Thursday, July 15, 2010

A Genuine Taste For It


You should probably know that I’m a pretty dull person with relatively boring taste in things that can sometimes fall right in line with the mainstream. I think CHEERS is the best sitcom ever, to me THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY is the funniest film the Farrelly Brothers have ever made and I may as well admit that in all honesty when it comes to films based on the novels of Thomas Harris I prefer Jonathan Demme’s THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS to Michael Mann’s MANHUNTER. Demme’s film was justifiably deemed a classic so quickly that it’s allowed the hardcore auteurists out there to pick up the slack in favor of the earlier film. It’s probably helped that Mann’s career has come a long way in the past few decades while Demme’s career has gone in other directions away from the mainstream, clearly showing that the man’s interests lie elsewhere (speaking for myself I can respect someone who marches to their own drummer but still feel that Demme’s post-SILENCE career has to be one of the biggest disappointments of the past twenty years of film). THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was of course a massive hit (domestic gross: $130 million), won five Oscars including Best Picture and so much of it has seeped into pop culture that its most famous elements have long since crossed the line into parody. In contrast, MANHUNTER, based on the novel “Red Dragon”, is the more sedate procedural, critically respected but a box office disappointment (domestic gross: $8.6 million), eschewing blatant serial killer thrills for instead attempting to truly examine how such things get under your skin and doesn’t necessarily deliver in the way you might expect. It also offers a presentation of its most famous character in a way that, whatever else you might want to say about it, doesn’t offer much interpretation for spoofing.


At least part of my preference is due to my own personal experience. Seeing THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS on its opening weekend back in February 1991 was an electric experience of the sort that I have rarely experienced in a theater before or since, where I genuinely felt a charge through the audience as if it was witnessing something truly exciting, truly memorable. That memory is certainly an emotional response for me, a feeling I retain to this day and such a reaction is not something that MANHUNTER, released less than five years earlier in August 1986 by DEG, ever goes for—it’s not so much a more intellectual approach as it is a clinical one and while it doesn’t work as well for me its best moments are there, unavoidable, in some cases unexplainable. And yet those scenes and moments never quite coalesce into a whole as effective as some of it truly is. With MANHUNTER’s reputation growing through the years along with the status of its director the film recently screened at the New Beverly for a Saturday midnight show. As it turned out, I didn’t think the movie exactly came off as ideal for the late hour—it may actually be the quietest serial killer movie ever made, the famous use of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” excepted, but even in this context getting to study some of these images on the big screen had its own rewards.


Retired FBI specialist Will Graham (William Petersen) who has the ability to think just like the killers who he pursues is talked into coming back to the job for one more case by his former boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) against the wishes of wife Molly (BRAZIL’s Kim Greist) to help catch a serial killer who has been snidely dubbed the ‘Tooth Fairy’ who has been known to brutally kill entire families. Graham’s investigation includes him having to meet with Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox) a brilliant psychopath whose capture was the reason for Graham leaving in the first place. As Will continues to pursue the Tooth Fairy he once again has to deal with these feelings he has been able to keep buried as his family is suddenly forced to go into hiding and the Tooth Fairy himself, actually named Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan) finds himself falling in love with a beautiful blind co-worker Reba McClane (Joan Allen) who he thinks may be his one chance at a normal life.


It diminishes both films to compare them so directly and the two directors are different enough in their basic approaches that it really seems pointless--one imagines Mann and Demme not having enough in common to carry a conversation over dinner, let alone taking source material that shares certain characters and approaching them in the same way. In comparison to Demme’s much more humanistic approach with the Bernard Herrmann-like power of Howard Shore’s score, MANHUNTER is much quieter, introspective as if its trying to force us into paying attention to what’s happening—its opening credits are just a few steps close to being totally silent as if reminding the audience to listen (and look) closely for the next two hours. MANHUNTER has appeared in several different versions over the years including a single network airing back in the nineties which nonsensically retitled it RED DRAGON: THE PURSUIT OF HANNIBAL LECTER in order to capitalize on the growing Lecter popularity. The different cuts (even reading up on the film I can’t tell how many there really are. Four? Five? Six?) seen on tape, disc and cable in addition to the original theatrical release are par for the course for Mann who never seems to tire of tinkering with his films past the point of theatrical release (I imagine him at home right now, recutting some section of THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS for a new Blu-Ray release. Does he work on old STARSKY AND HUTCH scripts too?). Since I’m not an expert on this film like some people are I couldn’t state all the differences but I certainly noticed that the 2001 Anchor Bay DVD I’m checking out as I write this for reference is missing what for me seeing it at the New Beverly was a key point of dialogue spoken by Will Graham, providing a point of clarity to his feelings on who he’s pursuing (“As a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster. But as an adult... as an adult, he's irredeemable…”) so the whims of Mann in reworking his films clearly know no end of frustrations. The degree of obsession his films express makes this understandable but no matter what, MANHUNTER, watching it at home or at the New Beverly, is always MANHUNTER. It’s a work that at times reaches almost masterful levels yet I constantly feel at a distance from it as if a silk screen is in the way preventing me from reaching some further understanding of it all.


Maybe Kubrick is an obvious point of comparison in its portrayal of obsession but more than that the film puts me in the mind of William Friedkin and not just because Petersen had just starred in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. the previous year. Actually, it’s not even that the style of MANHUNTER feels all that much like Friedkin but there is a certain attention to detail as well as the basic idea of observing process which causes certain moments to stick out—those crime scene photos left out on the plane so the young girl gets an unfortunate look at them is one, or Graham somehow trying to focus on the grass in front of him after the trauma of his meeting with Lecktor--but I feel distanced from the cool style, stark angles with architecture to match, the overwhelming feeling of Blue & White that screams some of my least favorite traits of the eighties (I never got into the MIAMI VICE TV show all that much back in the day either—maybe I’ve got a mental block to this type of thing) along with some music that works great and some that is, for me, the worse the decade has to offer such as the song “Heartbeat” over the end credits, for one. It causes me to mentally check out on occasion, wondering if this is deliberately elliptical storytelling or if we’re just missing a reel of vital info, searching for that extra layer just as I get lost in gazing at those birds flapping behind Petersen in one of his reveries as the character gazes at his wife. Part of Mann’s M.O. seems to be to avoid the expected suspense at certain points and the late appearance of Joan Allen’s surprisingly forward character throws us just as it throws Dollarhyde—we don’t know what to make of this expression of seeming warmth any more than he does. Elements like this mean that I always feel like I’m studying MANHUNTER more than watching it. This isn’t a bad thing at all but there are points where I wonder if there aren’t a few drawbacks.


The fractured narrative of MANHUNTER, screenplay adaptation written by Mann, includes not introducing its ‘villain’ until nearly the halfway point but even if the already incarcerated Lecter/Lektor character didn’t happen to become much more famous later on (in a film which used the spelling of the character from the original novel), it’s possible that the Tooth Fairy would still be overshadowed by the handful of appearances of Dr. Hannibal Lecktor as played by Brian Cox. With only a fraction of the screen time Anthony Hopkins had in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, a performance which became legend by the end of that film’s opening weekend, Cox brings a chilly force to his few minutes, a power that is unexplainable in its own way—several years after I first saw this film for the first time on cable just about all I remembered was the calm, chilly power he has in casually getting Will Graham’s home address during the phone call scene. If it were his only appearance it might be considered one of the best one-scene performances of all time but his earlier meeting with Graham is almost as powerful in how the two actors play it (his third scene, where he and Graham confer via phone late in the film, isn’t at all bad but doesn’t feel quite so essential to me, maybe because the narrative has moved past Lecktor by that point). The humor of this character, tossed off as he places a stick of gum in his mouth feels almost offhand, just as any of the spare pieces humor in the film does, like the technician who offers, “You’re so sly, but so am I,” when making a discovery, which I know was once said by Phil Hartman on an episode of NEWSRADIO.


With the meaning of the Red Dragon and its relation to Dollarhyde that the novel took its title from (for the record, I’ve read the books of SILENCE and HANNIBAL but never this one so all I have to go on is my perception of the film) feeling like it has been de-emphasized in accordance to its removal from the title (the existence of certain stills indicate how much was really shot to tie into the mythos) it seems to mean that when Dollarhyde’s death pose recalls the look of the Dragon doesn’t have as much resonance as it probably intended to at one stage. The point of MANHUNTER appears to be observing the process of how these characters studiously move through this case to a point where its no longer safe for their own stability, but Mann as director also somewhat makes it about his own experimentations with structure, with periods of silence and oblique jump cuts in the climax (not as noticeable in the print as it’s always been on video for me, but maybe it was the late hour). He’s not interested in the machinations of the plot as much as examining what this is all doing to the character of Will Graham as he studies this case of a killer who invades white upper middle class households. It’s a world that I imagine Graham would like he and wife Molly to be a part of, but it’s not something he’s able to do and his tiny beachfront house with no backyard (how the Tooth Fairy seems to gain access to each of the homes he invades) feels appropriately like a place to hide out from the world. Mann prominently focuses on the trauma that the lead character once went through and is now going through again, feelings he articulates to his son played by David Seaman in the strangest supermarket scene ever shot and even if it didn’t contain the most distracting continuity errors in the history of film it would still feel like these several minutes are more about the Kubrickian prominence of the cereal boxes behind William Petersen more than anything the two are discussing. It doesn’t help but the child actor playing the son isn’t particularly good either (among other non-actors distractingly sprinkled throughout the film) and it occurs to me that all of the strengths and weaknesses in the film are best exemplified in this one scene. A foreground we desire to pay attention to in danger of being overwhelmed by a background that for reasons which come off as mysterious makes its presence known whether it should or not. It winds up revealing the best and worst of what Michael Mann is capable as a director, all in what would in most other director’s hands be a simple dialogue scene. I’ll gladly state that I worship at the altar of HEAT, THE INSIDER as well as parts of COLLATERAL and don’t wish to hear from anyone saying otherwise…but there are times in some of his other films where the flaws that result in spite of (or is it because of?) his obsessive quest for perfection are impossible to ignore. They’re just as clear in the frame as those damn cereal boxes.


Petersen delivers a strong conviction to the character, bringing the viewer into his eyes and selling the scenes where he does nothing but talk aloud, piecing together the puzzle, not something every actor could pull off without getting bad laughs. Greist and Farina both strong support, Tom Noonan’s inherent oddness as Dollarhyde barely seems to warrant calling him a villain…he’s just somehow other, compulsively watchable every single second he's onscreen. Stephen Lang (one of the best things in Mann’s PUNLIC ENEMIES is enjoyably sleazy as Freddy Lounds and Joan Allen is greatly effective in her relatively brief screen time, making me wonder what her character is like when she’s not suddenly finding herself in a serial killer thriller. Chris Elliott turns up briefly as one of the FBI analysts (in an interview years later he confessed to feeling bad that his presence may have caused some unfortunate laughter), Benjamin Hendrickson brings some intriguing officiousness to his brief portrayal of Dr. Chilton (an extra Chilton scene exists, just not cut into the film) and Frankie Faison, Barney the orderly in the three Lecter films with Hopkins, is seen as Lt. Fisk. A number of bit players seem to be non-actors, some more distracting than others in their appearances—this is one of those areas that I think Friedkin succeeds at more.


Even if I feel somewhat resistant to it, the nature of what Mann and cinematographer Dante Spinotti achieve with their framing of these stark images is at times impossible to shake and reminds me of Tarantino’s comment spoken once at the New Beverly that when Michael Mann went all-digital we lost him as an artist. Whatever my feelings on its drawbacks, the film’s approach to the serial killer format has been influential—I’m no fan of the TV show CRIMINAL MINDS but I see much more MANHUNTER in there than SILENCE (For the record, I haven’t brought up Brett Ratner’s RED DRAGON, the film that remade this with Hopkins because, really what’s the point?). Taken on its own, MANHUNTER exists as a record of Mann’s style in development on its way to greatness which hadn’t revealed itself yet. If there’s something in there I don’t respond to it may be me, it may be the film. It may be my own expectations or even limitations. Or maybe I just haven’t looked closely enough yet. But, like every film I encounter, I can only really judge what I see with my own eyes.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

"missing what for me seeing it at the New Beverly was a key point of dialogue spoken by Will Graham, providing a point of clarity to his feelings on who he’s pursuing (“As a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster. But as an adult... as an adult, he's irredeemable…”)"

Well said! I was upset that Mann removed this crucial bit as well. I daresay it is Petersen's finest moment in the film and really underlines what Noonan's character is all about. Maybe Mann felt that it spelled things out too much? I dunno. Fortunately, MGM released a widescreen version of the theatrical version on DVD that has that bit intact (I think I have 3 different DVDs of MANHUNTER now).

I appreciate what you're saying about MANHUNTER vs. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS but I think why I prefer Mann's take on Lector over Demme's all comes down to Anthony Hopkins' overtly theatrical flourishes. Maybe it's because, as you say, his performance has become parodied and imitated and quoted to death while Brian Cox's performance still flies under the radar. Cox uses restraint and minimalism so well in this film. His Lector is polite to the point of cheeriness but there is a menace seething under the surface, a superiority complex like he feels (and knows) that everyone else is below him.

I will admit that the soundtrack is pretty awful (Iron Butterfly excepted) and really dates the film in a bad way but I think that it is more than redeemed by the stellar performances (I actually like the kid who plays Graham's son) and moody, atmospheric cinematography.

le0pard13 said...

Another of your wonderful expositions, Mr. Peel. And J.D.'s comment is spot on. He and I both share a great admiration for Thomas Harris' source book, too. I highly recommend that read -- it was the progenitor and started the wave of charismatic and diabolical serial killers that have inundated novels, film and TV over the last three decades (if you're interested, I did a recent post on it). I certainly can sit through the different versions of this film. I can't say the same for Brett Ratner's 2002 remake, though. Thanks very much for this.

Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellino said...

J.D.--

I didn't know that the bit was on the MGM release--that's why I felt I had to specify which two versions I was working off of because I couldn't be sure there weren't more differences!

I totally get what you're saying about Cox and those are definitely some strengths the film has. That the music doesn't seriously damage it says a lot about how effective much of it is.

le0pard13--

Many thanks for the kind words. Maybe I will have to get around to the book one of these days. My recollection of the Ratner film--really, by a certain point in writing this I was conciously avoiding looking at any of it--is that it's pretty much a piece of hackwork that apes the Demme film so much it never achieves its own identity...but as pieces of hackwork go, I guess I've seen worse. Maybe that the basic story is pretty strong helps. Right now, I don't have any plans to revisit it.

Scott Bradley said...

Lovely piece, as always, Mr. Peel. And, for anyone who's interested, I'm actually co-authoring a monograph on MANHUNTER. My collaborator, Professor Philip Simpson (who just published the first definitive scholarly study of Thomas Harris's novels, called MAKING MURDER), was in fact able to fly in from Florida to attend the New Beverly screening (he had never seen the film on the big screen, and I'd only seen it once before on the big screen - back in 1986!). I think Mr. Peel quite nicely articulates why MANHUNTER is an ambivalent experience for so many viewers, and the differences between it and LAMBS. Great stuff, as always!

Guillaume said...

Yes great stuff Mr Peel!

MANHUNTER is one of my favorite films and Mann one of my very favorite directors.
William Petersen and Tom Noonan's performances are incredible,i think,and i was glad to catch a screening of this underrated film,last year at the Mann tribute in Paris (i also saw during this big screen tribute: THIEF,THE KEEP,THE JERICHO MILE and THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS).

Unlike you,i think that the 80's soundtrack is effective,especially the Shriekback tracks (all these great scenes between Tom Noonan and Joan Allen),but i agree that the final track "Heartbeat" is quite dated.
Mann's use of Cinemascope and locations is also pretty striking,enhanced by the beautiful work of Dante Spinotti.
I can't wait to have this gem on Blu Ray!

Anonymous said...

I thought Michael Mann butchered "Red Dragon" when I saw it on the big screen back in 1986. The book is one of the scariest thrillers I've ever read and the film was a massive disappointment -- then. However, as time has passed, and a few more viewings, I've come to really like the film, especially William Peterson's performance. As you note the film has its flaws, but, I prefer it to "Silence of the Lambs" as it seems more fittingly deranged (though I don't have any real complaints with "Silence", either). Also, "Manhunter" features the great Dennis Farina (aka "Mike Torrello"), always a plus to any film. Mr. Peel I highly recommend the Thomas Harris novel. A masterpiece! And what the hell happened to the man who wrote "Black Sunday", "Red Dragon" & "Silence of the Lambs"? I'm a big fan of Frankenheimer's adaptation of "Black Sunday", too.

- Bob

Michael Lear said...

Excellent analysis, as always. For me, you hit it right on the head be describing the feeling of studying the film rather than watching it. I think Mann's take on this material was too stylized, but I do like the film quite a bit. The Kubrick comparison is pretty spot on, especially the Kubrick of The Shining. Both films seem sort of cold, clinical, and seem to be less interested in playing up suspense and more interested in a more clinical, intellectual approach, to varying degrees of success. I had't heard the Tarantino comment before, and if Collateral hadn't been shot on video I would probably agree with him. Public Enemies was a mess.

Ned Merrill said...

Great analysis as usual, Peel. Read the book years ago and I've seen the movie several times, but not in recent years so my memories are not as fresh as yours, but I think I respond more to it than you. Funny thing is I'm a Demme-ite overall, rather than a Mann-ite, but I enjoy and prefer the coolness and reserve of this film, embodied by the quietly evil Cox interpretation of Lecter to the overly celebrated SotL and Hopkins. As for Mann, I'm firmly in the THIEF / MANHUNTER camp rather than the '90s-era and beyond output. Agreed about Demme's disappointing post-SotL moves.

My recollections are of really enjoying those elements in MANHUNTER that many would say "scream '80s" in a bad way--the neon blue and green gels so heavily used in the cinematography and the much-discussed soundtrack. I get the criticism of "Heartbeat," but the incidental music by Michael Rubini and the Reds and, particularly, the tracks by Kitaro, Klaus Schulze (briefly of Tangerine Dream), and Shriekback serve the story well and are quite in line with the tone and style.

I was lucky enough to see a gorgeous print of MANHUNTER in '97 at the Museum of the Moving Image. In something that's never happened during any other repertory screening I've attended, an original trailer from '86 was still spliced onto the front of the print--the forgotten Bryan Browner starrer TAI-PAN. That brought a good chuckle out of the crowd, IIRC. It's a pretty good indication, as well, of how pristine and relatively un-played that print was...truly like stepping back in time 11 years!

Vic Arpeggio said...

Well said, Mr. Peel.

I saw the screening last night at the Egyptian with Michael Mann -- who answered a few cogent questions but did have to suffer through clunky queries often which didn't have anything to do with the film -- and the print was gorgeous. I hadn't studied the film as closely as I did this time out and definitely picked up on some of its flaws-- the style-for-style's sake costuming (was everything from Chess King or Merry-Go-Round?), the occasionally-obtrusive score, the infamous supermarket scene, which I think works well in what Graham is communicating to his son but is still very problematic in that you're paying more attention to the Boo-Berry and Mr. T cereal boxes than you are to Petersen.

I love a couple of the musical cues -- the synth wash that carries over a couple of key moments (including the "it's just you and me now, sport" line) and the two tracks from the '80's band Shriekback, including "Coelocanth," the haunting piece playing over Joan Allen's experience with the sedated tiger. FYI, Dan Butler, another SILENCE OF THE LAMBS performer (and best known as "Bulldog" Drummond on TV's FRASIER), shows up here as one of the FBI tech experts analyzing the toilet-tissue letter found in Lecter's cell.

The 2001 Anchor Bay DVD adds in a couple of scenes -- one where Graham scouts one of the victims' homes with a real estate agent and an important climactic moment with Patricia Charbonneau as Dollarhyde's intended victim being paid a visit by WIll Graham -- but does cut the important dialogue. The "Director's Cut" from a Showtime screening in the late '80s is taken from a full-frame, almost unwatchable video master. MGM released a standalone DVD of the theatrical cut, but the only way to get the Blu-Ray is to buy the three-disc "Hannibal Lecter" compilation that includes SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and HANNIBAL.

TheMacDotMe said...

Enjoyed your write up on this. It's been awhile since I've watched Manhunter, but I found it interesting you'd say it felt more that you were studying the film rather than watching it. The first time I saw Manhunter was when a teacher showed it in a Criminal Profiling class I took in college. He must have felt the same.

Personally, I'd much rather watch Manhunter than Silence, as I prefer the cool clinical approach over the more salacious Silence. But maybe that's because I'm a Mann fan. Either way, it's Peterson's performance as Will Graham that stuck with me ever since that first viewing. The quiet descent of the hunter down that dark psychological rabbit hole was riveting.

I'm looking forward to picking up the Bluray in September and revisiting this. And keep up the good writing work here. I quite enjoy these articles.