I've just finished Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind, and immediately went to the bookstore and purchased the second book in the series, The Wise Man's Fear, which I think should indicate that enjoyed the book.
The Name of the Wind is the story of Kvothe, a legendary hero who disappeared, going into hiding or maybe just retirement as Kote, the simple innkeeper. He is tracked down by a world-famous author who is mostly known by his epithet, Chronicler. After some strange, supernatural events in Kvothe's small adopted town, Chronicler identifies Kvothe for who he is and persuades him to tell his life's story.
The Name of the Wind consists, then, primarily, of the first day Kvothe spends dictating his memoirs. We learn about his childhood, growing up with his family and their troupe of actors, and his early lessons in the magic known as "sympathy." Like most good heroes, Kvothe's call to adventure is a tragic trauma, and one that sets Kvothe on the path to revenge against some of the most dreaded figures in the world's legends - the mythical Chandrian.
The narrative takes us from his days as a beggar in a cruelly indifferent city to his early years at the University, and it is this academic setting that makes up the meat of the story. The Name of the Wind will inevitably draw comparisons to Harry Potter, as both stories concern a magically-gifted orphan who attends a wizarding school.
But the University in the Name of the Wind feels a lot more college than high school. Indeed, the major threats to Kvothe's goals tend to be less the sort of life-endangering magical kind, and more the all-too-real financial kind. If anything, Kvothe's main struggle is just to keep his head above water and pay his tuition, not to mention the interest owed to the loan-shark he borrowed from.
But the financial struggles of a student who had only just ceased being a beggar might be considered secondary to his difficulties with a troubled woman named Denna. Kvothe's affection for Denna is no secret, nor is hers for him (though true to any young man, Kvothe constantly second-guesses her signals, even when she's being practically explicit,) but the realities - both of an inexperienced young man dealing with his first romance, and also that two people feeling great affection for each other does not a healthy relationship make - are never cheated away.
Despite being set in a fantastical world, Kvothe's experiences at the University feel totally modern (give or take a few lashings.)
Kvothe manages to be an "ace" protagonist without it ever feeling like a cheat. The universe is so aligned against him (one key factor in this is that he finds himself in a pride-induced feud with a fellow student with far greater influence and wealth) that it would be impossible for the story to proceed if not for his incredible talent and cleverness. And after all, we wouldn't be hearing about this guy unless he was special. Plus, the narrative subverts expectations as often as it meets them.
If there is one major criticism I have to level against the book, despite enjoying it greatly, it is that it is somewhat tantalizing, offering a tiny glimpse of a large world, yet keeping us confined to a rather small part of it. To compare it with another famous contemporary fantasy series, this is almost like the opposite of A Song of Ice and Fire, in that it focuses in intently on a single protagonist and his personal struggles, while leaving the world's politics and greater motions nebulous. There are of course some advantages to this - the story never threatens to veer off down a rabbit hole of plots that only hint at some relevance to the main storyline (I'm looking at you, Quentyn Martell,) and allows us to delve deep into Kvothe and the people around him instead of expecting us to memorize a million different character names.
Yet the series also promises that Kvothe will be instrumental in that world's history. The series, which is expected to be a trilogy, is called the Kingkiller Chronicle. It doesn't take a very large logical leap to figure that Kvothe probably killed a king at some point, but which king that is, and of what domain, we don't really know after finishing book one.
I suppose the only reason that this bothers me is because of the conceit of the story - that Kvothe is now an older man (though probably not very old - I'd guess 30s) and is looking back on all of this as the sole person with the perspective to know what was going on in the legendary hero's mind - suggests that we should be at least sketchily aware of why people write songs and tell half-accurate stories about this man. Because we don't know exactly what he's famous for, the revelations of his actual past, as he remembers it, are perhaps less shocking.
Nevertheless, lest I allow this one quibble to sour my endorsement of the book, I should say that the story is vital, well-observed and feels deeply personal. I expect I'll have to let it marinate in my brain for a bit while I decide just where I'd rank it in the canon of contemporary fantasy fiction (though that process will have to wait a bit, as I'm reading volume two now,) but I'm going to say probably high.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Monday, June 16, 2014
Delving into the Unknown in Game of Thrones
One of the most exciting scenes in Game of Thrones' season four was the appearance of a White Walker (who are known in the books as "Others,") taking one of Craster's sons to a great icy version of Mordor (or for fans of the Warcraft computer games, Icecrown.) The White Walker - a kind of frightening, pale ice monster that seems very similar to the original, scary version of fairies, and who is riding an undead horse - rides slowly into a crater that is walled on all sides by rock and ice, and puts the child on an ice altar. Obscured through the altar, we see a line of figures standing watch, while the center-most figure approaches. Eventually, this figure picks up the infant. The figure is another White Walker, but with a kind of crown of spikes or horns along the rim of his head. He touches the child's cheek with his finger and the baby's skin turns the pale white of the Walkers, and his eyes turn the same icy blue.
There have been plenty of invented story lines in Game of Thrones - stories that did not take place in the books. The entire character of Ros, for instance, does not exist at all in the books. Yet these inventions have largely been useful to help with the adaptation process. Ros is a great example here, because in a large part, she existed so that other characters could spout exposition at her (often while having sex with her, because HBO.) This scene with the White Walker, however, hit us hard for two big reasons:
One is that for a fantasy show, we don't actually encounter the fantastical all that much. The show is largely about politics and family drama. Even outside of the intrigue-filled King's Landing, the plots on the edges that are more magical in nature still tend to deal mostly with the relatively mundane. Jon Snow must fend off an imminent Wildling attack and Daenerys is waging a war against several allied city-states and their institution of slavery.
It actually works out quite well, because sometimes fantasy can dull you to the fantastical through overexposure. It also imposes a challenge on the writer so that they can't pull a deus ex machina as easily. The other reason that it works so well is that when something magical happens, it really blows us away.
The other reason it hit so hard is that, unlike the Ros-style adaptational changes, this is a scene that we have just never been even close to witnessing in the books. The books limit our perspective on the world by having us see things through the eyes of "viewpoint characters." It's still in the third person, but each chapter has a clearly marked character (such that one book might have several chapters with the same title, like "Tyrion," which does make it hard to look for specific passages.) While in that character's viewpoint, we don't really see anything that he or she does not see, and thus we often have to pay closer attention than the characters to figure out just what is going on outside of his or her head. And on top of that, if something happens without a viewpoint character there to witness it, we just don't hear about it. So given that there's no chapter that is called "That One Other," "One of Craster's Doomed Babies," or "That One Other Other," we never saw anything of this apparent conversion. It's perfectly conceivable that this has been going on all along, and indeed the books might reveal this eventually, but this was the first time that things really seemed to be getting revealed to book-readers at the same time as the show-watchers-only.
And I suspect that as time goes on, we're going to have more of this happening. Game of Thrones' first season, and largely its second, were very faithful to the books (though the Arya/Tywin combination was an inspired alteration.) Season three largely adapted the first half of book three, using its episode 9 climax appropriately on the Red Wedding. Therefore, it seemed reasonable to expect that season four would simply finish off book three. In some cases, it did. Tyrion's plot ends in exactly the same way, as does Arya (if you count her story's end as just that last scene with the Hound and onward) and with Sansa and Jon Snow, it's pretty close, with Sansa delving slightly into book four and Jon hanging back a little and not quite finishing book three. Yet in some cases, things have steamed on far ahead. Daenerys is well into book five content (though there's still definitely enough left for a full season for her in the existing books) and Bran is practically finished with book five. Meanwhile, the Greyjoys (who are, admittedly, few people's favorite characters) are lagging behind a bit, at least when in comes to what's actually happening on the Iron Islands.
Given the asynchronistic status of the various plots, it means that while we have plenty to look forward to holding over those who for some bizarre reason have not read the books yet, in other cases, we are staring into an uncertain future - and the show could very well spoil the books for us! (Or we might see a far more profound divergence between the two. Hopefully this will turn out better than the Scott Pilgrim adaptation, where so much of the focus was on the already-completed earlier books that you came out of the movie hoping for Scott to wind up with someone else.)
Game of Thrones is a huge experiment, and it has largely paid off (it's the most popular HBO show. Ever.) But given that they began with an unfinished series of source material, the show now needs to navigate stepping off the moving walkway and start walking on its own.
There have been plenty of invented story lines in Game of Thrones - stories that did not take place in the books. The entire character of Ros, for instance, does not exist at all in the books. Yet these inventions have largely been useful to help with the adaptation process. Ros is a great example here, because in a large part, she existed so that other characters could spout exposition at her (often while having sex with her, because HBO.) This scene with the White Walker, however, hit us hard for two big reasons:
One is that for a fantasy show, we don't actually encounter the fantastical all that much. The show is largely about politics and family drama. Even outside of the intrigue-filled King's Landing, the plots on the edges that are more magical in nature still tend to deal mostly with the relatively mundane. Jon Snow must fend off an imminent Wildling attack and Daenerys is waging a war against several allied city-states and their institution of slavery.
It actually works out quite well, because sometimes fantasy can dull you to the fantastical through overexposure. It also imposes a challenge on the writer so that they can't pull a deus ex machina as easily. The other reason that it works so well is that when something magical happens, it really blows us away.
The other reason it hit so hard is that, unlike the Ros-style adaptational changes, this is a scene that we have just never been even close to witnessing in the books. The books limit our perspective on the world by having us see things through the eyes of "viewpoint characters." It's still in the third person, but each chapter has a clearly marked character (such that one book might have several chapters with the same title, like "Tyrion," which does make it hard to look for specific passages.) While in that character's viewpoint, we don't really see anything that he or she does not see, and thus we often have to pay closer attention than the characters to figure out just what is going on outside of his or her head. And on top of that, if something happens without a viewpoint character there to witness it, we just don't hear about it. So given that there's no chapter that is called "That One Other," "One of Craster's Doomed Babies," or "That One Other Other," we never saw anything of this apparent conversion. It's perfectly conceivable that this has been going on all along, and indeed the books might reveal this eventually, but this was the first time that things really seemed to be getting revealed to book-readers at the same time as the show-watchers-only.
And I suspect that as time goes on, we're going to have more of this happening. Game of Thrones' first season, and largely its second, were very faithful to the books (though the Arya/Tywin combination was an inspired alteration.) Season three largely adapted the first half of book three, using its episode 9 climax appropriately on the Red Wedding. Therefore, it seemed reasonable to expect that season four would simply finish off book three. In some cases, it did. Tyrion's plot ends in exactly the same way, as does Arya (if you count her story's end as just that last scene with the Hound and onward) and with Sansa and Jon Snow, it's pretty close, with Sansa delving slightly into book four and Jon hanging back a little and not quite finishing book three. Yet in some cases, things have steamed on far ahead. Daenerys is well into book five content (though there's still definitely enough left for a full season for her in the existing books) and Bran is practically finished with book five. Meanwhile, the Greyjoys (who are, admittedly, few people's favorite characters) are lagging behind a bit, at least when in comes to what's actually happening on the Iron Islands.
Given the asynchronistic status of the various plots, it means that while we have plenty to look forward to holding over those who for some bizarre reason have not read the books yet, in other cases, we are staring into an uncertain future - and the show could very well spoil the books for us! (Or we might see a far more profound divergence between the two. Hopefully this will turn out better than the Scott Pilgrim adaptation, where so much of the focus was on the already-completed earlier books that you came out of the movie hoping for Scott to wind up with someone else.)
Game of Thrones is a huge experiment, and it has largely paid off (it's the most popular HBO show. Ever.) But given that they began with an unfinished series of source material, the show now needs to navigate stepping off the moving walkway and start walking on its own.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
The Smug Villain in TV
I stopped watching House of Cards shortly after....
Yeah, ok, going to put this in a spoiler cut. I will say that we're probably a little too spoiler-averse these days. A good story stands on its own even if you know what's going to happen (see: Hamlet. Spoiler Alert: Everybody dies.) Sometimes twists are even more fun if you figure them out ahead of time (though that's a narrow path to walk. It's only fun if it's a clever twist. The best example of this I can give is when I figured out the twist ending to Fight Club, and for vindication, in the commentary Edward Norton pointed out the exact scene where I figured it out as the first part of the movie where he'd believe people could predict the ending. On the other hand, if it's not clever enough, like Shutter Island, you spend the movie yawning and waiting for the film to catch up with you.)
But I also recognize that sometimes, seeing a movie or show with fresh eyes and no preconceptions can be a unique experience. (I first saw the Matrix, a fairly non-twisty movie, without knowing anything about the premise, and that was pretty cool.) A good show will still be entertaining when you watch it the second time, but I think that the "unblemished snow" viewing is something ephemeral that, while not necessarily better than watching it with foreknowledge, is an experience that the audience can only have the one time (barring memory loss, of course.)
Ahem, I seem to be going off on a tangent. Spoiler warning for House of Cards, Hannibal, and Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire (book spoilers, so even if you watch the show, beware!) I also mention Breaking Bad, but there's not much spoiler-wise for it here.
Yeah, ok, going to put this in a spoiler cut. I will say that we're probably a little too spoiler-averse these days. A good story stands on its own even if you know what's going to happen (see: Hamlet. Spoiler Alert: Everybody dies.) Sometimes twists are even more fun if you figure them out ahead of time (though that's a narrow path to walk. It's only fun if it's a clever twist. The best example of this I can give is when I figured out the twist ending to Fight Club, and for vindication, in the commentary Edward Norton pointed out the exact scene where I figured it out as the first part of the movie where he'd believe people could predict the ending. On the other hand, if it's not clever enough, like Shutter Island, you spend the movie yawning and waiting for the film to catch up with you.)
But I also recognize that sometimes, seeing a movie or show with fresh eyes and no preconceptions can be a unique experience. (I first saw the Matrix, a fairly non-twisty movie, without knowing anything about the premise, and that was pretty cool.) A good show will still be entertaining when you watch it the second time, but I think that the "unblemished snow" viewing is something ephemeral that, while not necessarily better than watching it with foreknowledge, is an experience that the audience can only have the one time (barring memory loss, of course.)
Ahem, I seem to be going off on a tangent. Spoiler warning for House of Cards, Hannibal, and Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire (book spoilers, so even if you watch the show, beware!) I also mention Breaking Bad, but there's not much spoiler-wise for it here.
Hannibal's Blood-Soaked Season 2 Finale
Whoa, phew, give me a second here.
Hol. Ly. Shit.
Well, spoilers incoming!
Hol. Ly. Shit.
Well, spoilers incoming!
Monday, May 19, 2014
Penny Dreadful
Penny Dreadful is one of the newest shows on Showtime. The series delves into the Gothic Horror of the late 19th Century, providing a gritty and gruesome story that incorporates many famous literary characters.
It is a premise that has been done before. For example, Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and I recommend sticking to the comic, and avoiding the film that made Sean Connery say "fuck it" regarding acting) of course teamed up many of 19th Century literature's famous heroes to kick ass together (and, being Moore, he never pulled his punches when these guys were supposed to be bastards.)
Perhaps I am betraying a lack of familiarity with the genre and era, but I don't think every major character in the show is strictly from a famous piece of literature. It might be best to look at the series with fresh eyes, in fact, though that approach might deteriorate as we go on.
The setting is a Victorian London awash with monstrous crimes. And this being cable, we are not shielded from the viciousness of the murders (though with the horrors portrayed on NBC's Hannibal - which is competing with Game of Thrones to be my favorite show on television - being situated on cable is not necessarily a prerequisite to show things that are gruesome.)
Instantly, one of the key strengths to show itself off for Penny Dreadful is its cast. Josh Hartnett, who plays a Buffalo Bill-style gunslinger showman named Ethan Chandler, has always had a somewhat offbeat style that positions him in more interesting roles than the teen-heartthrob leading man he was originally type-cast as (I recommend Lucky Number Slevin as evidence.) Timothy Dalton plays Sir Malcolm Murray, father of Mina, who you might recognize as a major character in Dracula. Malcolm is the tough older gentleman badass, but with a deeply wounded interior that occasionally shows through. Of the core cast, however, by far the person I'm finding most interesting is Eva Green, who seems dangerous and mysterious, with strength and poise, and just seems to be something otherworldly. In Penny Dreadful's first episode's major action sequence, there is a brief shot in which Green's Vanessa Ives stands up to a horrific monster, and it is the monster that is momentarily stunned by her appearance. The second episode enhances her mystery as she becomes the true medium at what was probably meant as a seance that was just for show.
One thing I'll be curious about in the future is to explore in greater detail the relationship between Vanessa and Dalton's Sir Malcolm. Vanessa is the one to recruit Hartnett's Chandler. She analyzes him in a very Sherlockian way, and it really seems like she's the one in charge. I don't know if she will prove to be the outfit's leader (Murray seems poised to take on that role) but I love the strength that Green imbues Vanessa with. Then again, Vanessa is such an enigma, with her terrifying spider-prayer session, floating candles, and seance-induced possession.
A few other main cast members have been introduced. One character, who you will quickly realize is Victor Frankenstein (played by Harry Treadaway) is, as of yet, still somewhat separate from the rest of the cast. We spend a good deal of time with his creation, and his scenes with the being who will come to be known as Proteus are emotionally rich - but don't let me spoil anything here.
Actually, after the first episode, Chandler - an American gunslinger with something mysterious to him - splits off somewhat as well. Chandler meets and befriends an Irish prostitute named Brona Croft, played by Billie Piper (who you may know as Rose from Doctor Who,) a profession that seems a little more dangerous given that there is some Jack the Ripper-like killer going around (though, given the genre, it's probably worse than Jack the Ripper.)
We then also have Dorian Gray, the only other recognizable literary character I'm aware of in the series, played by Reeve Carney. As of yet, Gray's connection to the overall plot is a little nebulous. So far, all he has really done is make sexual/sensual advances on both female cast members.
I really like the mood and feel of the show so far. There is a sense that the show knows what it wants to do, and the cast is good enough to sell the genre stuff (I am a huge fan of sci-fi/fantasy, but I also recognize that it needs to make great efforts to earn the audience's suspension of disbelief.) Still, I feel that we are very much in a table-setting mode. The cast has yet to assemble, and while there are some vague implications of an apocalyptic threat (which, honestly, I think we could downgrade. There's a bit of a stakes-fatigue I feel in a lot of genre fiction these days) I think the series really needs to kick into gear in the next episode. Admittedly, Game of Thrones was still just introducing characters in episode three, but without the foundation of a series of novels, I think Penny Dreadful needs to at least give us some kind of prologue story to resolve if they are not yet ready to get into the meat of the series.
Still, do not mistake this critique as a condemnation. So far, I am very much enjoying the show, and I look forward to more, which is about as good a thing as any you can say about a new series.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
True Detective
Television is not exactly foreign soil for the crime procedural. The default "successful show" is often some form of procedural, usually legal, medical, or most commonly, police. That's why there are so many CSIs and Law and Orders that, as far as I can tell, are not really related to each other story-wise.
So what makes True Detective different?
Well, the most immediately recognizable distinction is that it stars two of Hollywood's A-List, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey - the latter of whom just won the Oscar for Best Actor.
As we've all been told, television is in a golden age, and it's drawing big names.
There are other ways that True Detective distinguishes itself. It's highly serialized, rather than a case-of-the-week, and each season will be a standalone story, presumably with a different cast. Indeed, True Detective's first season is really more like a miniseries. The show also focuses far more on its two leads than the case they are working, and tells a story that is grand and novelistic in scope.
And then there's the fact that it's a cosmic horror story.
Those who know a little about the bleak genre of horror whose most famous author is HP Lovecraft may have heard of the book called "The King in Yellow." Written by Robert W. Chambers in 1895, the book is a series of short stories revolving around the eponymous play, which, when read, drives the reader insane.
True Detective never becomes explicit with its supernatural allusions. The few times we see something utterly abnormal, it is generally suggested that it is some form of synesthesia or an acid flashback going on in Rust's (McConaughey) brain.
But the show connects the central idea of cosmic horror - that the more we know of our universe and its true nature, the farther we will slip into madness - with the experience of confronting the darkness within humanity.
Rustin Cohle and Martin Hart (Harrelson) are homicide detectives with the Louisiana State Police. In 1995, they get a case involving a young woman who was ritualistically murdered and put on display next to a tree in the middle of some farmland. For the next seventeen years, they pursue that case.
Marty is theoretically the stable, normal one of the pair. He's a good cop, and he's convinced that he's a good father and husband, even though he cheats on his wife and doesn't really pay much attention to his daughters. But Rust is a total nihilist. He's suffered a personal tragedy, which has left him with nothing to do but bury himself in his work, which just so happens to be staring into the face of the darkest stuff humanity has to offer.
When the series begins, we see things in two different eras. Marty and Rust are interviewed in 2012, and as they discuss their investigation, we see what goes down in 1995, and then later 2002, before we catch up to the present (well, two years ago, but close enough.)
Marty seems a little stiffer, but Rust has clearly gone down deep into that darkness. The framing device recalls that most famous of cosmic horror stories, the Call of Cthulhu. The two fresher, younger detectives, are looking at the mess of a human being that Rust has become, complete with long hair and a droopy mustache, and they're beginning to wonder if Rust got so close to the case that he took a little of the darkness with him. Is knowledge of that darkness like a disease, spreading to anyone who looks too closely?
The series does wrap up the mystery, but the exact nature of what happened remains ambiguous. This could be a case of mad people doing awful things, or it's possible that there is truly something far larger, far greater at work.
Really, I think that the underpinnings of just what genre True Detective is will remain ambiguous - certainly until season two, but likely throughout.
So what makes True Detective different?
Well, the most immediately recognizable distinction is that it stars two of Hollywood's A-List, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey - the latter of whom just won the Oscar for Best Actor.
As we've all been told, television is in a golden age, and it's drawing big names.
There are other ways that True Detective distinguishes itself. It's highly serialized, rather than a case-of-the-week, and each season will be a standalone story, presumably with a different cast. Indeed, True Detective's first season is really more like a miniseries. The show also focuses far more on its two leads than the case they are working, and tells a story that is grand and novelistic in scope.
And then there's the fact that it's a cosmic horror story.
Those who know a little about the bleak genre of horror whose most famous author is HP Lovecraft may have heard of the book called "The King in Yellow." Written by Robert W. Chambers in 1895, the book is a series of short stories revolving around the eponymous play, which, when read, drives the reader insane.
True Detective never becomes explicit with its supernatural allusions. The few times we see something utterly abnormal, it is generally suggested that it is some form of synesthesia or an acid flashback going on in Rust's (McConaughey) brain.
But the show connects the central idea of cosmic horror - that the more we know of our universe and its true nature, the farther we will slip into madness - with the experience of confronting the darkness within humanity.
Rustin Cohle and Martin Hart (Harrelson) are homicide detectives with the Louisiana State Police. In 1995, they get a case involving a young woman who was ritualistically murdered and put on display next to a tree in the middle of some farmland. For the next seventeen years, they pursue that case.
Marty is theoretically the stable, normal one of the pair. He's a good cop, and he's convinced that he's a good father and husband, even though he cheats on his wife and doesn't really pay much attention to his daughters. But Rust is a total nihilist. He's suffered a personal tragedy, which has left him with nothing to do but bury himself in his work, which just so happens to be staring into the face of the darkest stuff humanity has to offer.
When the series begins, we see things in two different eras. Marty and Rust are interviewed in 2012, and as they discuss their investigation, we see what goes down in 1995, and then later 2002, before we catch up to the present (well, two years ago, but close enough.)
Marty seems a little stiffer, but Rust has clearly gone down deep into that darkness. The framing device recalls that most famous of cosmic horror stories, the Call of Cthulhu. The two fresher, younger detectives, are looking at the mess of a human being that Rust has become, complete with long hair and a droopy mustache, and they're beginning to wonder if Rust got so close to the case that he took a little of the darkness with him. Is knowledge of that darkness like a disease, spreading to anyone who looks too closely?
The series does wrap up the mystery, but the exact nature of what happened remains ambiguous. This could be a case of mad people doing awful things, or it's possible that there is truly something far larger, far greater at work.
Really, I think that the underpinnings of just what genre True Detective is will remain ambiguous - certainly until season two, but likely throughout.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Hannibal
When I first heard that they were going to be making a television show about Hannibal Lechter, I, like many others, was intensely skeptical. Not only did this seem like a cheap "recognizable name = profit" kind of thing, but we have been, I think, somewhat inundated with the "sociopaths catching killers" genre (as much as I like Sherlock, I do also think that some of its camp has begun to wear a little thin, and Dexter really never got as good as its first season, even though the fourth was pretty good.)
But then I discovered that Hannibal was cooked up by Bryan Fuller, he of Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls (which I have yet to see) and Pushing Daisies. Fuller makes good television, and after binge-watching the first nine episodes of Hannibal, this opinion has not changed.
Yet while Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies took a surprisingly light (and in the latter case, even cheerful) tone despite being about death, Hannibal is a show that exists deep in the darkest pits of hell. That's not to say there isn't occasional levity (often brought about by the forensics team composed of Hettienne Park, Aaron Abrams, and none other than Buddy Cole himself, Scott Thompson,) but Hannibal is a hard R in terms of tone and graphic violence.
As an aside, it is actually shocking to me the level of gore they are able to show on a network television show. To stand on my soapbox for a second, why does NBC get fined if they let an errant "fuck" out now and then or show someone naked (which are both perfectly natural things that can and will occur in the average person's life) whereas showing a man whose throat has been cut open so that his vocal chords can be turned into the strings of a macabre cello is A-OK? I have never been able to wrap my head around why our culture finds violence so much more comfortable than sex and, even more absurdly, foul language. Anyway, coming down from the soapbox now.
Theoretically, Hannibal is a procedural, but it escapes the trap of many procedurals by focusing far, far more on the regular cast than drawing out the killer-of-the-week mystery. In fact, the weekly killer is rarely the focus of an episode.
While it branches out a bit as the series progresses, the center of the show is not, as one would imagine, the cultured cannibal who Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar performing (little known fact: he was not the first to play Lechter. That was Brian Cox in Manhunter in the 80s.) Rather, the protagonist is Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy. Graham is primarily an academic psychological profiler who teaches FBI trainees at Quantico, but has a unique gift (which doubles as a curse) that allows him to get into the minds of killers.
In the face of a tricky (and of course, utterly horrific) series of killings, Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) brings Graham in to help in figuring out the killer's motivation. However, Graham's colleague Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) objects, given the strain that such work puts on Graham's psyche. Crawford seeks out Bloom's old mentor, Hannibal Lechter, to work as a kind of therapist or anchor to help Graham deal with the mental stress.
And so, after a fairly long way into the pilot, we finally encounter the infamous Doctor Lechter. Lechter is played my Mads Mikkelsen, and he does so in a way that makes him at once utterly and completely dissimilar to Anthony Hopkin's Lechter, while still coming around to the same basic blueprint of the character. Mikkelsen's Lechter has almost none of the scenery-chewing grandiosity of Hopkins', but is instead perfectly cool, perfectly subtle. If one were not aware of the show's legacy, one could potentially be fooled into thinking that Lechter was, in fact, just a cool foreign intellectual... at least until we see him carving up human lungs for his next meal.
Thus, the dynamic of the show eventually becomes clear. Graham and the team pursue and confront demons week to week, while they remain unaware that one of their number is the devil himself. The friendship between Will and Hannibal is surprisingly genuine, but one must remember that the defining trait of Hannibal Lechter is that despite his appetites and his proclivities, he is ultimately seeking out people he can call friends (though he tends to butcher those who don't live up to his standards.)
The show is rendered cinematically, recalling Seven, and perhaps unsurprisingly Silence of the Lambs. Additionally, the role of dreams (usually nightmares) and imagination plays a prominent role, showing the dark side of Fuller's typical whimsy. One of the major visual signals of the show is the demonstration of Will Graham's "killer mind imagination." At the crime scenes, he wipes away his fellow investigators, and the accumulation of time, with a sort of windshield-wiper of yellow light. Honestly, this reminds me a bit of the UI of a video game, but in a good way, if that makes sense. Just as if you were going into "Eagle Vision" in an Assassin's Creed game, Will goes into his "killer vision," but the effect is particularly disturbing, as it forces him to cast himself as the killer.
The show is not flawless. While Dhavernas does a lot with what she gets, it seems that Alana Bloom does not have a clear role to play in the series just yet, other than as a complicated love interest for Will, and in a more disturbing way, for Hannibal (really only disturbing because of what we know of Hannibal.) Likewise, the sensationalist blogger Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorosteki) is a little too winkingly selfish and self-serving.
The danger, I think, for Hannibal is that it could become too much of a superhero story. We already have Will's empathic superpower and Lechter is weighed down by so much time in the public consciousness that he could come to feel a bit too much of a cardboard cutout - a symbol of a character rather than a character. Mikkelsen and the writers have thankfully been working hard to avert that so far, but I think it's a danger they should look out for.
But so far, what I've seen of the show has been excellent, though I would emphatically encourage you not to eat while watching it.
But then I discovered that Hannibal was cooked up by Bryan Fuller, he of Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls (which I have yet to see) and Pushing Daisies. Fuller makes good television, and after binge-watching the first nine episodes of Hannibal, this opinion has not changed.
Yet while Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies took a surprisingly light (and in the latter case, even cheerful) tone despite being about death, Hannibal is a show that exists deep in the darkest pits of hell. That's not to say there isn't occasional levity (often brought about by the forensics team composed of Hettienne Park, Aaron Abrams, and none other than Buddy Cole himself, Scott Thompson,) but Hannibal is a hard R in terms of tone and graphic violence.
As an aside, it is actually shocking to me the level of gore they are able to show on a network television show. To stand on my soapbox for a second, why does NBC get fined if they let an errant "fuck" out now and then or show someone naked (which are both perfectly natural things that can and will occur in the average person's life) whereas showing a man whose throat has been cut open so that his vocal chords can be turned into the strings of a macabre cello is A-OK? I have never been able to wrap my head around why our culture finds violence so much more comfortable than sex and, even more absurdly, foul language. Anyway, coming down from the soapbox now.
Theoretically, Hannibal is a procedural, but it escapes the trap of many procedurals by focusing far, far more on the regular cast than drawing out the killer-of-the-week mystery. In fact, the weekly killer is rarely the focus of an episode.
While it branches out a bit as the series progresses, the center of the show is not, as one would imagine, the cultured cannibal who Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar performing (little known fact: he was not the first to play Lechter. That was Brian Cox in Manhunter in the 80s.) Rather, the protagonist is Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy. Graham is primarily an academic psychological profiler who teaches FBI trainees at Quantico, but has a unique gift (which doubles as a curse) that allows him to get into the minds of killers.
In the face of a tricky (and of course, utterly horrific) series of killings, Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) brings Graham in to help in figuring out the killer's motivation. However, Graham's colleague Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) objects, given the strain that such work puts on Graham's psyche. Crawford seeks out Bloom's old mentor, Hannibal Lechter, to work as a kind of therapist or anchor to help Graham deal with the mental stress.
And so, after a fairly long way into the pilot, we finally encounter the infamous Doctor Lechter. Lechter is played my Mads Mikkelsen, and he does so in a way that makes him at once utterly and completely dissimilar to Anthony Hopkin's Lechter, while still coming around to the same basic blueprint of the character. Mikkelsen's Lechter has almost none of the scenery-chewing grandiosity of Hopkins', but is instead perfectly cool, perfectly subtle. If one were not aware of the show's legacy, one could potentially be fooled into thinking that Lechter was, in fact, just a cool foreign intellectual... at least until we see him carving up human lungs for his next meal.
Thus, the dynamic of the show eventually becomes clear. Graham and the team pursue and confront demons week to week, while they remain unaware that one of their number is the devil himself. The friendship between Will and Hannibal is surprisingly genuine, but one must remember that the defining trait of Hannibal Lechter is that despite his appetites and his proclivities, he is ultimately seeking out people he can call friends (though he tends to butcher those who don't live up to his standards.)
The show is rendered cinematically, recalling Seven, and perhaps unsurprisingly Silence of the Lambs. Additionally, the role of dreams (usually nightmares) and imagination plays a prominent role, showing the dark side of Fuller's typical whimsy. One of the major visual signals of the show is the demonstration of Will Graham's "killer mind imagination." At the crime scenes, he wipes away his fellow investigators, and the accumulation of time, with a sort of windshield-wiper of yellow light. Honestly, this reminds me a bit of the UI of a video game, but in a good way, if that makes sense. Just as if you were going into "Eagle Vision" in an Assassin's Creed game, Will goes into his "killer vision," but the effect is particularly disturbing, as it forces him to cast himself as the killer.
The show is not flawless. While Dhavernas does a lot with what she gets, it seems that Alana Bloom does not have a clear role to play in the series just yet, other than as a complicated love interest for Will, and in a more disturbing way, for Hannibal (really only disturbing because of what we know of Hannibal.) Likewise, the sensationalist blogger Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorosteki) is a little too winkingly selfish and self-serving.
The danger, I think, for Hannibal is that it could become too much of a superhero story. We already have Will's empathic superpower and Lechter is weighed down by so much time in the public consciousness that he could come to feel a bit too much of a cardboard cutout - a symbol of a character rather than a character. Mikkelsen and the writers have thankfully been working hard to avert that so far, but I think it's a danger they should look out for.
But so far, what I've seen of the show has been excellent, though I would emphatically encourage you not to eat while watching it.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
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