Hannibal discussion

That has beent he part of the book that has stuck with me all those years. It was even creepy in the movie.

All the Hannibal books were great, but disturbing (:

They are, but for me that took it to a whole new level. : )

Yeah, pretty gross and it was pretty well portrayed in the movie, surprisingly.

Becky, I agree. Something about the guy from 'Goodfellows' (too lazy to look up his name) gave it almost a comedic touch. : )

I thought the movie was good, not great. Julianne Moore did a good job considering she had big shoes to fill.

I found "Hannibal Rising" and "Red Dragon" movies to be entertaining and well produced (the latter being a remake of "Manhunter").

I think that being over the top is the point of 'Hannibal', and very enjoyable that is to.

Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs are awesome books. The film Manhunter is a bit dated, but very atmospheric. And I'm sure you know the movie of the sequel ;-)

I found Hannibal reminded me of reading Timescape by Michael Crichton. Both were written by authors who had not long had mega-blockbuster movies made of their works. These following books were written with the movie in mind, and I found myself feeling that many of the scenes in Hannibal were written from the camera's eye. If you are going to write a screenplay, then do that - don't disguise it as a book.

So the scene is there for the shock. I did not find it disturbing, I found it sensationalist, and it was a bad ending to a not very good book.

I agree totally, Richard. It was a cheap way to end the story and it destroyed the credibility of the detectives´character. Harris tries to lead us up to accepting the change in her behaviour from FBI sleuth to braineater, but fails miserably. She had a support system out there and had been offered other positions once the Bureau let her go, so it did not make any sense to ally herself with the fiend.
His "alleged" mind control was hardly credible even over the other characters, but over her, that went too far. Too bad. what could have been an outstanding book degenerated into a visceral shocker for an audience ever bent on more and more outrageous acts of depravity.

I found Hannibal to be perfectly profound for its genre. Disturbing and over-the-top are some qualities needed in such a novel. It may not "seem" credible that one would open up ones head and eat their brains. The beauty of this is that is gives the readers (the Lector Lovers) a view of his outrageous acts of depravity. It's what the book is about. It's what this type of reader "wants." He's a sociopath/psychopath and the author portrayed the conflict and the character beautifully. It did what any good book is supposed to do; grab the reader by the throat, make an impact, and years later everyone still remembers that particular scene (as was intended). Just my opinion!

Like I said, Jody had it right. This book is just way too sick!!!!

Ha! I remember quite vividly in my university day watching the movie as Sunday evening premiere on our local pay channel (M-Net, South Africa)... It was the first time in my adult life where I actually stopped watching a movie because of being grossed out when he had the bad cop (Ray Liotta) eat his own brains out... I came across the books a few years later and read them all. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. Dr Hannibal Lecter is for me a very interesting character - very similar to Anakin Skywalker... the last instalment (Hannibal) was for me possibly the best book keeping aforementioned in mind - Harris obviously showed here that Lecter was his favourite character and protagonist.

Hannibal, in my eyes, was meant as a mastermind who had great knowledge of the human anatomy from his time working in Paris, I think it was Paris (been a while since read Hannibal Rising), and also his knowledge of culinary excellence. He used both of these to his advantage when eating his victims, although all of them deserved their death, in his view point, but eating them was wrong once he had his revenge on the men who killed Mishka. Then again as even many modern day cannibals explain, once a person eats certain amounts of human flesh it is hard to resist a constant attraction to the meat. I believe this to be the case with Hannibal rather than him just being a sadist who eats his murder victims for the simple reason of no evidence. Having the FBI agent eat his own brains was, I thought, quite appropriate as he was attempting to right his own obvious affection towards Clarice. Killing the man that denies their love interest's desires is often how sociopaths attempt to correct the way they are seen. The scene of making a man eat his own brain, I believe, was conducted very well and not really thrown in the reader's face.

This is just my opinion and I love both the books and the movies.

I loved the book and the movie. It's supposed to be over-the-top and or disgusting while being somehow tasteful and not teen-slasher grotesque. I do wish the movie had stuck to the book more. Being a huge horror fan, Silence and Hannibal are two of my all time favorites. If you want a truly weird, way-out-there book, try American Psycho. I bought that at a yard sale for .50 and everyone who borrowed it gave it back when they were done looking at me like I was mentally ill, as if I had written it.

Too right Leon! interesting parallel
Hannibal is actually my favorite of the books, and to draw not from Star Wars, but Space Balls - Evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
Starling... so self-righteous and naive she can't even deal with the normal everyday badness of the people around her. How did she ever think she would be able to beat Dr. Lecter?

Nope. That's just how his mind works! But pinning a woman against the fridge and begging for love is too much. Way too much and way out of character.

It was disturbing, but too much? No. It matches with the themes of the story and all the books. It's always been about dark, depraved stuff.

If I had to pick something that I found the most disturbing in the series, it would have been with the twisted men wanting to film people getting eaten alive by those horrible pigs.