netflixed "hannibal rising" and damn!, my fists were clenched the entire time as i watched that movie. it was not that graphic or violent and yet i was squeamish. it must be a sign that i'm getting old! or maybe my fists were clenched because of the odd backstory that's supposed to explain the character of hannibal lecter. i never read the books but going by the films, i thought it was an odd backstory, amateurish. in fact, i'm shocked to read the credits that this is the only screenplay in the series that the author penned himself. you see, hannibal lecter was made famous in "silence of the lambs" for wearing a mask to prevent him from biting his keepers. it is never said that he wears such a mask to kill or to get off on. we the audience know him with the mask from when he is incarcerated. the story of "hannibal rising" is to show when he was growing up and how he became the monster. he is shown wearing a similar mask from a japanese suit of armor. what the fuck? sonnano kankeinei!

anyway, it's truly bizarre how hannibal is living in france in the 1950s with his uncle's wife who is japanese and lost all her family in hiroshima. a woman who prays to a suit of armor and has the honor of polishing it once a year on her ancestor's birthday. say what? there's supposed to be this sympathetic connection between hannibal losing his entire family, she losing hers, and the detective on the case of hannibal's first killings who also lost his entire family, all of this during world war 2. hannibal is full of anger. this causes his first killing and the rest are due to revenge. that is when he first cannibalizes. i was expecting some sort of gradual metamorphosis into a killer and cannibal but it's more like, bam! now he's hannibal the cannibal. it would be so much more interesting if the film was about hannibal in his heyday when the press gave him the nickname 'hannibal the cannibal'.