Three Hannibals

At some point in the long heated competition between actors for statues each year, someone somewhere will bring up the apples and oranges factor. How do you compare what Actor #5 is doing in movie A about This versus what Actor #3 is asked to achieve in movie Z about That? Which is why this video of three men playing the same exact scene in different films versions of the Hannibal Lecter novel "Red Dragon" is so fascinating.

Any observations?

Comments

[Bensunce]

That's fascinating! Three very different approaches but the result is somehow the same... that character just makes you feel uneasy... but it's difficult to judge Hopkins' performance in Red Dragon because he's so much campier in that than in Silence of the Lambs where he was more nuanced and subtle...

[jessica]

Yeah, you really can't compare Anthony Hopkins in Red Dragon to Anthony Hopkins in SotL. One was a great performance and one was a caricature of that performance. I laughed out loud when he turns to the camera in this. In SotL he was genuinely unsettling.
Before SotL, Lecter wasn't this Ultimate Iconic Villain that he's become, and Cox plays him in a more down-to-earth way. He's not trying to have this instant impact that Hopkins had in SotL, and tries to have in Red Dragon. Mikkelsen's Lecter is in the shadow of Hopkins, and we expect certain things of the character now. He does play it with that unsettling alien-like quality that we expect to see, but he's not trying to burn holes in you with his eyes like Hopkins, he's more subtle and insidious than that.

It's just as interesting to me, if not more, to compare the 3 Grahams, especially Petersen and Dancy, who are both good. Edward Norton was miscast in that part, imo. He's dull dull dull, and when Lecter tells him 'we're very much alike,' I don't buy it at all.
The most obvious difference between Petersen and Dancy is that, while both are playing characters who are trying to resist Hannibal's influence because they're afraid of how 'very much alike' they are, in Dancy's version there is the added dimension that the relationship between Graham and Lecter is played like a romance. (Gives a different meaning to lines like 'You just came to look at me, to get the old scent back.') Dancy is playing barely-concealed longing along with forced professionalism. Petersen is trying to maintain a cold distance, he's almost...spaced out, like he's trying to be somewhere else in his mind.

[Jaragon]

Interesting- " Manhunter" is better film than "Red Dragon" which was made just to cash in on the success of the Lecter character.

[svg]

I've been thinking about Hannibal all week plus I've been on a Micheal Mann kick lately so this is like a confluencing of my interests at the moment (albeit with some added Ratner). I see in the comments of the video someone's done a similar one for Hamlet. It's such a cool idea, I hope there'll be a few more of these.

As an aside, I only watched Manhunter for the first time a few weeks ago and now I finally know why Joan Allen is in Face Off