On this site will be posted analyses of popular media productions. These analyses will have to do with determining the underlying meanings of various movies, songs, and certain novels. Methods used to analyze a given production will include exploration of the creators' use of symbolism, allegory, metaphor, etc., and deciphering any arcane or obscure references that it may contain.
Showing posts with label Hannibal Rising (2007). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hannibal Rising (2007). Show all posts
CATEGORY: MOVIES; WARNING: THIS ANALYSIS CONTAINS SPOILERS!!
[Image at left from the Wikipedia 'Hannibal Rising (film)' page; "Hannibalrisingposter",[a] licensed under fair use via Wikipedia.]
Welcome to the analysis of Hannibal Rising. Buttons at the bottom of each post enable navigation through the parts of the analysis. Regarding the appearance of possible anti-Semitism on this blog, please see the 'Disclaimers' section near the bottom of this page.
We begin the analysis with a brief description of the film, followed by a summary of the plot up to the point of Hannibal Lecter's childhood escape from the Lecter family's hunting lodge.
Hannibal Rising is a 2007 horror film and the fifth film of the Hannibal Lecter franchise. It is a prequel to Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. The film is an adaptation of Thomas Harris' 2006 novel of the same name and tells the story of Lecter's evolution into the infamous serial killer of the previous films and books. The film was directed by Peter Webber from a screenplay by Harris, and was released in 2007. It stars Gaspard Ulliel, Li Gong (credited as Gong Li), Dominic West, and Rhys Ifans.
In 1941, an eight-year old Hannibal Lecter lives in Lecter Castle in Lithuania. Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union turns the Baltic region into part of the bloodiest front line of World War II. Hannibal, his younger sister Mischa, and their parents travel to the family's hunting lodge in the woods to elude the advancing German troops.
The Lecter family (lower right) approach their hunting lodge.
Later, the Nazis are driven out of the countries soon to be occupied by the Soviet Union. During their retreat, a German plane first attacks, then crashes into, a Soviet tank that had stopped at the Lecter family's hunting lodge looking for water. Due to the explosion and fire from the crash, everyone is killed except Hannibal and Mischa.
A German plane crashes into a Soviet tank, in the front yard of the Lecter family's hunting lodge.
Hannibal and Mischa survive in the lodge until six former Lithuanian militiamen, led by a man named Vladis Grutas, storm and loot it. Finding no other food in the bitterly cold Baltic winter, the men look menacingly at Hannibal and Mischa. They cannibalize Mischa right in front of her brother, who escapes and is found by Soviet soldiers.[b]
As with the other Hannibal Lecter movies analyzed on this blog, there is much in the way of underlying meaning in Hannibal Rising, and the movie contains a 'hidden plot' as well. We will begin exploring these aspects of the film, in the next part of the analysis.
a. Poster for Hannibal Rising: The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, The Weinstein Company / MGM, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.
b. Wikipedia, 'Hannibal Rising (film)'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Rising_(film).
Reproduction of the Prague Golem. [Image from the Wikipedia 'Golem' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]
In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms and medieval writing. The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late-16th-century rabbi of Prague. There are many tales differing on how the golem was brought to life and afterwards controlled.
The earliest stories of golems date to early Judaism. Early on, the main disability of the golem was its inability to speak.[a] Recall that Hannibal is essentially mute for a period of time, i.e., in the orphanage (above left), up until he has been with Lady Murasaki for a while (above right).
Part of the golem legend sometimes depicts the golem as eventually becoming evil, turning on society. By the end of Hannibal Rising, Hannibal has obviously become evil. In the Lecter movies that are set later than Hannibal Rising (The Silence of the Lambs, etc.) it becomes evident that Lecter, as a full adult, has turned on society, symbolizing the fact that this is what the evil hermaphroditic Jews have done.
a. Wikipedia, 'Golem'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem.
In this post, we explore the issue of why it is that Hannibal Lecter becomes a cannibal.
1) In the bible, in 1 Corinthians 12, it is said that the members of the church are like the parts of Jesus' body (1 Cor. 12:27 says, "Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it." [New International Version]). Regarding transubstantiation, the Gospel of John describes Jesus speaking to a crowd of Jews on how one can attain eternal life by partaking of his (Jesus') body and blood. Below is quoted John 6:51-56 [New International Version]:
51. [Jesus said,] "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." 52. Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" 53. Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him."
In accordance with the above, we realize that part of the reason Lecter is a cannibal, is because he wants to symbolically partake of Jesus' body and blood, by eating people (the members of the church), in order to become immortal.
2) In Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, there are listed five forms of rebirth, the fifth of which Jung calls "Participation in the process of transformation: [This is] indirect rebirth. Here the transformation is brought about not directly, by passing through death and rebirth oneself, but indirectly, by participating in a process of transformation which is conceived of as taking place outside the individual...This rite may be a ceremony such as the Mass, where there is a transformation of substances."[a] Mass is the Eucharistic celebration of the Roman Catholic Church. The basic idea is that in partaking of Jesus' blood and body, via cannibalizing people, Lecter wants to experience rebirth. Rebirth will then enable Lecter to 'see the kingdom of God', for in John verse 3:3, Jesus says to Nicodemus, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." [New International Version]
a. Jung, C. G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1. Princeton University Press, 1969. para. 205.
Antique Japanese (samurai) katana, Metropolitan Museum of Art. [Image from the Wikipedia 'Katana' page; Antique japanese katana by Emmanuel H., licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.]
There is a graphic scene in the movie in which Hannibal uses a katana sword to cut off a man's (i.e., the butcher's) head. In this post we will explore sword symbolism, but first, a description of the kantana is in order.
Historically, katana were one of the traditionally made Japanese swords that were used by the samurai of feudal Japan. Modern versions of the katana are sometimes made using non-traditional materials and methods. The katana is characterized by its distinctive appearance: a curved, slender, single-edged blade with a circular or squared guard and long grip to accommodate two hands.[a]
Above left: Hannibal holding the katana that he has just used to kill the butcher. Above right: Late in the movie, Hannibal carries a tanto, which has here been damaged by a bullet fired at him by Grutas.
The sword is considered to be a phallic symbol. In this respect, we can connect the 'evolution' throughout the movie of the 'physique' of Hannibal's sword, symbolizing his penis, with Jews who have deformed genitals due to suffering from congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a medical condition which also causes these Jews to be evil. Early in the movie, Hannibal uses a katana, which is curved. This symbolizes the curved penises of these Jews, some of whom suffer from chordee, a medical condition in which a man's penis is curved upward or downward at the junction of the head with the shaft of the penis.
By the end of our movie, Hannibal has been 'reduced' to using a tanto, a kind of short sword. This symbolizes the reduction in masculinity of the aforementioned evil Jews, reflecting their evil hermaphroditic qualities, which is not only a mix of feminine and masculine physical aspects, but a combined male/female evil as well.
Hannibal's tanto has been concealed by him underneath the jacket he is wearing, between his back and the jacket, when he boards Grutas's houseboat near the end of the movie. When Grutas fires a gunshot at Hannibal's back, Hannibal is protected by the tanto from being wounded or killed by the bullet. Hannibal's tanto itself represents the same sword he started out with (the katana he used to sever the butcher's head), but in a reduced form, as already noted. The final insult to Hannibal's metaphorical phallus is that the bullet which struck the tanto caused damage to it which is irregular and asymmetrical in form (as shown in the above right screencap). This symbolizes an irregular, asymmetrically placed urethral opening, indicating still further the deformed genitals of the evil hermaphroditic Jews (these are the specific evil Jews that Hannibal Lecter represents).
a. Wikipedia, 'Katana'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katana.
Top left: Mrs. Lecter hides some pearls in a mounted boar's head in the Lecter family hunting lodge. As she hides them she says, "pearls before swine." Hannibal is nearby. "Pearls before swine" refers to a biblical quotation from Matthew 7:6 in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, which implies that things (such as pearls) should not be placed in front of people (these people here being equated with swine), who do not appreciate their value. In that Mrs. Lecter is placing the pearls into hiding while Hannibal is present, and whom as we've said, represents certain evil Jews, the implication is that these Jews are swine, and something of value is being removed from their sight. Top right: Several years later, Hannibal returns to the ruins of the lodge and finds the pearls. The purpose of our being shown this is to recall Mrs. Lecter saying, "pearls before swine." Above left: Hannibal finds the tub Mischa was cooked in. Hannibal would have been better off not finding it, since it is the recalling of Mischa's death that later encourages him to risk his life seeking revenge on Grutas and his men. Above right: Hannibal finds the dog tags of Grutas and his men. It would be better if he had not found these, since they are what actually enables him to track down the men, placing himself in danger. The finding of the tub and the dog tags, put together with the "pearls before swine" reference, are meant to convey this: Certain evil Jews, who are swine, should never have anything of value placed before them, such as a tub in which a young child was cooked by boiling or items which once belonged to a wartime rogue band of murderers and cannibals (i.e., these evil Jew swine would consider these to be things of value).
The movie opens with a shot of a spider lurking in the center of its web.
As indicated by the above screencap, Hannibal Rising opens with a shot of a spider in a web. Spider and weaving symbolism are explained in detail in the Dictionary of Symbols:
"The spider is regarded in the first place as a lunar manifestation, devoted to spinning and weaving. While the thread is reminiscent of that of the Fates, as the Koran emphasizes, what is woven is of extreme fragility. 'But verily, frailest of all houses surely is the house of the spider' (Koran 29:40).
"This fragility evokes the fragility of a reality which is no more than illusory and deceptive appearance."[a]
The movie's spider web symbolizes that Hannibal 'lives in a glass house', so to speak.
"The Bambara...call spiders a class of initiates who have attained 'internalization, the creative power which the individual draws from meditation and intuition'[b]."[c]
"On the other hand, this internalization, suggested by the spider lurking in the middle of its web, provides the analyst with 'an excellent symbol of introversion and Narcissism, the individual swallowed by his or her own centre' (Beaudoin)."[d]
In accordance with the above, the shot of the spider in the center of its web in Hannibal Rising symbolizes, in part, the fact that Lecter is a narcissist. This, in turn, symbolizes that the evil Jews he represents, as a group, are narcissistic.
a. Dictionary of Symbols. Ed. Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, Trans. John Buchanan-Brown. London: Penguin Group, 1996. pp. 903-904.
b. Zahan, Dominique, La dialectique du verbe chez les Bambara, Paris and The Hague, 1963, p. 116.
c. Dictionary of Symbols, p. 905.
d. Ibid., p. 905.
Avove left: Contemporary blown glass and bronze ner tamid (eternal flame) by artist David Ascalon.[a] Above right: Reconstruction of the menorah of the Temple created by the Temple Institute. [Image from the Wikipedia 'Menorah (Temple)' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]
In part 3 of the analysis, it was mentioned that there is a single candle burning by Hannibal's bed in the scene in which he injects himself with thiopental (truth serum). Within a certain context, this candle represents a sanctuary lamp. A sanctuary lamp, also called an altar lamp, is a light that shines before the altar of sanctuaries in many denominations of Jewish and Christian places of worship.
In Jewish tradition In Judaism, the sanctuary lamp is known by its Hebrew name, ner tamid, which is usually translated as "eternal flame" or "eternal light." Hanging or standing in front of the ark in every Jewish synagogue, it is meant to represent the menorah of the Temple in Jerusalem as well as the continuously burning fire on the altar of burnt offerings in front of the Temple. It also symbolizes God's eternal presence, and is therefore never extinguished. They are also intended to draw parallels between God and fire, or light, which is emphasized throughout the book of Exodus in the Torah.
These lights are never allowed to dim or go out, and in the case of electric problems, often alternate emergency energy sources are used to prevent it from diminishing.
The eternal light is central to the story behind the celebration of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. When the ancient Maccabees rebelled and reclaimed the Temple in Jerusalem, they rekindled the eternal light. However, there was only oil sufficient to keep the flame burning for one day, and it took eight days to bring new oil. Miraculously, according to the story as recounted in the Talmud, the flame continued to burn until the new oil arrived.
Today, Jewish celebrations of Hanukkah include the lighting of the Hanukkah menorah or "Hanukkiyah," which has nine branches, including one for the candle used to light the eight flames (candles or wicks in oil) recalling the story.[b]
A silver Hanukkah menorah. [Image from the Wikipedia 'Menorah (Hanukkah)' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]
Recall from part 3 of the analysis that the Hannibal Lecter's surname originates in an Ashkenazi Jewish occupational surname, Lichter, meaning someone who made candles or possibly someone who tended a light. The fact that the candle in the young Hannibal's room, which represents a ner tamid and thus a Jewish menorah, goes out at the moment when Hannibal awakens from his flashback, represents, in accordance with the above, the idea that God is 'no longer present', i.e., that by at least this point, Hannibal has no trace of God left in him. Hannibal Lecter, in fact, represents evil Jews, and the symbolism of the candle going out indicates that God is no longer present in these Jews, i.e., the evil Jews Hannibal represents have no trace of God left in them.
a. Image from the Wikipedia 'Sanctuary lamp' page; David Ascalon - Ner Tamid, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia.
b. Wikipedia, 'Sanctuary lamp'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_lamp.
A candle is shown burning in Hannibal's room at Lady Murasaki's house, just before Hannibal injects himself with truth serum.
The surname Lecter is related to the name Lechter, which is derived from the name Lichter. Lichter is a German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) occupational surname for someone who made candles or possibly for someone who tended a light, from an agent derivative of from Middle High German lieht, Yiddish likht 'candle', 'light'.[a] Due to this name symbolism, we see that Hannibal Lecter represents Jews, within some context.
We note that in the scene in the movie in which the young Hannibal injects himself with truth serum so that he can recall information that might help him apprehend Grutas, there is a candle burning in Hannibal's room (as shown in the above screencap). At the moment of Hannibal's flashback to the point at which he was rescued (as a boy) in the snow, after having escaped from Grutas and his men at the Lecters' hunting lodge, we observe that at the exact point at which one of his rescuers cuts a chain that had been placed around Hannibal's body by Grutas's men, Hannibal awakens from the flashback, and the candle, which has by now fully burned down, goes out. The symbolic meaning of Hannibal's candle going out, will be discussed in part 4.
Above: Hannibal awakens from his drug-induced dream (left), at the exact moment of his recollection of the chain around his neck being cut after he had escaped from the childhood hunting lodge (right).
a. Ancestry, Lichter Family History: Lichter Name Meaning. Web, n.d. URL = http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=lichter.
The other Hannibal Lecter movies that have been analyzed on this blog (Manhunter, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal) have all been found to contain 'hidden plots', that is, there are things going on beneath the surface of these movies, that the audience does not see. This is also true of Hannibal Rising, and its hidden plot is discussed in the below.
Near the beginning of the film, while Grutas and his men were in the Lecter family's hunting lodge (above left), one of them discovered Hannibal's identity from a scrapbook that was there (above right). After the cannibalization of Mischa, and Hannibal's subsequent escape from the hunting lodge (and then later, the orphanage), he arrived at Murasaki's residence (below left). While he was there, Murasaki found out what happened at the lodge, by overhearing Hannibal talking about the incident in his sleep (below right), and she decided that she would enable Hannibal to get revenge on Grutas and his men.
Murasaki began to carry out her plan by training Hannibal to be what one could describe as a warrior (above left). She then set up things so that Hannibal killed a butcher, to cap off his training: Lady M. went with Hannibal to the market where the butcher worked, knowing that the butcher would insult her, as he had done in the past (as indicated by the fact that he knew she was Japanese). One clue that Murasaki pre-planned for Hannibal to confront the butcher, was that during the scuffle in the market, she turned out to be carrying a knife (above right), which she used to keep another man at bay while Hannibal and the butcher were fighting (below left). Later, Hannibal went looking for the butcher, found him near a lake, fought him (below right), and then beheaded him with a sword.
Not long after Hannibal killed the butcher, inspector Popil made his first visit to Murasaki's residence (as shown at left), to investigate the butcher's death.
Murasaki later provided Hannibal with an alibi for the butcher's killing - recall the butcher's severed head being discovered gored on a post (above left), in a scenario such that it could not possibly have been placed by Hannibal (which, in fact, it was not - it was instead placed by Murasaki). The intended next step was for Hannibal to go after Grutas and his men. Hannibal returned to the ruins of the hunting lodge, and found their dog tags (above right).
Later, when the inspector made what appeared (to the Hannibal Rising audience) to be only his second visit to Murasaki (as shown at left), he said on arriving, "This isn't a social call." This was ostensibly only his way of indicating that he had come over to discuss serious matters (which he had). However, another implication of his statement was that there had been additional visits since Popil and Murasaki's first meeting (these visits having been hidden from the film's audience), which were social in nature. The point is that for some time prior to this supposed second visit, Murasaki and the inspector had been having a sexual relationship. Evidence that Lady M. knew more about Popil than it seemed she could have, based only on the first meeting between the two, includes there being certain things she said to Popil during this (again, supposed) second visit, which indicated that she already knew he had lost family during the war. The implication is that he must have told her this during one of his intervening 'social calls'. At some point while the two were together, prior to this 'second' meeting, Murasaki let Popil know what Grutas and his men had done at the Lecter hunting lodge. Eventually, Popil convinced her to let him bring Grutas and his men to justice, rather than let Hannibal kill them.
The plan established between Popil and Murasaki included her being a spy in Grutas's camp. She developed a sexual relationship with Grutas, with the idea having been to get information out of him which could later be used to convict him as a war criminal. Later, Grutas kidnapped her (see screencap at left), with his idea having been that he could draw Hannibal into a trap.
In the sequence of scenes on Grutas's houseboat at the film's end, it appeared Lady M. was in impending danger of being killed by Grutas. While Hannibal, who had been able to board the houseboat, was walking along a passageway approaching Grutas's cabin (above left), Grutas went inside an adjoining area (above right) so that Hannibal would not see him. Then, as soon as Hannibal entered Grutas's cabin, Grutas appeared from behind him and fired a single gunshot (below left), which appeared to strike Hannibal in his back; but, Hannibal was protected from the bullet by a weapon (a tanto, which is a kind of short sword), that he had hidden underneath his jacket (the tanto with a bullet hole in it is shown at below right).
Following the above, Hannibal turned the tables on Grutas, physically incapacitating him by slicing his Achilles tendons (above left). Murasaki's hands had been only tied loosely behind her back (above right). Lecter himself didn't notice this until after he had disabled Grutas, and by then, he was set on killing him; so he wasn't particularly worried at this point about whether Mursaki was trying to deceive him in some way.
In the above-described final showdown between Hannibal and Grutas, the culmination of which is shown at left (with Hannibal on top of Grutas, whom he then kills), Lady M. needed to have Hannibal win the confrontation, and quickly; for if inspector Popil arrived before or during the confrontation between the two men, and arrested Grutas, then later, the press and/or some other party might have found out about the aforementioned sexual relationship between Murasaki and Grutas, and that Murasaki and Popil had been working together, and had themselves been having a sexual relationship. Popil would have been called out for using unethical methods to apprehend Grutas. Note that by the time of the confrontation between Grutas and Hannibal, Grutas was the last member of his gang still living (besides a man who had escaped to Canada, whom Hannibal kills at the movie's ending).
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Saint Augustine's Confessions andCity of God from Wikisource (except where otherwise noted); portions from Wikisource used on this blog are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica from the 'Logos Virtual Library' website (except where otherwise noted), compiled and edited by Darren L. Slider; believed to be in public domain.
[Image at left from the Wikipedia 'Hannibal Rising (film)' page; "Hannibalrisingposter",[a] licensed under fair use via Wikipedia.]
