Sakizuki aka a Japanese amuse-bouche
Another almost excellent episode.
They are having so fun revisiting Silence of The Lambs!
The Will/Katz scenes keep winking at Lecter/Clarice scene, especially in this episode when Will switched into "quid pro quo" mode asking for something in return for his help with the case!
And there's the chair and crossing line stuff that is from the books/films as well. And Bedelia coming too close to caged Will, to the point that the guards rushed in, was an echo of the last Clarice/Lecter scene when he stroked her finger, except that this time the girl was the one whispering something meaningful; And Gillian Anderson's performance in Lecter's office kinda recalled Jodie Foster's in certain Lecter/Clarice scenes -- which has a weird loopy meta-quality to it, given that the character of Scully in The X-Files was made up after Clarice Starling.
The show is its own creature but never forgets to recall where it comes from and pay tribute to the previous versions of the legend.
Now about the plot. As I said last week, Will is figthing back which implies lies, acting and manipulation. In order to beat Hannibal's schemes he'll have to become Hannibal in a way. This week, Will seems to regain, or rather to gain, the upper hand, He allows Katz to use his skills, but will use her to; He performs for Alana, Hannibal...and Dr. Chilton. Will is not a fool (I loved that he knew that Chilton was recording everything) and is no longer innocent.
I'm surprised that Hannibal fell for Will's act, though...
But let's talk about the opening scene. It was a bit too much IMO, or rather it lasted too long, bordering on torture-porn territory. That si the reason I said almost-excellent episode. Showing Umber starting to tear himself out of the corpses-eye and showing later his subsequent wounds would have been enough. We didn't need to go through the whole horrifying process. The rest of Umber's short story was okay. The hunt was well down, and introduced us to the corn field that would prove to be significant, and I liked the detail of his fallen body hitting a rock before entering the river.
Above all, I liked the idea of reflection, that the previous episode already used as a motive and that this episode carries on this week. The corpses posed as an eyeball is a design that one can only see from above -- as we already knew from the final image last week--, which is a position Hannibal himself assumed in the episode, and the mural is then reflected on his own amber iris. Mikkelsen's "Hello, I love your work!" was quite funny without becoming campy. So far the show's version of Lecter has managed to avoid the camp the Hannibal films indulged in. Also, Hannibal recognised himself in the muralist, a work of art and a certain design. He saw a reflection of his own artistic work, on a smaller scale.
BTW, when walking us through the pilot, Fuller said that the first two episodes work as a two parter that “is really about the metaphor of a guy who’s constructing a human mural, which is essentially what Hannibal Lecter is doing with all of the characters in the piece.” I was pleased reading that for it goes with my theory that every killer reveals something about our antagonist, Hannibal. I haven't read the walkthrough for this week so I migth need to edit this post later!
But there's more, in terms of reflection, the eyeball made of human material is inside of a silo, meaning that the top is open and circular...like an architectural oculus.
BTW the silo's oculus reminded me of the Pantheon's one in Rome. Oculi are usually part of religious buildings, temples, mosques...it's fitting given the theological conversation Hannibal has with the killer. In this case of course, Hannibal whose hubris is phenomenal sees himself -- again with the reflection leitmotiv -- as a god, above human laws and ethical rules, and, of course, above everyone else on the food chain.
And when Will is doing his thing and mentally takes the muralist's place, he looks at the oculus and sees his nemesis, the stag man.
Speaking of the stag man, apprently it has been officially identified by Bryan Fuller himself as a Stag Wendigo. I have to confess that I didn't know about Wendigos. They are half-beast creatures from Algonquian mythology:
"The Wendigo is part of the traditional belief systems of various Algonquian-speaking tribes in the northern United States and Canada, most notably the Ojibwe and Saulteaux, the Cree, the Naskapi, and the Innu people. Although descriptions varied somewhat, common to all these cultures was the conception of Wendigos as malevolent, cannibalistic, supernatural beings (manitous) of great spiritual power."
But the term is also used to describe a mental illness, known as Wendigo psychosis that may or may not have existed. See more at the Wikipedia page.
But enough with the Stag man. One last thing about the eye reflection: basically we had an eye for an eye in that silo... an expression that exactly sums up what Will is up to, when it comes to the reckoning he promised in the pilot!!!!!
Of course the ultimate eye is the aperture of the camera (hence the final shot from the pilot!), or rather the audience's eye.
Now Jack has his own session therapy. He is confused and starts seeing people and the world differently. He is the one having an existentialist crisis. His journey this season will be that one of an eye opening.
Compared to season 1, that mostly showed Hannibal manipulating people, looking smart and cooking suspicious meat, season 2 is slightly changing our view of the character. We get to see things that usually happened off screen. Hannibal appears more often wearing his murder suit, and for the first time we saw him handle a trophy before it became just meat. Watching him saw a leg that he had removed from the muralist's body was definitely something new and something that is de-romanticizing Hannibal lecter. The crazy killer, hidden behind the charm and the elegant and sophisticated façade, is revealed. A human leg is to him what the bodies were to the muralist, just material to use, and his gorgeous and delicious meals beforehand imply some gruesome stuff. We are supposed to love him enough to keep watching but not to fall in love with him.
Bedelia Du Maurier probably saw glimpses of the repulsive side as well, beneath the "person suit" Hannibal wears. I don't mind not knowing the specifics of what happened with that patient of hers, and how Hannibal used it to tie her to him. Not everything needs to be explained or voiced out loud. Sometimes showing a severed leg, or feet, and someone stepping back, or moving forward in a threatening and predatory way is enough.
I loved how the Du Maurier/Lecter scenes were all about moving this time with few dialogues, when they used to be all about verbal sparring before without any body moves.
It's enough to see how scared Bedelia is now, and to understand how clever she is to move out and vanish before a murder-suited Hannibal broke into her place. Her exiting the stage seems to deprive Will of a possible support and ally, someone who believes him and could corroborate his profile of Lecter, but actually I think that it leaves Hannibal more vulnerable to Will's plan, given that Will is his "last friend", the last person he can truly bond with.
Bedelia Du Maurier leaves, new psychiatrist enters! I have always liked Martin Donovan (must be his green eyes) so I hope the character will turn out to be exciting.
The corn growing out of the body in Hannibal's mind palace was great but my favourite image this week was the one taking place in Will's mind palace, when we saw the bodies float or be swept along by the current -- or perhaps swim -- in the river wherein Will is fishing. They just looked like tritons! It was beautiful and a wonderful analogy of what he does. It reminds me of what he told Hannibal in season 1, about always bringing back something everytime Jack sent him to the field.
But yes, I was wrong when I said the viewers wouldn't be privy to Hannibal's own mind palace. We got to see how he figured the "crime scene" out. It's interesting to point the differences between Will's skills and Hannibal's. With Will, it's all about the mind, deduction from clues and imagination, while Hannibal's process is more sensual and animalistic. It's his quasi-supernatural sense of smell -- a predator's feature -- that allowed him to imagine a corn field and to find the silo. It's all about the nose and Bedelia's parting gift is the evidence that she indeed knew him better than anyone.
BTW the perfume thing called to my mind another famous serial killer...
But Hannibal couldn't recreate the scene, the way Will does. He could only see the corn field. It seems that Will's mental abilities, thanks to his empathy, are actually superior to Hannibal's. Lecter thinks that he is above all humans, but Will Graham is the one with the omniscient power. He is the true eye that sees it all.
ETA: The walkthrough with Bryan Fuller is up at the AV/TV Club.
I'm sure bleodswean will enjoy that talk, especially the last part about Catholic mythology!
Me, I'm more interested in the writing structure than in what Hannibal Lecter may represent or not, and I'm glad that they aren't trying to make a point about it. Also, as an avid reader of hard boiled crime novels, I like my serial killers to be the embodiment of human weaknesses and flaws not of some supernatural primal force called Evil.
The issue I have with that take is that Mikkelsen and Fuller seem to have Satan and Lucifer mixed up. Also if Lecter is Lucifer (or even Satan) he has to be a believer in God -- to rebel against some power, you have to acknowledge that power --, while the Hannibal Lecter from Harris' book is an atheist.
That said, the medievalist in me can't help liking the idea of our resident cannibal being Satan, because it reminds me of all the iconography showing the devil eating and defecating men!
Like these pictures:
ETA2: Bad news, the ratings are not good at all. This show should be on cable. It isn't going to survive on network television...
They are having so fun revisiting Silence of The Lambs!
The Will/Katz scenes keep winking at Lecter/Clarice scene, especially in this episode when Will switched into "quid pro quo" mode asking for something in return for his help with the case!
And there's the chair and crossing line stuff that is from the books/films as well. And Bedelia coming too close to caged Will, to the point that the guards rushed in, was an echo of the last Clarice/Lecter scene when he stroked her finger, except that this time the girl was the one whispering something meaningful; And Gillian Anderson's performance in Lecter's office kinda recalled Jodie Foster's in certain Lecter/Clarice scenes -- which has a weird loopy meta-quality to it, given that the character of Scully in The X-Files was made up after Clarice Starling.
The show is its own creature but never forgets to recall where it comes from and pay tribute to the previous versions of the legend.
Now about the plot. As I said last week, Will is figthing back which implies lies, acting and manipulation. In order to beat Hannibal's schemes he'll have to become Hannibal in a way. This week, Will seems to regain, or rather to gain, the upper hand, He allows Katz to use his skills, but will use her to; He performs for Alana, Hannibal...and Dr. Chilton. Will is not a fool (I loved that he knew that Chilton was recording everything) and is no longer innocent.
I'm surprised that Hannibal fell for Will's act, though...
But let's talk about the opening scene. It was a bit too much IMO, or rather it lasted too long, bordering on torture-porn territory. That si the reason I said almost-excellent episode. Showing Umber starting to tear himself out of the corpses-eye and showing later his subsequent wounds would have been enough. We didn't need to go through the whole horrifying process. The rest of Umber's short story was okay. The hunt was well down, and introduced us to the corn field that would prove to be significant, and I liked the detail of his fallen body hitting a rock before entering the river.
Above all, I liked the idea of reflection, that the previous episode already used as a motive and that this episode carries on this week. The corpses posed as an eyeball is a design that one can only see from above -- as we already knew from the final image last week--, which is a position Hannibal himself assumed in the episode, and the mural is then reflected on his own amber iris. Mikkelsen's "Hello, I love your work!" was quite funny without becoming campy. So far the show's version of Lecter has managed to avoid the camp the Hannibal films indulged in. Also, Hannibal recognised himself in the muralist, a work of art and a certain design. He saw a reflection of his own artistic work, on a smaller scale.
BTW, when walking us through the pilot, Fuller said that the first two episodes work as a two parter that “is really about the metaphor of a guy who’s constructing a human mural, which is essentially what Hannibal Lecter is doing with all of the characters in the piece.” I was pleased reading that for it goes with my theory that every killer reveals something about our antagonist, Hannibal. I haven't read the walkthrough for this week so I migth need to edit this post later!
But there's more, in terms of reflection, the eyeball made of human material is inside of a silo, meaning that the top is open and circular...like an architectural oculus.
BTW the silo's oculus reminded me of the Pantheon's one in Rome. Oculi are usually part of religious buildings, temples, mosques...it's fitting given the theological conversation Hannibal has with the killer. In this case of course, Hannibal whose hubris is phenomenal sees himself -- again with the reflection leitmotiv -- as a god, above human laws and ethical rules, and, of course, above everyone else on the food chain.
And when Will is doing his thing and mentally takes the muralist's place, he looks at the oculus and sees his nemesis, the stag man.
Speaking of the stag man, apprently it has been officially identified by Bryan Fuller himself as a Stag Wendigo. I have to confess that I didn't know about Wendigos. They are half-beast creatures from Algonquian mythology:
"The Wendigo is part of the traditional belief systems of various Algonquian-speaking tribes in the northern United States and Canada, most notably the Ojibwe and Saulteaux, the Cree, the Naskapi, and the Innu people. Although descriptions varied somewhat, common to all these cultures was the conception of Wendigos as malevolent, cannibalistic, supernatural beings (manitous) of great spiritual power."
But the term is also used to describe a mental illness, known as Wendigo psychosis that may or may not have existed. See more at the Wikipedia page.
But enough with the Stag man. One last thing about the eye reflection: basically we had an eye for an eye in that silo... an expression that exactly sums up what Will is up to, when it comes to the reckoning he promised in the pilot!!!!!
Of course the ultimate eye is the aperture of the camera (hence the final shot from the pilot!), or rather the audience's eye.
Now Jack has his own session therapy. He is confused and starts seeing people and the world differently. He is the one having an existentialist crisis. His journey this season will be that one of an eye opening.
Compared to season 1, that mostly showed Hannibal manipulating people, looking smart and cooking suspicious meat, season 2 is slightly changing our view of the character. We get to see things that usually happened off screen. Hannibal appears more often wearing his murder suit, and for the first time we saw him handle a trophy before it became just meat. Watching him saw a leg that he had removed from the muralist's body was definitely something new and something that is de-romanticizing Hannibal lecter. The crazy killer, hidden behind the charm and the elegant and sophisticated façade, is revealed. A human leg is to him what the bodies were to the muralist, just material to use, and his gorgeous and delicious meals beforehand imply some gruesome stuff. We are supposed to love him enough to keep watching but not to fall in love with him.
Bedelia Du Maurier probably saw glimpses of the repulsive side as well, beneath the "person suit" Hannibal wears. I don't mind not knowing the specifics of what happened with that patient of hers, and how Hannibal used it to tie her to him. Not everything needs to be explained or voiced out loud. Sometimes showing a severed leg, or feet, and someone stepping back, or moving forward in a threatening and predatory way is enough.
I loved how the Du Maurier/Lecter scenes were all about moving this time with few dialogues, when they used to be all about verbal sparring before without any body moves.
It's enough to see how scared Bedelia is now, and to understand how clever she is to move out and vanish before a murder-suited Hannibal broke into her place. Her exiting the stage seems to deprive Will of a possible support and ally, someone who believes him and could corroborate his profile of Lecter, but actually I think that it leaves Hannibal more vulnerable to Will's plan, given that Will is his "last friend", the last person he can truly bond with.
Bedelia Du Maurier leaves, new psychiatrist enters! I have always liked Martin Donovan (must be his green eyes) so I hope the character will turn out to be exciting.
The corn growing out of the body in Hannibal's mind palace was great but my favourite image this week was the one taking place in Will's mind palace, when we saw the bodies float or be swept along by the current -- or perhaps swim -- in the river wherein Will is fishing. They just looked like tritons! It was beautiful and a wonderful analogy of what he does. It reminds me of what he told Hannibal in season 1, about always bringing back something everytime Jack sent him to the field.
But yes, I was wrong when I said the viewers wouldn't be privy to Hannibal's own mind palace. We got to see how he figured the "crime scene" out. It's interesting to point the differences between Will's skills and Hannibal's. With Will, it's all about the mind, deduction from clues and imagination, while Hannibal's process is more sensual and animalistic. It's his quasi-supernatural sense of smell -- a predator's feature -- that allowed him to imagine a corn field and to find the silo. It's all about the nose and Bedelia's parting gift is the evidence that she indeed knew him better than anyone.
BTW the perfume thing called to my mind another famous serial killer...
But Hannibal couldn't recreate the scene, the way Will does. He could only see the corn field. It seems that Will's mental abilities, thanks to his empathy, are actually superior to Hannibal's. Lecter thinks that he is above all humans, but Will Graham is the one with the omniscient power. He is the true eye that sees it all.
ETA: The walkthrough with Bryan Fuller is up at the AV/TV Club.
I'm sure bleodswean will enjoy that talk, especially the last part about Catholic mythology!
Me, I'm more interested in the writing structure than in what Hannibal Lecter may represent or not, and I'm glad that they aren't trying to make a point about it. Also, as an avid reader of hard boiled crime novels, I like my serial killers to be the embodiment of human weaknesses and flaws not of some supernatural primal force called Evil.
The issue I have with that take is that Mikkelsen and Fuller seem to have Satan and Lucifer mixed up. Also if Lecter is Lucifer (or even Satan) he has to be a believer in God -- to rebel against some power, you have to acknowledge that power --, while the Hannibal Lecter from Harris' book is an atheist.
That said, the medievalist in me can't help liking the idea of our resident cannibal being Satan, because it reminds me of all the iconography showing the devil eating and defecating men!
Like these pictures:
ETA2: Bad news, the ratings are not good at all. This show should be on cable. It isn't going to survive on network television...