The
Dragon’s Tale is Lost in the Translation: A Review of Brett Ratner’s
Red Dragon
Red Dragon. Dir. Brett Ratner. 2002.
I’m not one of these people who moans incessantly when a film version of
a novel isn’t a verbatim translation of the original story. I understand that
writing and film are two different mediums, and I appreciate a skillful director’s
ability to translate a story to the screen, imbuing it with his/her own vision.
And it was for these reasons that I really wanted to like Red Dragon,
a lot. But alas, there was much to irk me.
The film version of Red Dragon is similar to Thomas Harris’ novel,
but the story has also been bent by Hollywood’s demands. In Harris’ novel,
Hannibal Lecter isn’t a major character. Indeed, there’s no continuity between
Red Dragon and Harris’ two later novels, The Silence of the Lambs
and Hannibal. But Hollywood loves a sequel, and the producers can’t
get financial backing without bankable stars. Apparently, Ed Norton
alone wasn’t enough of a box office draw. The cinematic muscle of Anthony
Hopkins reprising his role as Dr. Lecter was required, thus transforming Red
Dragon into the prequel of The Silence of the Lambs.
The plot is basically this. Former FBI agent Will Graham, the man who captured
Hannibal Lecter, is convinced to come out of retirement to stop another serial
killer, the Red Dragon. Graham must use his extreme empathy, which allows
him to actually “see” what the killer was doing at the time of the murder,
to stop the Red Dragon before he slaughters another family in his multi-state
killing spree. Unknown to Graham, the killer is selecting his victims from
home movies that come into his possession.
And it’s here that the similarities between the film and novel end. The
novel as a genre more easily lends itself to character development than does
film since it’s easier to pack more information into a 400-page book than
a 120-minute movie. Thus Harris’ novel is able to shift from detailed information
about Will Graham’s terrifying insights while investigating a crime scene
to the tormented childhood of the Red Dragon, Francis Dolarhyde, born deformed
and subsequently abandoned by his mother. The film, unfortunately, relies
too heavily on the audience’s ability to fill in the gaps of the story, which
is especially problematic when attempting to understand what formed the killer.
Ralph Fiennes does an excellent job of portraying the painfully shy and
deeply conflicted Francis Dolarhyde, but good acting isn’t enough.
The film reduces Francis Dolarhyde’s motives to trauma induced after his
hateful grandmother threatened to cut off his penis as punishment for bed-wetting.
Perhaps Brent Ratner, the director, wanted to make Dolarhyde’s character
similar to that of Lecter’s, that is, a sort of evil so monstrous as to defy
explanation, and thus, decided that material devoted to showing the audience
a portrait of the monster as a young man was unnecessary. But Francis Dolarhyde
isn’t sufficiently similar to Hannibal Lecter for this strategy to work.
The urbane Dr. Lecter possesses a preternatural intelligence, giving him
an almost supernatural quality. With few exceptions, Hannibal Lecter kills
because it pleases him as much as liver with fava beans and a fine Chianti.
But Francis Dolarhyde kills because he has to; he’s in the clutches of the
Red Dragon who demands to be fed. Harris understood the need to thoroughly
probe Francis Dolarhyde’s psyche in order to explain the formation of this
compulsion without making it appear trivial. Director Brett Ratner’s failure
to thoroughly develop his villain makes Francis Dolarhyde into a one-dimensional
boogey man with some unusual drives.
Another casuality of the film’s translation of the original story is Dolarhyde’s
fascination with representations of reality in both high and low art. This
is a terribly important theme in the novel, and is the key to understanding
Dolarhyde’s personality. Dolarhyde selects his victims after coming into possession
of their family films, that genre of photography meant to document a domestic
harmony that may be entirely fictional. But reality is unimportant when
pitted against the artfully constructed image of What Ought to Be. This seems
to be a popular theme at the movies this season, as seen in another recent
film, One Hour Photo, where the constructed image becomes more significant
and comforting than reality. When Dolarhyde kills his victims, he makes his
own family films, which represent him as both a participant in and disruptor
of a domestic harmony that he has never experienced. His compulsion to revise
various family films is inspired by high art, namely, a William
Blake watercolor, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With the
Sun, where a dragon is both awing and terrifying a nubile young woman.
This image embodies everything the painfully shy and tormented Francis Dolarhyde
wishes to be. When Dolarhyde is finally able to see this great work of art
in person, he is stunned by how small it is. In his mind, the image has assumed
much larger proportions, and hence, he feels betrayed by the puniness of
reality. Perhaps due to the limitations of the format, the film is unable
to adequately communicate the significance of Dolarhyde’s fascination with
these images. They’re merely another quirk in his personality and provide
a convenient means for selecting victims.
A final problem with the film was its failure to explore an issue raised
by Francis Dolarhyde’s fascination with represented, posed family life, namely,
the erosion of individual privacy in an increasingly industrialized and compartmentalized
society. We entrust our family photos to strangers, never dreaming that
on the other end is a human who actually sees these personal images, who
might find them sufficiently compelling to print a copy for himself, and
even use them for some nefarious purpose. This theme is a chilling side note
in Harris’ novel, but really isn’t developed (pun intended) in the film.
The acting was notable. Both Feinnes and Norton give exceptional performances
in their roles, and Emily Watson’s Reba McClane, Francis Dolarhyde’s blind
co-worker who almost saves him from the Dragon’s clutches, is exceptional
for the small gestures she uses in creating the character. Anthony Hopkins
never seems to tire of playing Hannibal Lecter, the charming fiend who alternates
between extreme civility and savagery with very little warning. It’s worth
the price of admission to see Hannibal Lecter in action before he was captured.
People familiar with The Silence of the Lambs will appreciate Ratner’s
reference to events in this first film. And the film itself is fine as an
action/suspense drama. But people going to the theater wishing to see
the complexity of Harris’ original story represented will ultimately be disappointed.