Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in 1991's The Silence of the Lambs
Who can forget Dr. Lecter? I'm not even sure where to begin with this guy. Few characters have that kind of power. It's the power to leave you with some kind of lingering feeling that he's in the room, the power to simultaneously terrify and disturb, but it's more than that, it's something unnamable that should probably remain that way. Quite possibly the single most convincing and chilling acting job I've ever seen was Anthony Hopkins's portrayal of the icy Dr. Lecter. But it wasn't just superb acting that made Hannibal so memorable. It was the character itself.
When Thomas Harris created Hannibal Lecter, he must have lain awake at night wondering what kind of monster he had unleashed. Hannibal has everything a villain could need to disrupt the psyche of a reader or audience. One one hand, he is intelligent, sophisticated, cultured. On the other hand, he is as cold as ice, cannibalistic, and starkly evil. He must be insane, but he never loses his cool. Cold, cruel, and calculating, his super-intelligent brain works in ways we don't understand, and that is the key to his power as a villain. The audience is forced to admit that he is more smarter, more cunning than them. And he is evil.
Hannibal Lecter also forces us to re-evaluate the world in which we live. It is part of his skill both as a psychiatrist and as a villain. He was designed from the very beginning to make us doubt the world in which we live. We don't expect sophisticated, intelligent, cultured people to be insane. We don't expect doctors to want to hurt us. We expect mental patients to be dumber than the doctors who try to keep them under control. Hannibal Lecter defies all these expectations.
An image I'll never be able to get out of my head is staring into the on-screen eyes of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, and seeing the iciness and the pure evil soaking through them, through the screen, and right at me.
Hannibal Lecter: a great character in Horror.
Home
Hosting Provided By HORRORFIND.COM
To find out about advertising on the Horrorfind Network Click Here