Archives
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
An Impolitic
Recommendation
From
Manhunter. By Shriekback.
NEWER AIN'T ALWAYS BETTER. Mrs. CP wasn't feeling good yesterday, and so we put her on the couch in the media room and turned her loose on the "On Demand" menu. To my dismay, she chose to watch on Comcast's "Fearnet" list the 1986 movie Manhunter. I should have known better. I can't watch movies as many times as she can, and I thought I was going to be bored by the star-making vehicle for William Peterson and Michael Mann. I wasn't.
It's the best movie ever made about serial killers, including the Silence of the Lambs trilogy (quadrilogy?) that followed from the same source material. I thought I was going to be put off by all the highly stylized sets -- white, white, white with darkness implied -- and the Miami Vice style of barely audible musings instead of dialogue. I wasn't.
I confess I haven't seen the remake (Red Dragon), but I know it had Anthony Hopkins instead of Brian Cox [corrected] as Hannibal Lecktor, and having seen Manhunter again, I believe Brian Cox was more scary, sinister, and real-world creepy than Hopkins's Katherine Hepburn impression.
What makes it all work so well is the twin premises of 1) Peterson as a hunter who truly gets into the head of his quarry and feels all the attendant pain, and 2) a portrayal of the killer that is human, sensual, and as close to sympathetic as it's possible to get with a monster. There's an eerie sexuality to the Red Dragon's scenes with his girlfriend, Joan Allen. You can actually feel the eros of his vicarious satiety when he arranges for his blind lover to feel the body of a sedated Bengal tiger, even as he shrinks from any contact with his cosmetically reconstructed cleft palate. The serial killer as a fatally damaged human being, not a twisted cartoon superhero.
The music also drives it all home; hence the YouTube clip above.
But it's a dangerous time for conservatives to be understanding about violent crimes. So forget I said anything. But if you want to watch the movie, I'm not stopping you.
