The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.0334 Monday, 12 February 2001
From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 11 Feb 2001 16:45:55 -0500
Subject: Hopkins Hannibal Titus
If you don't like to know details about films you haven't seen, and if
you plan to see Ridley Scott's film Hannibal then read no further. If
you don't plan to see it or if you care hearing about it an advance, you
may not want to read further either. But you may be interested in an
echo of Hopkins last screen appearance in Titus. Reviewers of Taymor's
film often pointed to the echo of Hopkins role as Dr. Lecter in Silence
of the Lambs. Now Scott's Hannibal returns the favor. Near the very
end of the film, FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) handcuffs
one of his wrists to one of hers as he has only minutes to escape.
When she refuses to give him the key, he picks up a meat cleaver like
the one in Titus and raises it to cut off what we are led to think is
her hand (he tells her "This is really going to hurt"--or words to that
effect--and then we see her grimace as he cuts off screen). The very
next shot shows her with both hands intact, however, so we infer that he
has cut off one of his hands, an inference proven correct by the last
sequence of the film in which Lecter appears with a bandaged arm.. Some
other echoes, though I would not claim any significance for them, are
(a) much of Hannibal is set in Italy, albeit in Florence rather than
Rome; a child is central to the ending of Hannibal as young Lucius is in
Titus, though the child is Asian and shares--literally--Lecter's
culinary tastes (we may be meant to infer that the boy will become
Lecter's prot
