Tagline: It started with revenge.
In Red Dragon we learned who he was. In Silence of the Lambs we learned how he did it. Now comes the most chilling chapter in the life of Hannibal Lecter – the one that answers the most elusive question of all – why?
Hannibal Rising marks the first time in the award-winning series that best selling author Thomas Harris (“Red Dragon,” “Silence of the Lambs”) writes the screenplay – reaching back to explore the origins of Lecter’s rage, terror and savagery.
The story begins in Eastern Europe at the desperate end of World War II. For many it was no longer a conflict of nations but one of individual survival – at any cost. A young Hannibal watches from only steps away as his parents violently die, leaving his cherished young sister in his care. This horrific moment will soon pale in comparison to the atrocities he is forced to witness, changing him forever.
Alone and without any means of support, he is forced to live in a Soviet orphanage that once served as his family’s beloved home. He flees to Paris to find his uncle has died but his beautiful and mysterious Japanese widow, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li) welcomes him. Even her kindness and love cannot soothe the nightmares and sorrows that plague him. Showing a cunning aptitude for science he is accepted into medical school, which serves to hone his skills and provide the tools to exact justice on the war criminals that haunt him day and night. This quest will ignite an insatiable lust within a serial killer who was not born, but made.
Hannibal Rising: Genesis
“When I made Red Dragon, I did a promotional tour around the world. In every city people asked me the same questions: “Why does Hannibal Lecter become a monster? Why does he become a cannibal? And at some point I started to think, well, they’re interesting questions. Maybe we should do a movie about the young Hannibal and see what happened to him, why he became a monster.” —Dino De Laurentiis, Producer
Hannibal Lecter is a cultural icon. Possibly the most famous anti-hero ever created. Brilliant, charming and evil, he grips the popular imagination like no other villain. His creator, the reclusive American writer Thomas Harris, introduced him to the world as a minor, though significant, character in the menacing novel Red Dragon published in 1981.
Harris is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s most skillful writers of psychological thrillers. His complex, brilliantly written stories are remarkable; not just for their spine-chilling horror, but also for the way they create empathy for the cunning, ruthless serial killer. Red Dragon quickly became a best seller. Producers Dino and Martha De Laurentiis spotted the potential in the story and were the first to bring Hannibal to the screen in the 1986 Michael Mann thriller Manhuter.
Manhunter was a cult success, but it was the 1991 movie Silence of the Lambs which brought Hannibal into the mainstream. Directed by Jonathan Demme, the taut, terrifying narrative collected five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins and Best Actress for Jodie Foster. Following Silence of the Lambs, Dino and Martha De Laurentiis returned to the Hannibal franchise when they produced the massive box office hits Hannibal in 2001 and the remake Red Dragon in 2002, with Anthony Hopkins starring in both.
It was fitting, therefore, that they were the drivers behind the new story. “We were inspired by a passage in the novel Hannibal,” Martha explains. “We found a two page sequence about Mischa, Hannibal’s younger sister, which hinted at reasons for Hannibal’s violence and suggested the opening of the story.”
The couple knew they had to get Thomas Harris on board and approached him with the idea. Although initially hesitant about re-entering the universe of his most famous creation, the writer found himself so absorbed by the idea that he wanted to write the screenplay as well as the novel. “How could we refuse?” says Martha.
Once they had a short treatment of the story, director Peter Webber was brought onto the project. “Peter was on our wish list from the beginning,” Martha says. “We wanted to go with a young, hungry director for this project. Girl With A Pearl Earring showed that he could tell a story visually and we could see from some of his TV work in the UK, that he had the right edginess.”
Webber was looking for his next project after his extraordinary feature debut, the hugely acclaimed, award winning, Girl With A Pearl Earring. He was thrilled by the idea of tackling the Hannibal legacy. “After the film, I was inundated with lots of scripts where no one really says anything, where people stare at each other across rooms, and lots of films about dead painters – Leonardo, Caravaggio – you name it and they’ve all landed on my doorstep! I realised that was really not what I wanted to do; I was very proud of that film, but I don’t want to make carbon copies of it forever and ever. It was really a film about love and this is a film about hate. I thought this was really a great opportunity to keep myself fresh and interested, doing stuff I’d never done before.”
“This story is about the birth of a monster, the creation of the character, so Hannibal is at the centre of it, whereas in the previous films, he’s always been tangential,” continues Webber. “In Silence of the Lambs, he has something like 18 minutes of screen time. In this film he is on screen 90% of the time. What’s more, in the previous films, he arrives on screen as a monster. For me, what’s interesting is seeing how this character came to be who he is.”
Thomas Harris is renowned for his detailed research and can take up to ten years to develop one of his blockbuster novels. Webber found the writer’s knowledge was a huge support as the film progressed. “He’s got such an amazing, detailed imagination. He is able to tell you what colour the curtains are in a certain scene, what the furnishings were, all these details – he just has an encyclopaedic mind. The other thing that’s fascinating about Harris is that he used to be a crime journalist, so each of the rather grisly murders in this film are all based on specific crime scenes that he attended.”
The two men developed a close creative relationship, with Webber visiting Harris in Miami to work on the script. “It’s actually hard to get him out of the house; he is a private man. So it was a privilege to be admitted into his home,” says Webber. Their exchange of ideas continued throughout the production: “We were in constant communication on the phone. Every evening when I got back, I wrote him emails as I prepared for the next day. I have a problem with this line, I want to change this or that.”
Martha De Laurentiis confirms the immense value of the writer’s close involvement: “Thomas was always accessible and we always kept him updated on what we were doing. He certainly did so much more than a screenwriter or an author normally does. It wouldn’t be Hannibal Rising without Thomas Harris’ constant input.”
There was still a real challenge in conveying the complexity of the storytelling in just 16 weeks of shooting. “Every thing that Hannibal does needs screen time to create impact,” Martha explains, “You can’t shoot tension and all of the delicious details of the character quickly, you can’t do it in two shots, you need time to establish it, get closer and enjoy it, setting all that up, so it honors the screenwriter and the screenplay.”
One of the issues they had to deal with was how to manage the audience’s engagement with the savage serial killer. Webber says: “Can you be sympathetic towards a psychopathic murderer? I’m interested in building something that is psychologically complex, where you are taken on a journey and have feelings for someone. I would say that in our film maybe you don’t have as much sympathy for Hannibal at the end as you do at the beginning, but you do understand why he ends up the way he does. Maybe that’s what’s true about all tragedies – it’s about that fatal flaw in a character, the one thing that brings a great person to their knees.”
For Webber, Hannibal Rising was the most ambitious project he’d undertaken: “The scale of this one is very different. We’ve got big battle scenes, a number of murders. The budget is considerably bigger than my last film and so there’s a much greater sense of responsibility.” However, he was undaunted by the challenge. “The tone of the story is different but you are using the same tools; you just use them in a different way.”
The Cast of Hannibal Rising
Casting the central role of young Hannibal was critical to the film. Producer Dino De Laurentiis describes how they searched for a long time to find the right person: “We couldn’t find a face with the right kind of mystery. We needed a young guy who looked like he could kill, but also someone who could be charming.”
Gaspard Ulliel had already completed A Very Long Engagement when he came to Dino De Laurentiis’ attention. “I saw the face of this young star and I thought this is it! We met with Gaspard in Paris, Peter did a screen test with him at my house and it was all up there on the screen, his intensity, his look. I remember I said ‘Gaspard, you were born to be Hannibal Lecter!’”
Peter Webber was just as certain: “It comes down to a gut feeling. I watched Gaspard’s screen test and I thought, this is the only person that I am compelled to watch for two hours. There’s something very special about him. He’s got something dark.” This instinct was confirmed as they began preparing the character together. “We sent him to a morticians because I wanted him to really understand how it feels to work with dead bodies,” explains Webber. “He enjoyed it so much that he wanted to go back for a second day! It was at that moment I realised I’d made the right decision. There is just something that little bit damaged about him, which is just fantastic!”
Ulliel was aware from the first that he would be judged against previous incarnations of the role. “To walk in Anthony Hopkin’s footsteps is a very daunting prospect,” he admits. “I watched the other films a lot and looked at how he moves and performs- how he blinks his eyes. I learnt many things from watching his performance, but I soon realized that the job was not to imitate him exactly, even if it was right to take some of the small details from his performance and add them to this character.
“I had to try and find the character within me and make it different,” he continues. “We are dealing with a different person. He’s much younger, he hasn’t experienced the same things, he hasn’t been hardened by his time in prison at this stage. I was also interested in the real evolution of the character. We see him discover his dark side through his medical training as well as through his first murders. There is a crescendo during the movie as he finds killing and eating people addictive. So, by the end of the film, I am getting closer to Anthony Hopkin’s way of thinking and speaking as Hannibal and I take more from his performance.”
For Ulliel, the biggest challenge was the relationship between Hannibal and Lady Murasaki. “In the three previous Hannibal films, you see Hannibal in lots of different situations, but rarely in contact with a woman in this way, having those kinds of feelings. It appears like a romance, but it is much more. He learns a great deal from Lady Murasaki and there is a real exchange. She helps to build his character and is the only comfort to him through his childhood. I wanted to bring over this complexity of feelings. I was prepared for the killing scenes, as I’d thought hard about them. It was the first thing I worked on. The more simple scenes are somehow harder for me – to come back and use simple dialogue and actions for the everyday Hannibal.”
Ulliel prepared for the role with his own research into the character’s motivation and found that Hannibal had an unusual psychology for a serial killer. “I read the three books by Thomas Harris and I also read a number of books about serial killers that were written by criminal profilers. They were hard to read, really shocking, but interesting too. Hannibal behaves in a different way than most serial killers, whose attacks are often linked to sexual meaning and feelings. There is usually some element of sexual relief, which is absent from Hannibal’s killings.”
Webber also helped with the research, Ulliel continues, “Peter gave me some DVDs of films which illustrated the atmosphere he wanted. He also had me look at some Asian samurai sword movies as there are some scenes in this film which are very Japanese in context.”
Ulliel was guided through the challenging murder scenes by the careful preparation and choreography of stunt coordinator Lee Sherwood. “I start putting the fights together on day one,” Sherwood explains. “I also get the actors involved, because every one of them will have their way of doing something, they’ll want to do it left-handed or right-handed or they’ll want to move in a way that they feel fits with their character. We get them involved in the action at the very early stages and I must say that the actors on this film have all been very, very good to work with.”
Playing the mysterious Lady Murasaki is Gong Li, China’s most famous actress. Gong Li made her name working with the renowned director Zhang Yimou on such films as Red Sorghum and Raise The Red Lantern. She continued to perform in internationally acclaimed Chinese films throughout the 1990s, recently moving to Hollywood in Memoirs of A Geisha. Producer Martha De Laurentiis is enthusiastic about their star: “Gong Li is able to emote in her face, in her eyes, she doesn’t need words. She’s the kind of film actress that you only come upon once in a decade, someone who has great depth of intelligence combined with incredible ability as an actress, as a film star.”
Following her acclaimed performance in Memoirs of A Geisha, Gong Li is at ease playing another Japanese character: “The most important thing for me is the character of the woman; whether she is Japanese or Chinese is not important to me. It’s all about the character that I am playing and in this case how strong and interesting a woman she is.”
“She is a very mysterious woman,” she continues. “She is lonely but also strong. She is able to gain so much strength from her culture, for instance in the way that she worships the armor of her ancestors every day. She has her good side as well as her bad side. She understands Hannibal and what they have in common is a painful background. She knows that Hannibal has suffered a lot in his childhood and she has also suffered. She tries to use her good side to bring him out of his darkness. The problem is that it is too late.”
Like the rest of the cast, Gong-Li feels proud to be part of the iconic Hannibal legacy: “I have seen all of the other Hannibal films. My favorite is Silence of the Lambs, especially the performances of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. I just really appreciate how they use their eyes to convey so much. I really like this film and have seen it many, many times.”
Peter Webber almost lost Gong Li because of scheduling difficulties. “Gong Li was shooting Miami Vice which overran and we had to change our schedule,” says Webber. “It caused all sorts of problems but it was worth the wait. Every minute that she is on screen is a moment of truth and beauty. She’s so subtle but so strong. She is an actress who is at the top of her powers.”
Amongst the other members of the powerful cast is versatile Welsh actor Rhys Ifans (Enduring Love, Vanity Fair) who plays Grutas, the leader of the army deserters that kill Hannibal’s sister. “I think the other men in the gang are victims of the war but Grutus is a psychopath,” says Ifans. “He doesn’t have any remorse at all about killing the little girl, whereas the other guys might. He relishes handing out punishment and pain. It is a dark world, but Peter gives it a grace. It starts as a war film and then it goes into film noir. I think it is a graceful film and that’s obviously due to Peter and also Ben Davis the director of photography. It is beautifully lit and there are a lot of really wonderful shadows to step in and out of, it feels good.”
He is equally positive about the casting of Hannibal: “I think the choice of Gaspard is brilliant. You could not, and should not, be looking for a young Anthony Hopkins, but Gaspard has certainly brought to it the sense of mischief that Hopkins had. I think this is the key to Hannibal Lecter. He is charming and a man of taste and he certainly does have that kind of aristocratic air about him, which is very scary.”
The Look of Hannibal Rising
The look of the film was always going to be hugely important in conveying the tension and trauma of the story. Director of Photography Ben Davis, whose credits include Imagine Me and You and Layer Cake, was responsible for translating Webber’s ideas into a visual style. “The great thing about this film is it has so many different textures,” says Davis. “It has different seasons, different moods, and different time periods. Also our lead character changes fundamentally from the beginning to the end, so the look of the film shifts with him.”
The story gave Davis the opportunity to explore different moods, something he relished: “Visually the film follows Hannibal’s journey, starting in Lithuania in the war, which is a very dark time in his life, reflected in a very dark, de-saturated, grainy look. There are a lot of shadows, a lot of blacks. Then he escapes Eastern Europe, crosses the border, and comes into post war France. It’s very claustrophobic at the beginning and then opens up when he escapes. We are outside for the first time, so there are more wide shots to convey a sense of freedom. And because that seems to me to be the only part of his life which is in any way nice, the colors become warmer.”
The final, violent crescendo of the film was a creative challenge to light. “It’s a sort of a descent into insanity, which is reflected in style, as the film becomes more and more film noir. Peter is a fantastic choice of director for this project because he has, like Gaspard, a sense of the macabre about him. There are scenes in the film that need to be handled very subtly and he’s done that, and he’s brought something new to the Hannibal films. There’s a subtlety to his approach which is key.”
Ben Davis’ lighting skill is certainly appreciated by the performers. “Ben is a great cinematographer,” says Ulliel, “the light is amazing. This is really important in a film like this, because it creates the atmosphere of suspense and fear.”
Production designer Allan Starski, who won an Academy Award for his work on Schindler’s List and received numerous nominations and awards for The Pianist, was charged with creating the look of the film. Starski took his first inspiration from the script: “Thomas Harris’ knowledge is fantastic and this really helped me because his descriptions are so good.”
Both Webber and Starski wanted to introduce as much reality as they could into the scenes of the Second World War. Webber explains: “Our props look real. For example, the Russian tank looks shabby, it’s got a bike tied to the back of it, it’s got cans of paint. It’s not nice and pristine which is what you often see in war movies. Allan grew up in Poland during the communist era and he’s old enough to remember the world war. That’s great because he can bring that level of authenticity to the film.”
Starski’s concern over authenticity even influenced how he had the sets painted. “Lady Murasaki’s Paris apartment is very elegant but it’s her father’s apartment and we should believe that it has history,” he explains. “Therefore even the walls must be true to the history and look like they were painted eight years ago not four days ago. I want to show the process of aging with the layers of paint.”
This striving for perfection was appreciated by the performers, as Stephen Walters, who plays Milko, explains: “Being surrounded by such authentic sets really helps the actors. For my death scene in the water tank, they filled the tank with body parts. That creates a reality before you’ve even started acting. The attention to the detail is amazing.”
That focus on authenticity was shared by costume designer Anna Sheppard, re-teamed with Allan Starski following her Oscar-nominated work on Schindler’s List and The Pianist. For the character of Hannibal, subtlety was the key. “Gaspard’s got the most amazing face and he plays a lot with his eyes so the costumes on him are different enough to show his change of age but not to distract from his performance. We used the costumes and the make-up to show how Hannibal’s character develops as the film progresses. When Hannibal first arrives in France, we kept a boyish look and used a lot of light colours and original clothing from the fifties, but when he goes to Paris his clothes become more streamlined and more severe. The last sequence is played just in a black polo neck, which really shows off his face and his slicked back hair. He looks very menacing.”
Sheppard was delighted to be dressing Gong Li. “We used a very stylised Japanese element in her dressing gowns, the shape of her kimono. I managed to find some original kimonos from the forties. The moment we move from the chateau, which was her husband’s home, to the family home in Paris, she becomes a very chic Parisian, and the older Japanese element practically disappears.”
Gong Li’s busy schedule did present some challenges: “It was quite nerve racking because I met her just once when I went to Miami to discuss her character, then I didn’t see her until she arrived on set,” explains Sheppard. “All her costumes were made without fittings, so there were a lot of alterations. I was dreading it slightly, but she was fantastic, putting on costumes she had never seen and then going straight out on scene – it worked out perfectly.”
Peter Webber is keenly aware that however individual the performances and however unique the look of the film, Hannibal Rising will be measured against the films that have come before it. “There are things both in the script and the performances where we tip our hats to those previous films, but the nature of this film is very different,” he says. “It’s a European story rather than an American story, it’s not a psychological thriller in the same way, it’s more of a suspenseful drama – more of a Gothic Western than the others. I hope that what we do is something quite separate and quite distinctive.”
Production notes provided by MGM, The Weinstein Company.
Hannibal Rising
Starring: Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans, Richard Brake, Kevin McKidd, Ingeborga Dapkunaite
Directed by: Peter Webber
Screenplay by: Thomas Harris
Release Date: February 9, 2007
MPAA Rating: R for strong grisly violent content and language / sexual references.
Studio: MGM, Weinstein Company
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $27,670,986 (33.7%)
Foreign: $54,498,898 (66.3%)
Total: $82,169,884 (Worldwide)