Tag Archives: Hugh Dancy

Apr 01

“Hannibal”: On New TV Show He’s Not-Yet-Known-to-Be Cannibal

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Premiering this coming Thursday at 10 P.M. on NBC is a new series called Hannibal.

That’s Hannibal Lecter, known to many from The Silence of the Lambs (1991), the most popular of the films featuring this character. In it psychiatrist Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) is the imprisoned cannibal killer who taunts young FBI cadet Clarice (Jodie Foster) as she enlists his aid regarding another case.

Who can forget Lecter’s final words? Now a prison escapee, he’s on the phone with Clarice. Lecter: “I do wish we could chat longer, but…I’m having an old friend for dinner…”

And another quote from the movie has likely sent a major chill down the spines of therapists and therapy clients everywhere:

Clarice: If you didn’t kill him, then who did, sir?

Hannibal Lecter: Who can say. Best thing for him, really. His therapy was going nowhere.

Hannibal the new TV series offers a prequel kind of twist on Lecter. As described by Slash Film, “Hannibal follows Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) in their early days — back before the FBI profiler knew that the famed psychiatrist was actually a cannibalistic killer.” Lecter is a forensic specialist working for the FBI in some capacity. Graham’s boss is Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne), head of Behavioral Sciences at the FBI.

And Lecter’s not the only shrink on board. There’s also a female psych professor who’s a consultant profiler for the FBI and there’s Lecter’s own therapist, played by Gillian Anderson.

An early review from Brian Lowry, Variety: “More than for the gruesome imagery, this is a show that cries out for cable, simply because it’s hard to envision a 22-episode broadcast run of ‘Hannibal,’ much less four or five such seasons. Besides, if Graham and Crawford let the bad doctor operate under their noses for that long, they’re not so brilliant, are they?”

Jan 13

“Martha Marcy May Marlene”: Woman Flees Abusive Cult

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A current and well-reviewed film from first-time director/screenwriter Sean Durkin is Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011). The plot according to IMDB: “Haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia, a damaged woman struggles to re-assimilate with her family after fleeing an abusive cult.” Following her escape, she winds up staying with her sister (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law (Hugh Dancy).

Explanation of the title: Lead character “Martha” is given a cult name of “Marcy May” by the cult leader and is also dubbed “Marlene” by a fellow cult victim. She’s played by Elizabeth Olsen (sister to the more famous Olsen twins), who’s received stellar reviews.

Cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes) is described thusly by reviewer Anthony Lane (The New Yorker): “Like any good cult leader, he is a terrifying parody of a father figure, intent on making his kin feel at home. He has them fed, housed, and warmly encouraged—’You’re my favorite, and I won’t lose you,’ he says to Martha. He also rapes them.”

Selected Reviews

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: “Durkin depicts a horror that some among us actually live, where the search for family leads to something familiar and dangerous.”

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Olsen inhabits Martha’s broken world completely. And at the movie’s end – a jarring, boldly ambiguous end – we’re in her head, too, not sure what is real, and what is not.”

Andrew O’Hehir, Salon: “…an utterly gripping ride that will keep you guessing until the last second about what is real and what imagined, and whether Martha has entirely snapped the tether of sanity.”

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: “It’s acted and directed like a sensitive drama, rather than a scary movie, and is all the scarier for it.”

A.O. Scott, New York Times: “[Martha] remains a blank space in the middle of a film that is an impressive piece of work without achieving quite the emotional impact it intends….Patrick periodically criticizes his disciples, including Martha, for failing to be open enough with him, and that is also a shortcoming of ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene,’ which is a bit too coy, too clever and too diffident to believe in.”