An
award winning documentary maker, Peter Webber won acclaim for his work
directing the Channel 4 series MEN ONLY. His star rose even higher with
his feature debut GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. HANNIBAL RISING is a different
proposition altogether, a story that explains the origins of one of
20th century literature’s most compelling anti-heroes –
Hannibal Lecter, played here by French actor Gaspard Ulliel.
HANNIBAL
RISING is a quite different film from GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING –
what made the producers come to you with it?
“I
think Girl With A Pearl brought me to their attention, because in America
we got three Oscar nominations and two Golden Globes and we won a bunch
of awards in Europe. It did shockingly, but very pleasingly, well. I
think they were intrigued by that film because there is some darkness
there though it’s very much under the surface. But they still
needed to be reassured. There was a piece of TV I did a few years ago
for Channel 4 called MEN ONLY, and I showed that to them and it was
sufficiently shocking, so that they felt Hannibal Lecter would be safe
in my hands.”
Both
of your films start with a strong central image, whether it be Vermeer’s
painting or the iconic, masked image of Hannibal, don’t they?
“I
hadn’t thought of that, but I suppose it’s true. In a way
that’s a discussion you have after you’ve made something.
When you start making something, there is some intellectual work involved,
there’s some brain power, but a lot of it is just about a gut
feeling, your emotions. It’s about questions of taste, what you
like and what you don’t. You look at this story and think about
how you bring it to the screen most effectively. How do we use the tools
we have as filmmakers, whether it be the way we light it, the lenses
we use, the locations we select or the actors we choose? All of that
is part of the tools of filmmaking, and you respond to the script and
the story. It’s only afterwards that you sit back and make that
kind of analysis.”
What was
it about Gaspard that made you cast him as Hannibal?
“I
think French people might associate him with it more than English people
because over here we haven’t had a chance to see him in very much.
Maybe the thing he’s most famous for in this country is A VERY
LONG ENGAGEMENT. But I saw a French film from a French director called
André Téchiné called LES EGARÉS, which I
think had a very small release over here under the title STRAYED. If
you see that I think you can begin to see the glimmer of Hannibal Lecter
in Gaspard’s eyes.”
It was,
presumably, a long search for the right actor, was it?
“We
looked far and wide, because for all that we had a great team working
on this film, if we didn’t have the right guy in the middle we
might as well have all packed up and gone home. I must have seen literally
hundreds of actors, we looked at some very famous American actors. I
was worried, not that they couldn’t do it, but they would bring
some baggage to the role. So I wanted someone who was a bit more of
a blank slate, if you like. Gaspard is very well known in France, but
frankly not well known outside of the country, so he had that going
for him. He is a fantastic actor, and he seems to have those Lecter
like qualities of being very charming and being very dark at the same
time. He really captured that for me.”
Did he
look at the work of the other actors who have played the role, to base
aspects of his performance upon?
“Gaspard
and I spent a lot of time with SILENCE OF THE LAMBS in particular because
that’s the definitive, classic movie of the series. We spent a
lot of time trying to work out what it was that Hopkins did, and I was
able to bring some forces to bear to help Gaspard. We had a very good
voice coach who could help deconstruct the speech rhythms that Hopkins
used, the intonation of his voice. And then I brought in a movement
coach, I’d worked with her before on Pearl Earring, because Scarlett
– great actress though she is – walks like a 20th century
woman, a sassy young girl. We had to teach her the body language of
a 17th century servant and in just the same way I brought the movement
coach in and she helped deconstruct Anthony Hopkins’ body language
for Gaspard. That enabled us to look at it and in the end give Gaspard
the tools he needed, not to do some slavish impersonation but to have
enough of the tics and the attitudes of Hannibal that could convince
an audience that some 20 to 30 years later he might become Hopkins.”
There are
hints, in past books, to Lecter’s background, aren’t there?
“There’s
a mention in the novel HANNIBAL, a paragraph really and maybe a couple
of other sentences, that are the central nugget around which this whole
story was constructed.”
It’s
odd here though, that we have a degree of sympathy for the character
because we can see what he has lost, and what he has been through.
“There’s
a whole generation of filmgoers who probably haven’t experienced
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and the other great movies that have been made
about him. I’d be very interested to see what it might be like
for them. Those of us who are old enough to have seen the original films
know where he’s going to end up eventually. You have some expectation,
but I’d be very interested to see what it would belike if you
came fresh to this.”
Does this
character spring directly from Thomas Harris’s imagination, or
is he in large part informed by his time as a crime reporter?
“Tom
is a very reclusive man he doesn’t do any interviews, and he doesn’t
do public appearances or anything like that. So it was very interesting
to go into his ‘lair’. One thing I discovered was that he’d
been a crime writer in the 60s and 70s with AP, and in fact most of
the killings in this film are based on specific scenes of crime that
he had attended. We have embellished and adorned them and tried to make
them as gruesome as possible, but they do have a basis in fact. I think
that’s very interesting.”
Is this
some kind of catharsis then, for all the terrible things he must have
seen in his life?
“I
think it must be, but I think that’s part of any creative process
really. What an artist or a writer will do is take those things that
have impacted them and, it’s like a grain of sand that goes into
an oyster. They work at it and work at it until it turns into some sort
of pearl.”
What about
the effect upon us, watching. What does it say about us?
“When
I saw the finished film my first reaction was that I didn’t realise
it was so violent. Where has that come from? Even though this is not
a message movie I realised that every single day for the last three
or four years I’ve been turning on the TV and seeing this parade
of human destruction that is the Iraq War. I think it has a drip-drip
effect, so thematically it was very interesting to me, this notion of
what happens when you take revenge and how revenge can destroy the person
who seeks it. That poison has to come out, and looking at it I realised
I’d been watching far too much BBC News 24 and CNN, because that
poison has to find a way to come out.”
Was Chinese
superstar Gong Li, who plays Hannibal’s aunt here, at any kind
of a cultural disadvantage coming into this – or did she know
all about Hannibal Lecter?
“I
don’t know how many of the other films she’d seen but she
was certainly aware of Hopkins’ performance and she was aware
of Lecter. In a way great actors transcend their culture, and I think
it’s part of my job to help the actors give the best performance
they can. We spent a lot of time working together, she was filming forever
on MIAMI VICE, but we did eventually get her and I spent a good few
weeks working with her in Miami going over the script in incredible
detail. This film may fit into the series but it works as a stand alone
film as well. This is the first time her character has appeared, so
I think it was just that normal process of character development you
get between a director and an actress.”
The scenes
at the beginning of the film, involving Hannibal’s younger sister
Mischa, are tough to watch. How were they to shoot?
“The
thing is you have to remember the experience of watching a film is completely
different to the experience of making a film. You don’t see the
girl at the moment of ultimate violence, she walks out through that
door, it’s left to your imagination. Although she is in some quite
terrifying moments beforehand, it’s play acting, it’s pretend
and kids do that all that time. She was a laughing little girl before
the scene, and in the key scene she was amazing, reacting to what was
going on around her. I think she’s an incredible little actress.
And after the scenes she would come out and would be laughing and playing
again. You realise that with a child they’re in the moment, they
don’t realise really what’s going on around them, it’s
like a big game.”
Finally,
how did you find it filming in Prague?
“I’ll
tell you, the most terrifying thing I ever came across in Prague was
not seeing Hannibal with his hands covered in blood, it was a hen party
from Newcastle. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Hannibal
Gaspard
Ulliel
