Hannibal

Honestly, I have no idea how to even go about explaining Hannibal to people. It's one of my favourite television shows, and when people ask me why, I find that whatever explanations I have of the show just generally sound too disturbing to other people.

However, I'm writing this blog post to explain how Hannibal, while it is pretty disturbing, is extremely fascinating as well. The show is shot beautifully, with gorgeous camerawork and editing, and flawless acting from the cast too.

I adore this show because it isn't like other crime dramas. It has murder scenes that are intimately gory, with mutilated bodies and disturbing but compelling presentations of those bodies. We get to see into the minds of murderers, and we are brought along on this captivating ride through the beautiful acting of Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, and Mads Mikkelsen as Dr Hannibal Lecter. The supporting actors are very good at what they do as well, bringing us along through the series. The dialogue in this show is equally engaging, with the murderers even insinuating at their own murders, Hannibal himself using innuendo to hint at himself and what he does; dialogue that, when listened to carefully and taken into account, link conversations from the beginning of the series to the present episode, and the relationships formed throughout the show. Hugh Dancy's acting is portrayed in a way that the audience starts to empathise with his character, Will Graham, and understands why he does what he does. Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal, however, portrays his character so that, even though we know who he is and what he does, he is still a lovable character, with witty comments and actions that lead us to understand the thought behind his actions, no matter how disturbing and nonsensical they seem.
Through Will Graham, we see the psychological side of murders and why people do what they do, and even why they kill the way they kill.
Before I elaborate more, let me just summarise the basic plot of this show.

NOTE: Do not read the rest of this post if you don't want to see spoilers, graphic and gory images, and so on.

First off, Hannibal is a show centered around a psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter, and Will Graham, a university lecturer turned FBI consultant because of his "talent" of thinking like a killer. Will has the ability to look at a murder scene and imagine  himself in the murderer's shoes, taking his/her steps, and doing what he/she did, resulting in the scene before him. Therefore, he was recruited by Jack Crawford, a FBI special investigator, to consult on murder crimes.

Will Graham

Jack Crawford

Hannibal Lecter, on the other hand, is a psychiatrist who is asked to become Will's psychiatrist during his stint as a consultant, to keep him mentally grounded, as Will is required to delve further and further into the minds of murderers in order to fully understand a murder.
Will's first case is that of a Garret Jacob Hobbs, a man who kills girls who look like his daughter, and then keeps "pieces" of them, to honour every piece of them. By that I mean that he kept their meat to eat, their hair to be used in cushions, and kept their bodies for other purposes, like what he did with the deer he hunted. Will ends up having to shoot Garret Jacob Hobbs, when he finds him attempting to murder his own daughter, Abigail Hobbs.

Garret Jacob Hobbs and his daughter

The fact that Will shot and killed this man haunted him for the rest of his career. He started to think like him, being in his shoes.
All this time, Hannibal was by Will's side, apparently guiding and counselling him. Little do the rest of FBI (and Will) know, Hannibal is actually the "Chesapeake Ripper", a killer who kills in groups of three or four. The Chesapeake Ripper kills his victims by cutting them or dismembering them, then displaying their bodies in theatrical ways, for example putting a man into a tree and having the tree grow "around and into him", and putting poisonous flowers into his body cavity to represent his heart, lungs, stomach and so on.

A few of the Chesapeake Ripper's victims

The Chesapeake Ripper always takes a part of his victims' bodies to keep, as well, as "trophies", but unbeknownst to the FBI, he is actually consuming those parts. Coincidentally, whenever the Chesapeake Ripper strikes, Hannibal Lecter holds dinner parties, serving meat cooked in all sorts of different ways to his friends. "Nothing here is vegetarian", as quoted by Hannibal.
Hannibal even serves the FBI agents (and Will) his creations, human meat cooked in what can only be described as delicious-looking dishes, telling them that he's serving duck, pork, beef, chicken, instead of telling them what it actually is. He does, however, hint at it in subtle words and sentences, another thing I would like to applaud the scriptwriter for, as no one but Hannibal truly understands the meaning behind what he says.

Hannibal at dinner with Will

One conversation between Hannibal and Will, when Hannibal is telling Will about the boar he cooked, was that the boar was overly aggressive when Hannibal caught it, and he says "It was rude, and we eat the rude." After that conversation, we see that the people Hannibal murders and consumes are those that were rude to him, or offended him in any sort of way.
Another small aspect of Hannibal and how he finds his victims that I find very impressive is his collection of business cards, and recipes. There are a few shots throughout the series of Hannibal thumbing through the business cards while sorting through recipes, taking one out, and then going after the person on the business card, just to serve parts of them the way we see in the recipe he chooses.

Dr Hannibal Lecter

The show is centered around how Will becomes affected by every murder he comes across, and how Hannibal is actually behind the scenes, engineering Will's slow but sure mental breakdown, with "less-than-conventional" psychological treatments, with flashing lights and even drugs to make Will unstable and forgetful.
Gradually along the story of the TV show, we see how Hannibal even becomes a "copycat killer" to frame people or even bring murderers to light.

We see the relationship between Dr Hannibal and Will slowly forming, with us even seeing how Hannibal tries to make Will embrace his murderer side, and slowly become mentally unstable, even hinting at Will becoming just like him, adapting to his violent surroundings.

Will and Hannibal during one of their therapy sessions

The ending of season 1 sees Will actually finding out who Hannibal is and what he does, but then at the time he has already been framed by Hannibal, and in prison, therefore no one seems to believe him. After that, even after Will has been released from prison, thanks to Hannibal "freeing" him by committing murders in trademark Chesapeake Ripper style while Will is in prison, Will tries to find ways to convict Hannibal, trying to convince a very disbelieving Jack Crawford. While in prison, Will even tries to murder Hannibal through a "fan" of his, who follows Will's orders, and even tries it again once he is out of prison.

Will in prison

We slowly see Hannibal and Will becoming more open with what either of them know, and Will even starting to become more cold-blooded when it comes to murdering people. Will does not actually murder people, per se, but kills a person whom Hannibal sends to kill him, then bringing the body to Hannibal's house, saying "I sent someone to kill you, and now you sent someone to kill me. We're even now."

Will is slowly turning into what Hannibal wants him to be, and since the show is still ongoing, I guess we'll just have to wait and see if Will will embrace it or go back to the "good side". Avid show followers are eager to see how the relationship between Will and Hannibal will end (if it ends at all) and whether anyone else will find out about Hannibal's true colours without getting killed by Hannibal before they can go public with it.