Nontraditional Love Story

I just finished watching Hannibal and find it (along with the prequel to it, Silence of the Lambs) a rather touching, if unusual, story of love and devotion. Hannibal Lecter, the voracious cannibal who feeds one unlucky victim pieces of his own post-lobotomy brain, obviously has no problem killing those he deems rude or unnecessary. He has ample opportunity to kill FBI Agent Clarice Starling but rather seeks to destroy those who try to destroy her. Lecter not only rescues her from man-eating boars, he also performs surgery to remove a bullet from her shoulder (as opposed to carving her up so that he can eat her liver with some "fava beans and a nice Chiante"). And then in the end* of Hannibal he makes an ultimate sacrifice of his own blood and body so that one of them may escape. If cutting off your own hand rather than that of a federal officer whose goal in life it is to curtail your freedom is not an act of love, then I don't know what is.

You may think I'm crazy. But I see characters who have a mutual respect for civility and manners (lest we forget that Lecter also nevers dines on Barney, his caretaker at the asylum) and for each other. The relationship might also be described as "equal parts antagonism and seduction". Though I much prefer the chemistry and tension that Jodie Foster and Sir Anthony Hopkins shared, Julianne Moore does a respectable job of mental sparring with the brilliant and vicious cannibal. It is indeed some sort of take on a tragic love story. I'm not an English scholar but the Starling/Lecter dynamic does remind me of the kind of chaste, love-from-afar relationship that one might read about in a novel by Bronte, Austen, or one of their contemporaries.


*I have just found out that the ending of the novel differs from the film in a drastic way. It was rewritten because in the original ending of the book Lecter abducts Clarice, brainwashes her, and they go on to live as lovers. (This greatly upset some of author Thomas Harris' fanbase). Just goes to show that sometimes the movie is better than the book.