(S P O I L E R S)
In
which I can give you the majesty of your becoming.
But
listen carefully to the sound
Of
your loneliness
Like
a heartbeat.. drives you mad
In
the stillness of remembering what you had
And
what you lost...
(“Dreams”/Fleetwood Mac)
It is the driving force, the
dark, pulsating heart of Hannibal
this claustrophobic tension between the clinical world of quantifiable
psychiatry and the lurking, illogical pandemonium of the dream world. The
Silence of the Lambs derived great power from Hannibal Lecter’s acumen with
hyper-logical mind games, and the its sequel indulged his more operatic,
decadent sensibilities. But Bryan Fuller’s
aim is to plumb the depths of the mind without a certifiable expectation for
any easy diagnosis. To touch madness. To experience every corner of the inky 3am
world where fantasy and reality engage in a dance of erotic phantasmagoria, a
Jungian melding of the indefinable twin impulses of our lives.
And at the center of it all,
sweating through his pillow night after night, gripped by the mania that so
many of us have felt in the middle of the night, when rational solutions seem
wholly inadequate, lies Will Graham. The
latest in a long line of heroic loners, possessed by a vision quest not of his
choosing. God’s Lonely Man, as Thomas
Wolfe might say. A seer schooled in the
cold logic of murderous intent and damaged psyches, but also one who’s had the
curtain of reality drawn ever so slightly back for him. Who’s been given a glimpse of the anarchic
glories that lie behind it, wild flights of fancy that occasionally kiss the
quotidian through a barrier more gossamer than most realize.
A man whose profound isolation
and loneliness often leave him only with the sound of his heart, and of the
guilt that consumes it, to drive him mad. And to taunt him with the question: “Why?” And maybe more importantly: “How much more?” In “Coquilles”, the standout fifth episode of
Hannibal’s maiden voyage, that
taunting grows deafening.
I
found an island in your arms
Country
in your eyes
Arms
that chain
Eyes
that lie
Break
on through to the other side
(“Break on Through”/The Doors)
Beverly Katz may be a supporting
player in the Hannibal universe whose
purpose often seems to involve providing exposition alongside comic sidekicks
Zeller and Price(although her eventual murder at Hannibal’s hands marks a
turning point in the show’s narrative arc), but she’s given one of the key
lines in “Coquilles”, one which illuminates many of this episode’s messianic
aims. As she and the forensics team
perform the autopsy on one of the Angel Maker’s victims, she notes that “Death
makes angels of us all, and gives us wings where we had shoulders, smooth as
raven’s claws.” Zeller guesses Robert
Frost as the quote’s source, but Will correctly credits Jim Morrison. “Even a drunk with a flair for the dramatic
can convince himself that he’s God” she quips. “Or the lizard king.”
Pop culture consensus has made it acceptable
to venerate Frost as a transcendent poet, while relegating Morrison to the
status of drunken buffoon spouting fourth grade poetry. But Frost could produce material that was
resolutely traditional, and Morrison’s rock star status and confrontational
persona often obscured his Rimbaud and Blake-influenced visions of profound existential
questing. The hazy line between these
two celebrity poets of the 20th Century is part and parcel of our
definition of genius and insight. It’s
also a split diopter of the sacred and the profane through which to view much of
what occurs in this episode.
The most obvious allusion to
Frost that Bryan Fuller provides the audience comes in the pre-credits sequence
when Elliot Buddish (the Angel Maker) gazes upon two of his prospective victims
at his hotel, seeing only their heads aflame (one of the series’ most striking
images). In a state of agitation, he
averts his gaze into the bucket of ice he’s gone to collect. It’s a direct reference to Frost’s “Fire and
Ice”, his famous vision of the twin forces of apocalyptic destruction. In a show filled with dichotomous tension, these
forces stand comfortably alongside dreams and reality, logic and madness.
In a greater sense, Frost’s
poetry often explores the outer reaches of isolation, and the potential for
inner destruction therein. And it’s here
that he finds kinship with Morrison, whose travels along the road of excess
toward enlightenment was shared by many, but which was still at heart the
voyage of a solitary man. The transformative
power of Morrison’s onstage persona, and the backbone of his continuing legacy,
was his total commitment to performance as a means of transcendence, a nightly
act of giving yourself over to the oft erratic impulses in the air. It’s what made him a mesmerizing force of
nature at his best, and a drunken buffoon at his worst. But such is the sacrifice and the peril of
commitment to capturing the essence of the shaman.
Such a shamanic imperative is at
the heart of Will Graham’s vision quest, his dark romance of a duet with the
other side. It’s only by channeling the
twisted psyches of his subjects, by almost completely giving himself over to
them, that’s he’s able to fully comprehend their obscene motivations. Elliot Buddish provides the most harrowing
mirror image for him yet. Though
according to his wife he’s not a religious man, the onset of his brain tumor
inspires thoughts most divine in his mind.
His quest to transform sinners into saints through a grotesque transfiguration
of the flesh echoes the Old Testament philosophy of redemption through blood
sacrifice. It also gives Will a view of
the dark side of revelation, a reality that only seems a half step away from
his. Transfiguration reigns over this
episode, as Bella Crawford reveals her cancer diagnosis by intellectually
dissecting the cold and emotionless calculus that the cancer employs in taking
over her lungs. And Buddish is clearly a
precursor to the mythical chaos that will be wrought by Francis Dolarhyde, the
Red Dragon himself (the quote that leads off this essay is from Will’s
nightmare vision of Buddish, a direct reference to a famous Dolarhyde
line. It’s also a parallel to Hannibal’s
Cassie Boyle murder tableau subconsciously mirroring Will’s previous visions of
Theresa Marlow’s gored body, yet another example of the waking world freely
intermingling with the dreamscape. And
don’t forget the psychosexual transformative desire of Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill.)
In biblical terms, Will hews to
the classic model of the prophet, endowed with an almost spiritual sense of
insight that is both gift and curse. He’s
doomed to be rejected (although in this case, the rejection is mostly
self-inflicted) and, as I mentioned in a previous essay, to endure a sort of
reverse Cassandra complex, sentenced to a life recreating the events of the
past, paralyzed to change them in any way.
But this paralysis also tears apart his psyche, transforming him into
what he sees as the manifestation of his worst fears. And the only person who seems to empathize
with the wicked power of his visions is a vaccum of empathy who revels in
playing both God and Devil.
Lost
in a Roman wilderness of pain
And
all the children are insane
(“The End”/The Doors)
Though there are certainly
religious overtones in parts of Hannibal,
“Coquilles” is the first episode to address the topic of a divine presence in
such explicit fashion. And the question
of an absentee God hangs heavy over the proceedings. During their conversation about the Angel
Maker, Hannibal tells Will that “Any idea of God comes from many different
areas of the mind working together in unison.”
Later, Will says of the Angel Maker “His mind has turned against him,
and there’s no one there to help.” Once
again, he clearly realizes his brotherhood with Elliot Buddish, their mutual
cry for relief from a damaged psyche.
But this exchange also begs the
question: If our conception of God comes from the mind, does the revolt of the
mind also equal the revolt/failure of God?
On a deeper level, does Will’s fear for his sanity mask a despair for a
potentially godless universe, in which that curtain between dreams and reality
is due to fall at any moment? Granted,
it’s a somewhat Lovecraftian notion, but seen from the perspective of this man
on the edge (which is our viewpoint for much of the show), it’s worth
considering. It’s also deeply
complicated by the eventual revelation of Will’s encephalitis and the effect it
has on his perception of reality, although how many prophets of all ages
(Elliot Buddish included) have walked that line between medical malady and
divine insight? At the scenes of Buddish’s crimes, DP James Hawkinson employs a
God’s eye POV of Will, the camera slowly descending towards him, Hugh Dancy
looking for all the world like a penitent man in search of something beyond his
world, staring straight into the face of God…but a God whose handiwork betrays
his vengeful intent.
If God is absent, then Will is
left with Jack and Hannibal to stand in for him, each man manipulating his
abilities to their own effect. It’s in “Coquilles”
that Hannibal first firmly plants the seeds of dissent between Jack and Will,
telling his patient that gods often abandon their creations, while also
referring to his service to Jack as a deal with the Devil. The irony is delicious, as it’s Hannibal whose
calculated oscillation between God and Devil figure leaves Will as his ultimate
creation, and his ultimate experiment. His
fascination with the fungible nature of spiritual enlightenment can be summed
up in his comments to Will about Buddish:
“You want to feel such sweet and
easy peace. The Angel Maker wants that
same peace. He hopes to feel his way
cautiously inside and then find it's endless, all around him… You accept the
impossibility of such a feeling, whereas the angel maker is still chasing it.”
Part of Hannibal might
rationalize the impossibility of this ocean of peace, but his curiosity about
the mental impulse that drives anyone to search for it also drives him to prod
Will into the deeper recesses of that journey.
Judeo-Christian beliefs often portray the grace of God as an all-encompassing
embrace of love. As a God figure in his
life, Hannibal offers Will that same comforting embrace. But it’s an embrace of enveloping darkness.
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