The Silence of the Lambs Directed by Jonathan Demme USA, 1991 (The following contains a great deal of spoilers) Rewatching The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins is as mesmerizing as ever in his masterful portrayal of psychiatrist and cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The intellectual serial killer who is emblazoned as one of the most …
You can always count on Hannibal for a grim spectacle, and last night’s ‘Tome-wan’ was no exception. What began as a pretty standard episode, if a little more revelatory than the last few, worked its way to some of the show’s biggest moments yet (but more on that later).
Let’s start from the top, shall we? The episode opens with some typical Will/Hannibal banter as their therapy sessions continue. The conversation makes it clear that each is weary of the other but neither is willing to show their hand completely, and both maintain their poker faces, even as they hurl half-hearted truths, ill-meaning metaphors, and thinly veiled threats at one another between their more standard philosophizing on the human condition.
The episode opens with yet another misleading sequence, although exactly how misleading the gorgeously shot Will-digo transformation/birth scene really is remains to be seen–after all, we still don’t know with any certainty who arranged the Randall exhibit, or whose body was sent flaming down the parkade runway in glorious tribute to Red Dragon’s exemplary Tooth Fairy kill. In fact, I would hasten that there is still a lot that we don’t know about this secret plan which has occupied much of the narrative lo’ these last few episodes. But more on that later.
As a fervent fan of both the films based on the character Hannibal Lecter and the source material written by Thomas Harris, I found myself very excited at the prospect of a television series based on the relationship between the titular cannibalistic sadist and the man who would eventually catch him hiding in plain sight, the highly intuitive Will Graham. When I heard that actors like Mads Mikkelsen, Laurence Fishburne, and Gillian Anderson had signed up to be a part of it, my anticipation became palpable, tempered only by the fear that this would be a short-lived cash-in on a mostly dead franchise. In that regard, I was happy to be mostly wrong.