Manhunter analysis: The hidden plot

**READ THIS** The blog is at cananalyze.blogspot.com
Manhunter is the 1986 movie based on Thomas Harris's 'Red Dragon'. The hidden plot is that Lecktor is attempting to psychologically manipulate Graham into murdering his own family. This manipulation takes place within Graham's psyche at a (mostly) unconscious level. Lecktor is able to obtain the pen he uses to write the tissue note from one of the guards, by using some form of hypnosis - similar to how he's able to get the pen from Barney in The Silence of the Lambs.

In the audio commentary to the 'Restored Director's Cut' DVD, Mann comments during the bedroom scene, "Crawford wants Graham to return, Molly wants Graham not to return." Mann is here providing a clue - what he's really saying is that Crawford wants Graham to return to the field and take the Dollarhyde assignment, and Molly wants Will to not return *from* the assignment, since she wants to be rid of him.

One tipoff that the guard who brought Lecktor the phone is not the same man as the guard in Chilton's office, is that their wristwatches are slightly different.

"Crawford knows about the cast but not the marks" (i.e. the teeth marks in the tissue): Note that when Crawford approaches Graham to converse with him in the corrider after the investigators' meeting, there is a placard near Graham showing an enlarged view of the tissue marks; but when Crawford walks up to Graham, Will moves his body in such a way as to block Crawfords's view of the display.

I'm sorry, but I cannot entertain any more comments about the validity of use of the curly/straight-hair logic that I used. I consulted the Stanford U. Scool of Genetics page to get my information - it's not hard to understand the genetics regarding hair type: A person receives one gene from each parent. If we let 'C' be a curly gene and 's' be a gene for straight hair, then curly hair requires CC, wavy is Cs, and straight is ss. If one parent, e.g. Molly Graham, has curly hair, there's no way for a child to get the two s's required for straight hair. Therefore, a naturally curly-haired parent cannot have a naturally straight-haired child, as stated in the video. I cannot entertain comments about, say, what constitutes wavy and what curly hair, or people who want to say something like, "my dad had straight hair as a child, but curly as an adult", or etc. It stands to reason that Mann used simple genetics for the movie.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• hannibal lecter analysis
• lecter hidden plot
• manhunter
• lecter hidden plots
• hidden plot lecter
• manhunter hidden plot
• hidden plot manhunter
• lecter analysis
• analysis lecter
• lecter meaning
• meaning lecter
• meaning manhunter
• manhunter meaning
• analysis manhunter
• manhunter analysis
• hannibal lecter plot
• plot hannibal lecter
• hidden plots lecter
• hannibal lecter hidden plots
• lecktor
• will graham
• hannibal lecktor

[razbigranicu]

Bloom is working with Lecktor? That's a pretty hard accusation...

[MrMovieAnalyst]

@razbigranicu The details are in certain parts of the analysis on the blog.

Note the 'diabolical'-sounding music playing while Graham is talking with Bloom in the corridor.

[celticdaze]

Stuff and nonsense, made me laugh though regards curly/straight hair, incest themes et al. Some people imagine themselves very clever by seeing and reading things in films that simply aren't there. What shortcomings are they making up for??? It's a great film, enjoy it for what it is, one of the most underated films of the 80's.

[MrMovieAnalyst]

@celticdaze How do you know it's not there - did you ask Michael Mann or Thomas Harris? The people who crack *me* up are the ones who are so confident when blowing off something that they don't understand, or who are too unsophisticated to recognize underlying themes in movies.

[clearlogicify]

Wow, so weak

[MrMovieAnalyst]

@clearlogicify You have to read the blog to get the full story.

[MrMovieAnalyst]

@spigoty As indicated in the director's cut of the movie, Mann changed things from the book so that Kevin is his natural child. Besides, you can't use the book to 'prove' something about the movie - book and movie must each stand on their own.

[MrMovieAnalyst]

@lynns0802 The "Can Analyze" blog.

[lynns0802]

what blog are you guys talking about

[MrMovieAnalyst]

@spigoty It seems Kevin's hair is medium length, but the point is its shown as straight. Putting the whole thing together carefully, with all the shots of Molly's hair, the incest theme etc. leads me to believe she's hiding from Will that she's Kevin's natural mom. You'll see when you look at the blog. Normally red symbolizes Mars (Dollarhyde). In religion, it symbolizes the blood of Christ and also the blood of Christ's enemies. To get the thing about violet you really need to check the blog.