it doesn't go nearly as deep.