Hannibal

Although Silence of the Lambs was, in effect, a sequel to Manhunter which was the first movie based on Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal was deliberately conceived as a sequel to Jonathan Demme's hugely successful and Oscar winning film. Thomas Harris had to be coaxed into writing a book and after various negotiations, Anthony Hopkins was persuaded to reprise his role as everyone's favourite cannibal, but with Julianne Moore replacing Jodie Foster who decided to say Ta Ta, Clarice. After their work together on Gladiator, director Ridley Scott seems to have found in Hans Zimmer, some combination of Vangelis and Jerry Goldsmith. Both of those composers have worked with Scott in the past and in the case of Goldsmith at least, with results that were excellent despite seemingly being unappreciated by the director and/or the studio. Zimmer can do the 'proper' symphonic scoring of Goldsmith (up to a point at least) and also the new-age Vangelis thing. Zimmer seems a good choice, at least in terms of what Scott wants in terms of music for his films.

It took me several attempts to actually get more than a few tracks into Hannibal. The one track I most wanted to hear was not by Zimmer at all, but a sumptuous Aria that featured in the film and was written by Patrick Cassidy. To my (and many other people's) eternal delight, it is featured as the closing track on the album. I'm not really much of an opera expert and am not terribly fond of the genre, but this one is sheer bliss, beautifully written and powerfully performed. My best guess would be that it suggests Verdi more than anything, certainly more dramatic than Puccini, yet less weighty than Wagner. Apparently Cassidy is going to write an entire opera based around the piece and I'll certainly be queueing up for a copy. Almost worth the price of the album alone.

What of Zimmer's score? A mixed bag is the answer. Firstly, to the annoyance of many, the album features dialogue excerpts. However, they are read by Sir Anthony Hopkins, an actor who, as Mr Southall pointed out, could make reading the telephone directory mesmerising. In all honesty, the music under the dialogue isn't anything special, Zimmer often favouring synthetic twittering in these sections and evidently considered the album would be perked up with Hopkins' dulcet tones. However, during the later sections such as Virtue and Let My Home Be My Gallows show the score for how could it might all have been. Virtue contains some eloquent string writing and the Libera Boys Choir also providing a haunting contribution of their own, the same going for Let Me Home Be My Gallows. Firenze Di Notte sounds like an action Zimmer cue gone wrong and isn't by Zimmer at all, but is synthetic percussion with eerie noises overlaid. Not terribly interesting stuff.

Valse Tartare is an arrangement of some of the some of the Blue Danube Waltzes by Strauss, but never quite turns into the psychotic, twisted arrangement it seems to threaten to do. The selection from the ever popular Goldberg variations works fine enough, even though I've never been a great fan of that particular part of Bach's output. At its best, Zimmer's music is somewhat similar to Shore's music for Silence of the Lambs being low and intense, but the eclectic selection of music on the album coupled with quite a number of fairly uninteresting cues yield the entire endeavor a little less than the sum of its parts. The best sections are well worth hearing and often superb, such a shame that much of it is surrounded by meandering nothingness.