Review: Michael Mann's "Manhunter" is evocative, sensual, and unforgettable

Movie of the Week #5 dives into the earliest Hannibal Lecter film

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Even with a few high-profile misfires in the mix, there are exceptionally few fictional characters of the last half-century who have been treated as well on film as Hannibal Lecter. It is pointless to compare works as toweringly great as Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and the NBC Hannibal series created by Brian Fuller (2013-2015). They are each masterpieces in their own right, and all so distinct from one another in their approach to the material that I would never want to try ranking them, or picking a favorite. Virtually every character in the Thomas Harris oeuvre has had multiple compelling interpretations, and not only does each adaptation hone in on different themes and ideas from Harris’ work, they all innovate film language to highly unique ends to get there, from Demme’s use of direct-to-camera address in Silence of the Lambs to the crash-course in a century of global avant-garde cinema that fuels Fuller’s Hannibal. Books can, have, and should be written about each of these works; they are all singular and indelible in their own right, and in the ‘true crime’ era we’re currently living (suffering?) through, these three adaptations stand particularly tall and apart from the pack as uniquely smart and thought-provoking versions of the serial killer narrative.

I say all this at the outset to establish that whatever gushing I am about to do for Michael Mann’s Manhunter is not at the expense of the other adaptations. And I establish that boundary for myself as much as for the reader, because Manhunter is such an amazing, all-consuming cinematic experience that it prompts critical hyperbole; I have to remind myself that as much as Mann’s interpretation speaks to me, Silence of the Lambs is also among the greatest films ever made, and Hannibal is one of the 10 best TV shows of the last 25 years. What is particularly fascinating to me about Manhunter is its status as the first adaptation of Thomas Harris’ world – and therefore the one most unencumbered by Hannibal Lecter’s later pop culture dominance – and as a foundational work for Michael Mann, who is one of my very favorite filmmakers, and who bends this material so entirely to his own will that it is as central to his body of work as any other film he has made. I will not say Manhunter is a more ‘evocative’ work than the other Hannibal masterpieces; Silence of the Lambs is more ‘evocative’ of the subjectivity of woman in masculinized spaces, of course, and one of the great cinematic texts on the subject; NBC’s Hannibal is more horrifying and challenging, and more ‘evocative’ of dreams, psychosis, and sexuality. But Manhunter is ‘evocative’ in ways only Michael Mann films are ‘evocative,’ of spaces and feelings, of mood and atmosphere. If Fuller’s Hannibal is sexual, Mann’s film is sensual, concerned with touch and texture and color, telling its story primarily through the sensations of the world the characters inhabit.  Watching Manhunter, it is easy to forget there are other Thomas Harris adaptations, or other movies at all, so all-encompassing is the world Mann constructs.