Review: Hannibal ‘Rôti’ – Sometimes All We Can Do Is Watch

Everywhere Will turns in ‘Roti’, he’s seeing water. Whether it’s the snow on the ground in the hills of Maryland or the rushing water seeping from behind the containers in the FBI morgue, real life or hallucinations, there’s water everywhere around Will – and as we see in one of his many fever dreams, he’s drowning in that water. What began as a fractured, but otherwise sturdy mountain is slowly crumbling and melting into a massive tidal wave (which director Guillermo Navarro literally shows us in his dream), threatening to swallow Will and leave him forever lost in the woods of his mind.

‘Roti’ is an episode about identity, and what can happen to those who are in control of their identities, those who aren’t – and most importantly psychologists and people who study the mind, the people who can influence an identity (theirs or others) will a few simple tricks. A lot of ‘Roti’ is dedicated to drawing metaphors between two men (Abel Gideon and Will Graham) who’ve lost their identities thanks to the manipulations of the doctors in charge of them – but it’s also about the identities of others, and how their self-perceptions can in turn have adverse effects on others.

At the center of it all is Will Graham, who this week finds himself chasing Dr. Gideon, a character we spent some time with in ‘Entree’: he’s still pissed about snide Dr. Chilton (and others) convincing him he was the Chesapeake Ripper, and he escapes custody in gruesome fashion to send a message to the real Ripper. What’s interesting is when Will goes to reconstruct the crime scene: the pendulum of light normally used to convey Will moving back and forth between his imagination and his reality stops dead in the middle while sitting in the back of the empty police truck – just stops, the screen goes black for a brief instant, and we’re back with Will. This is a massive red flag, and it’s so quickly dropped in, it’s easy to miss – thankfully, Will explains it pretty soon after when we see his drowning dream and he pleads with Hannibal (who in turn reminds him that he’s a completely reliable anchor to reality for Will to rely on).

This turns out to be bullshit of course, as we find out in what I’d argue is the most fucked up sequence of the show to date: after Gideon kills one of the shit-talking doctors (meticulously holding down the still-moving tongue shoved into his neck until it stayed still, a dark touch I loved), he kidnaps Freddie Lounds (who by the way, does nothing but explain EVERYTHING with her dialogue in this episode) and brings her to the place the Ripper left the arm of Jack’s intern – supposedly to have a little chat.

But there’s more up his sleeve: he brings in Dr. Chilton, and proceeds to surgically remove his organs, all while Chilton is sedated, awake, and with Lounds on stand by with a ventilator if need be. Navarro really wrings every second of skin-crawling horror out of that scene (which in itself, is a very slight homage to the climatic scene of Hannibal, without the following meal and Clarice) as Gideon clamps his midsection open, and begins removing his intestines and liver.

It’s a fascinating little twist from the novels – in the books (and Silence of the Lambs film) Chilton is a presence in Lecter’s prison life, a demented man in charge of the ward Lecter presides in. There’s strong suggestions made in the Hannibal novel that Lecter kills Chilton after escaping – but he doesn’t even make it that far in this show, supposedly alive at the end, but having his guts reconstructed by a team of doctors. Will we see him again, sneering over Hannibal when he’s in prison (if this show runs long enough for that)? I’d assume not, but anything’s possible, right?

That’s not the end of the fuckery, however: after Gideon finds Graham waiting in the car for him, Will has him drive to Hannibal’s. Will is barely staying afloat at this point, and as he lets Hannibal be his “gauge”, Hannibal uses the opportunity to keep Gideon alive and tighten his grip around Will’s brain. He convinces Will that he’s seeing a ghost (to his credit, Will is seeing Garrett Hobbs again, his mind replacing the man he killed with the man he feels he needs to kill), and sends them both lose in a race to Alana Bloom (who by the way, is ever so slowly warming up to the idea of Will and the many dogs he lives with).

They stand in the field behind her house together, both of them trying to figure out if they have “any self left”: Gideon lost himself thinking he was the Ripper, and Will putting his mind into the minds of other killers and getting lost in them. Gideon thinks killing Bloom might show him the answer, to help him “understand more” about who he’s become – but Will already knows what he’s slowly becoming, and “shows” himself by killing Gideon. Will kills Gideon to save Alana, yes; but he also kills him because he’s slowly turning into a killer himself – and because Hannibal has the answers and not Gideon’s death, killing Gideon doesn’t provide Will with any of the answers he’s looking for.

With the continued fragmentation of Will’s psyche comes a more visually inventive, disturbing version of Hannibal – and although I’ve said his name numerous times already, Guillermo Navarro really deserves some credit for his shot composition in this episode (along with the writers and production staff, of course… it’s easy to tell everyone’s at the top of their game on this show), soaking Will’s scenes in hallucinogenic moments and surreal dream sequences. But no mesmerizing imagery works without equally solid writing – and ‘Roti’ is one of the season’s finest, weaving the intellectual with the dramatic and throwing a few buckets of blood on top for good measure.

Grade: A-

Other thoughts/observations:

– Hannibal has “no interest in studying sheep”; only eating them, as he unsubtly points out to Chilton.

– Will sees himself surrounded by a “thicket of antlers” in the FBI room: there’s murder everywhere around him, and it continues to threaten and consume him at every turn.

– another person asks Hannibal whether he’s interested in Will or his mind; his psychiatrist asks him if he wants to help clean up the “oil mess” or just admire it from a distance.

– Watching Hannibal’s calm reactions to Will’s seizure might’ve been the creepiest part of an episode where a man’s liver got removed from him while he watched.

– what’s interesting about Will’s dream sequence is how at first, it appears to be Will trying to wash away the memory of all these violent thoughts and images… but the tide quickly starts moving towards him, a sign that just “flushing” it out is only going to do more damage.

– Jack Crawford’s hat is awesome.