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immediate object. There is, even in happiness, a soupçon of sadness in it, as if aware of the fragility of joy, of the danger, deceptions, and death lying in wait. These eyes alone, at the thin frontier between bright wonder and the tragic sense of life, warrant seeing the film a second time. Lena Endre will make all women viewers proud of their womanhood, and all men a little more loving toward their women for being her sisters.

■ Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence -of the Lambs, is a sorry thing indeed. The earlier movie, admittedly based on a better novel, was directed more subtly by Jonathan Demme, using more suggestion. Ridley Scott merely revels in gore. The screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian tries hard to be both scary and smart-aleck, but cannot even cover up gaping holes in the plot. To think that Hannibal Lecter, who in the novel had plastic surgery on his face but in the movie looks like the same old Anthony Hopkins, would go unrecognized in tourist-filled Florence, even under the name Dr. Fell (of “I do not like thee” fame), is in itself preposterous.

About the Author

Jay Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger was a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow at National Review Institute.

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immediate object. There is, even in happiness, a soupçon of sadness in it, as if aware of the fragility of joy, of the danger, deceptions, and death lying in wait. These eyes alone, at the thin frontier between bright wonder and the tragic sense of life, warrant seeing the film a second time. Lena Endre will make all women viewers proud of their womanhood, and all men a little more loving toward their women for being her sisters.

■ Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence -of the Lambs, is a sorry thing indeed. The earlier movie, admittedly based on a better novel, was directed more subtly by Jonathan Demme, using more suggestion. Ridley Scott merely revels in gore. The screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian tries hard to be both scary and smart-aleck, but cannot even cover up gaping holes in the plot. To think that Hannibal Lecter, who in the novel had plastic surgery on his face but in the movie looks like the same old Anthony Hopkins, would go unrecognized in tourist-filled Florence, even under the name Dr. Fell (of “I do not like thee” fame), is in itself preposterous.