(S P O I L E R S)
In
which this is the nightmare that followed him out of his dreams.
It’s all about that final scene,
isn’t it? All of the feinting, and
lingering glances, and circling around each other? All of it meant to build to one of the most
subversive scenes in, at the very least, network television history, if not the
annals of the medium in general. The one
in which the ostensible protagonist and the ostensible antagonist (although we’ve
long since abandoned reductive definitions like those in the context of Hannibal) sit down to dine on what is
heavily implied to be the body of a just recently butchered, petite female
journalist. In which they continue their
long-standing personal symposium on the nature of God, punctuated by that
ostensible protagonist tossing out “You can't reduce me to a set of
influences. I'm not the product of
anything. I've given up good and evil
for behaviourism.” And in which they
finish off the episode with a knowing grin between them, the conclusion of a
tete-a-tete laden with homoerotic undertones (itself the conclusion of a long-gestating
homoeroticism in said relationship.)
See, Hannibal non-converts? This is what you’ve been missing in the
late hours of Friday night prime time for the past two years. Let the show’s move to Thursday nights serve
as a wake up call.
It’s so strange discussing the
anarchic glee that Hannibal displays
in the latter stages of Season 2 from an objective perspective, because
longtime viewers (or writers who decide to shotgun the entire run in a month
and a half for an essay series) have, much like Will Graham with Hannibal,
become so inured to the freaky stylistic timbre of the narrative that a scene
like the aforementioned one just seems like a logical progression of the
plot. Granted, when I think back to
watching this episode for the first time a year ago, it seemed deeply
disturbing…although part of me had to figure that all was not as it
seemed. And in retrospect, knowing that
so much of what we see in these penultimate episodes is the carefully crafted
product of Will’s design, his grand plot to catch Hannibal once and for all,
some of the shock is lessened. But his
deep dive into Lecter’s abyss is not without its ambiguous implications. In a recent interview with Backstage, Hugh Dancy noted that Will
remains somewhat of a mystery to him, that he tries to embrace the more
nebulous aspects of the character in portraying him. This is why Hannibal is still such a thrilling experience the second time
around: the radical psychological dialectic refuses easy answers on the moral
and ethical spectrum.
This two episode run is a
sterling example of such a dialectic, its narrative thrust trading in the role
of animal instinct in human lives. Once
again, the killer of the week device is employed as commentary on the main
storyline, although the tale of animal trapped in a human body Randall Tier
invades that central story in a more severe manner than most of the show’s
pop-up psychopaths. In a near-repeat of
his warning to Garret Jacob Hobbs, Hannibal advises Randall of the FBI’s
approaching hoofbeats. But his greater
intent this time is to push his former patient toward murdering Will, or at
least toward testing the boundaries of Will’s growing commitment to their
relationship. There’s much discussion
between Will and Hannibal about the need to embrace their animalistic
side. In analyzing one of Randall’s
murders, Will tells Jack that “He wants to maul. There’s nothing personal about this” and that
“He’s not denying its natural instincts.
He’s evolving them” (in regards to the appropriation of the predatorial
instinct.) In “Naka-Chono”, when Will’s
empathic vision of Randall’s killer delivers him into a discussion with this
man that he just slaughtered and hung on an animal skeleton, his victim states
that “This is my becoming. And it’s
yours.”
It’s another in the show’s long
line of foreshadowings to the eventual arrival of Francis Dolarhyde, but it
also cements the uneasy question of what dark instincts are growing within
Will. Early on in “Shiikazana”, Hannibal
prods him about his fantasy of murdering him (by manipulating the nightmare
stag that has haunted him since he killed Garret Hobbs, which also serves as a
direct nod to one of young Hannibal’s more gruesome murders in the prequel Hannibal Rising.) Will’s response (“I felt a quiet sense of
power”) could be applied to so many of the disturbed, impotent individuals in
the Lecterverse, all chasing after a dominance that flirts with the
divine. It’s no mistake that animal
imagery is so closely associated with these would-be pupae. Jame Gumb’s Death’s-head
Hawkmoth, Dolarhyde’s Red Dragon, Mason Verger’s pigs (more on them in a
moment): all of these men aspire to transcendence by regressing themselves to their
basest instincts, mirrored by the way in which so many of Hannibal’s murder tableaus elevate their very human victims to
near-transcendent works of art. Will
Graham may never fully reach the depths of impotence that they all inhabit, but
he comes close to touching it, enough so to rip away at the fabric of his
sanity. His self-defense-driven murder
of Randall Tier is morally sound, but the manner in which he delivers up the
corpse to Hannibal as a peace offering can’t just be dismissed as part of his
plan. Those actions scar Will in ways
that are still left to be explored.
Scars and the animal instinct
both serve large roles in “Naka-Mono”, in which the death of Randall Tier
appears to release his instincts into the veins of the plot. In a surreal and somewhat queasy sequence,
Hannibal continues his seduction of Alana by comparing the musical qualities of
his Theremin to their love making (which is all shot with a near-impressionist
sheen by James Hawkinson.) The scene is
crosscut with Margot’s seduction of Will (to produce the male heir she needs to
inherit the Verger fortune?), their exploration of their mutual physical and
mental scars the animalistic foreplay, Hannibal’s distant voice the narration “guiding
them from dissonance to composition.”
And then, in a truly audacious sequence, the two sexual couplings are
merged in a psychotropic visual melange, as Will psychologically shifts between
Margot and Alana, before ending up in bed with her and Hannibal. But his most prescient vision (and one of the
show’s most disturbing) is of the Wendigo plowing away on Alana (which itself
calls back to the POV closeup of Will as the nightmare stag in “Shiizakana”,
drenched in blood, clothed in stag hide, a look of ecstasy adorning his face as
he rises from his human meal.)
Such a perverse sequence is aptly
complementary to the arrival of Mason Verger into the main plot. Michael Pitt has always been an actor who’s
fascinated me. His delicate good looks
give him the air of a melancholic leading man, but his career choices veer much
more toward the life of a character actor.
Cast opposite Steve Buscemi in Boardwalk
Empire, he was the damaged soul/prodigal son whose flight from the gangster
life was motivated by a debilitating personal trauma. And from the mumbling Kurt Cobain surrogate
in Last Days to the psychopathic
pretty boy in the American version of Funny
Games to the burgeoning sexual experimentalist of The Dreamers, he’s always pushed at the boundaries of his assumed
career path. He’s also developed a
reputation as being difficult to work with, which was abetted by his early
departure from Boardwalk and his
quitting Hannibal after Season 2. Whether these rumors are true is anyone’s
guess, but his body of work is still constantly intriguing. In his limited turn as Mason, he imbues what
is probably the most deviant, despicable character in the Lecterverse (at least
in the context of what is revealed about him in Thomas Harris’s Hannibal) with a demented sense of
delight, the self-satisfied decadence of a man living in a hermetically sealed
world, whose unlimited financial power both protects him and traps him in cycle
of searching for an elusive and greater high (one of his first lines is “What
do I want?”, repeated four times.) Bryan
Fuller has described Mason as The Joker to Hannibal’s Batman, which is a real
testament to the complexity of Lecter’s character in this version of his story. And like the Clown Prince of Crime, Mason
uses part of Hannibal’s repertoire against him.
For as Will and others have noted in the past, the Chesapeake Ripper
views his victim as pigs, the very animal that Mason utilizes to predatory
extremes, eventually against his sister’s psychiatrist at the conclusion of
this season.
To the leftovers we go:
*After years of hiding in plain
sight, Hannibal is forced to deal with an ever growing army of doubters in
these late season episodes. “Naka-Mono”,
in particular, gives voice to Margot, Freddie, and Alana in this regard
(Freddie as the voice of reason is a real delight.) Viewed through the pseudo-rape/assault lens
of “Yakimono”, it’s a fitting development for this story. It also provides another layer to the
Hannibal/Alana/Will love triangle, as her questioning of the boundaries of
their relationship when the trio have dinner is soon thereafter followed by
Will and Hannibal’s episode-ending culinary meetup (which plays very much like
the spurned lover getting back with the true object of his affection after
sleeping with his true love out of revenge.)
*In their initial conversation in
“Shiizakana”, Will and Hannibal are shot by James Hawkinson in a series of
increasingly closer one-shots. The
effect is both intimate and disorienting, a further establishment of the
collapsing psychological reality of this season.
*Come one now: how many other
shows would attempt a Theremin-centric love scene?
*“What’s your private carnage?”
(Will, to Margot)
*“You will always be ruled by
your fascination with teeth.” (Hannibal, to Randall)
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