I was lucky enough to finally see Hanna on the big screen. It’s worth the effort to try and catch it at the theater, particularly for all of the stunning cinematography, so much of which was shot on location. The film is beautiful and meaningful, and as I said in the no-spoiler preview of the film, haunting.
Here we’ll be taking a look at some screencaps I nabbed from the trailer, and having a conversation full of *HUGE SPOILERS* for the film. Click away if you don’t want to know ALL of the particulars of this story before you see the film.
(*CLICK* all pics for larger versions!)
At the top of this post, we see Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) turning the tables on her attacking father Erik (Eric Bana). Eric has said in interviews that he let Saoirse beat the crap out of him for authenticity sake…well, he allowed a few bruises, anyway. 🙂 In any case, Saoirse is feral and believable as the attack assassin she’s been trained to be.
Here we have some caps of the iceman Erik and his wild-haired but ethereally lovely daughter Hanna.
I really liked their scenes together. It was pivotal to the story that despite all the hunting and fighting and drills, there was true warmth and affection between them. I liked that he read to her out of encyclopedias as if they were bedtime stories, and the strange way that he only let her know the book definition of things like music and kisses. I think it was an intriguing part of the story that this lack of experience and emotion were actually a huge detriment to Hanna’s success at her mission. Training a robotic killing machine is fine if you’re dealing with other robotic killing machines–but there are all sorts of human emotions, foibles and crises along the way that Hanna is ill-equipped to handle, and her one-dimensional upbringing becomes a detriment. In trying to protect her, Erik has actually hindered and hurt her.
I also appreciated that Hanna wasn’t a caricature or comic book assassin. She’s complicated. She wants to go out on her own and complete her “mission”–and see the rest of the world. But then when it’s time for it, there’s the lovely scene where she folds up next to Erik and just lays against him–a child again, looking for comfort from her dad.
Here we see Hanna’s wistful look and the cleaned-up Erik giving her last-minute instructions. I don’t think he had any idea what she would really be in for.
Here are two great shots from the film. Note how the subjects are framed by their surroundings, the differences in lighting, the brilliance of Marissa’s red hair compared to her cool gray clothing and setting.
I’m still trying to decide if I wanted more from Marissa (Cate Blanchett) in this film. She’s a character of mystery and contradictions, but if you go through each scene, you get little clues. There’s perhaps a hint that she loved or wanted Erik and resented his relationship with Hanna’s mother–and with Hanna herself. There’s also a brilliant scene with Hanna’s grandmother, where Marissa cracks a little when she’s asked if she has any children. There’s enough there to paint in some of who Marissa is, but I feel like there was room enough for another piece. Perhaps if I see it again I’ll have more of an idea, but I think I would have liked something more in her final stand-off with Erik. More of a reaction on her part, more fear, or remorse, or bloodlust–something.
But maybe that’s part of the beauty of Hanna. Normally I’m very resentful of “figure it out for yourself” writing–I tend to think it’s a lazy copout. But in this case I think it’s Hanna’s film and Hanna’s story, and we’re in many ways going on her perspective. She doesn’t know, and probably will never know, the true nature of who she is or who her mother or Erik were, or why Marissa really wants her dead so badly when she’s actually so proud of her experimental results.
One thing Hanna does especially well is creating a never-ending feeling of suspense and usually dread. When we see Hanna in captivity, acting so calm and blank, we don’t know if we’re more afraid for her or the unwitting people around her. Whatever it is, we know something bad is going to happen.
You know this isn’t going to turn out well. This woman’s job is the equivalent of a royal food taster. She’s just met her boss’ poison.
I think this was another crucial moment. That even the stoic, obsessively ordered and ruthless Marissa is freaked out by Hanna’s abrupt killing spree, tells us so much about how scared we should be by this little girl assassin. This is another question the film poses–whether Marissa had a point in cleaning up the experiment. As much as we come to identify with Hanna, is it really safe to have her out in the world? What sort of a person is she going to become?
More great cinematic moments. This movie is a joy to screencap; there are just so many cool shots. The Grimm’s fairytales dilapidated amusement park also made a perfect setting for this grim fairytale. Very symbolic and beautifully done.
Cate has a similar ability to Tilda Swinton, to play these uber skinny, somewhat androgynous, buttoned up, dangerous women.
Tom Hollander doesn’t ever seem to be the kind of guy you want following you, whether he’s joined by goons in Hanna or officers in Pirates of the Caribbean. At first blush he’s sort of charming and likable, but then that crazy killer instinct comes out and it’s very, very freaky.
A heck of a stunt by Hanna to get herself a little further across the desert before dehydrating.
The softer side of Hanna, as she learns how to be a teenager. I liked her relationship with Sophie (Jessica Barden), but I’m still on the fence about the kiss. I’m not sure how much it was supposed to mean, or if it was something the male director thought was pretty, you know what I mean? I took it as a moment of affection and trust, but I’m not entirely sure it was necessary.
Another shot of Sophie and her mother Rachel (Olivia Williams). This was another question mark in the film–am I naive to ask if Sophie and her family met the same gruesome end that all of the other innocent people on Isaacs’ trail did?
I’m so glad Eric got to show his stuff in the film, and I don’t mean that clingy, wet long underwear he climbed out of the ocean in. But, you know, I was glad of that, too. But his fight sequence was excellent–he is very good at the man-of-action stuff. As for the character, it takes some serious confidence to actually lure your attackers to a secluded area where they can surround you. Wowza. I’m also glad that if nothing else, Erik at least got to do some nasty things to Isaacs and his goons, considering what they’d done in their pursuit of him and Hanna.
I think this was the most heartbreaking part of all, that this painful exchange was the last one that Hanna and Erik had. It’s the end result of Erik’s mistakes in judgment…as Hanna says, he didn’t prepare her for this. He didn’t prepare her for a lot of things. In some ways you have to wonder if he kept so many emotions out of her life because he couldn’t handle them himself anymore. Maybe it was more that he wanted to be a stoic robot, so he couldn’t feel pain anymore. That’s the beauty of Eric Bana. Even if it’s unspoken aloud, he says all of those anguished things with his eyes.
Here’s another shot of Marissa, and then the final showdown. Even though it’s perhaps cliche to begin and end the film with the same line, but I confess I didn’t expect it here. It was incredibly chilling, and truly plants the seed of uncertainty in what ordinarily would be a moment of triumph, of good victorious over bad. It’s just that suddenly we’re worried about how good Hanna actually is.
I hope you enjoyed the Hanna screencaps. When the DVD comes out, there should definitely be some Bana beefcake screencaps coming your way. For now we’ll have to settle for pretty and poignant Eric.
What did you all think of the film? Any thoughts on the themes or possible plot holes in the film? Please do share!
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There are a few more screencaps in my Hanna preview post, as well as some Eric Bana shots from a Hanna interview.
PHOTOS: Hanna screencaps, c2011 Holleran Co., Studio Babelsberg & Focus Features.
Shriney is a freelance entertainment writer who contributes regularly to both big-name and little-name websites. She's also published some pretty dirty stuff in fiction. When she's not trying to make a living, she's perving over hot men, screencapping obsessively, and doing her best to share the SQUEE with like-minded women and men. She's been known to disappear for long stretches into the Dirty Old Lady Cave, where you are also welcome to book your own room.
I was just as haunted by this movie as you, and I did go back and see it a second time, I loved it so much.
Thinkie thoughts you have about Erik going to far in the direction of no emotion! It’s very likely he was so devastated when Marissa came after them and killed Hanna’s mother that he started out in grief/depression, and then layered on the stoicism so that Hanna wouldn’t hesitate when it came time to kill. I agree that he woefully unprepared her to go out in the world, though, where people are naturally social.
I thought it was interesting that the modifications she underwent were supposed to make her physically stronger–that worked–and feel less pity–that I don’t think worked. I mean, Erik raised her from age 1 to kill when need be. Unfortunately, we see children in armies taught to do just that without genetic modification. Yet despite never having friends, she formed a true empathetic bond with Sophie.
The kiss scene I thought was very sweet, and a wonderful portrayal of the innocence of youth, when most media depicts snarky, jaded, smart alec teens. Even though Sophie wore makeup, talked shopping and pop stars, and liked to kiss boys, she was still young. She could sing songs in the camper van with her parents and little brother, and pledge eternal friendship to someone she’d just met. I read the kiss as the kind of innocent puppy-piling that is becoming rarer as everything comes to seem more sexualized. (I believe it was Saoirse who came up with the kiss idea.)
Unfortunately, I think the family didn’t make it. Marissa was leaving absolutely no evidence behind her, nor was Isaacs. (In fact, I think Marissa deliberately held back to let Erik take out Isaacs and his remaining goon, just to clean up those two loose ends.) However, if you want to believe they lived … Marissa might have pulled Isaacs off to plan the trip to Berlin, leaving the one remaining goon to take out the family. If they managed to get the drop on him and flee, and he was too embarrassed to admit it, well, I won’t stop you thinking that. 😀
Isaacs was actually one of my few niggles in the movie. Tom Hollander did an amazing job, and his character fit in with the almost caricature-type qualities that the players in this fairy tale had, but on the other hand I felt like, “The Evil Gay, really?” At first meet, he’s appreciating an intersexed dancer and, hey, that could be very sex positive. But it was a shortcut to his further portrayal as perverse, violent, sadistic, etc. Well, that and his German accent. Because we all know Germans and queers are sociopathic. :-/
Erik absolutely broke my heart at the end when he told Hanna, “Run!” and headed for Isaacs’ car. Hannah had just gotten through telling him he wasn’t really her father and then he went and placed himself between her and danger–I knew what was coming and started crying right away.
Eric played the hell out of this role and was absolutely gorgeous!
Thanks for letting me blather about this here–I loved it so much!
Thank you so much for all of your thoughts! I appreciate it. It always drives me crazy that when I want to find out more about how people interpreted a film, I can never find it–all the major outlets only do non-spoilery or only mild-spoilery reviews. So if you don’t understand the ending or wonder if you’re the only one peeved about character death, you have nowhere to go! So I’m wanting to create a space where we can all blather to our heart’s content on these sorts of things. *G*
As for the family death, my original assumption was that it was all over for them. But the movie didn’t shy away from showing all the gruesome deaths of other innocents, so when they didn’t show us anything about the family, I wasn’t sure. It also was one of my issues that when Hanna told Sophie not to follow her, that she was trying to protect her and her family. So it seemed odd to me that Hanna went on her merry way, then, and didn’t try to help them in any way. I was sort of hoping she was going to come back to the RV and kick some major ass and save the family, but she didn’t. I guess you could just take it as her survival instinct–I’ll save you if I can, but if I can’t, oh well.
My only thought about the family surviving was that Marissa had said early on that she had Isaacs to do the things that she couldn’t do. So when she showed up at the interrogation, I thought it could perhaps mean that they were doing that one by the book. It was just strange to me that they left that all unspoken. But I thought maybe it was a show of respect for the characters–you already saw what had happened to people who ran into Marissa and Isaacs, and because we were attached to the family, they chose to not linger over their deaths and merely leave it unsaid. I don’t know! It just kind of threw me for a loop there.
As for Isaacs being the cliche, I don’t think that struck me that way, but now that you point it out I see what you mean. That is a common stereotype in films, that a gay villain is naturally more creepy/deranged/sick than a straight villain. It’s one of those tough things now, because I don’t think gay characters should *never* be evil, but if you do an evil gay character you risk being considered a stereotype. I would say something like “Eastern Promises” did a better job, because that character was twisted not because he was gay, but because he was repressed and filled with self-loathing and denial.
That’s interesting what you say about Hanna having empathy. I wonder if, in this case, it’s because Erik really wasn’t a monster who wanted her to be a killing machine. He was a good man and loving father, so perhaps despite the fact that he kept her so driven and tough and sheltered, his own kindness and empathy rubbed off on her anyway.
The “Run!” bit at the end broke my heart, too. I knew it wasn’t going to end well–I do need to see it again, because the thing I couldn’t quite tell was where Hanna was when she heard the shot. A part of me thought she had started to head back to help him, but I was a little confused by her surroundings (probably also blurry with tears) so I wasn’t sure if she had just kept running away or had considered coming back to him. Gah.
Eric was amazing in this. And damn sexy. 😛 Thank you so much for your blather, I thoroughly enjoyed it!
Yes, I think Hanna had a mission, so couldn’t go back. (I do think she might have gone back post-movie to find out what happened.)
As for why they didn’t show the family’s deaths, it could have been a combination of respect for the family, not wanting to show children’s deaths onscreen, and plot timing–you know how Marissa and Isaacs operate, so let’s just move ahead to Berlin. They also didn’t show the motorcycle boyfriends’ deaths, but it’s strongly implied. 🙁
(They could also be leaving that smidge of hope the family got the drop on goon-man. 🙂
ITA that Erik’s good heart impacted Hanna’s personality! I shudder to think what she would have been like if Marissa had raised her.
It looked to me like Hanna was still running away when the sound of then shot came, like the sound came from behind her. That was interesting thing I picked up on second viewing: Hanna’s mother’s death was shown the same way. Erik was running away with Hanna and we hear the echoing shot from behind them, offscreen.
The movie is so worth a second watch! I loved it, and it’s so much fun to discuss it with someone.
See, I’m definitely going to have to go back and see again, because I didn’t get that about the motorcycle guys either. Maybe I just refuse to see that sort of thing…lol. But I think at that point, when they got to the camp, it seemed more like they were just looking for Hanna–after all, Isaacs sent the little brother back to sleep without doing anything to him then.
I agree with you on plot timing–that we’ve already seen the pattern of what Isaacs does with witnesses, so we don’t need to keep hammering it home. But it does leave the door open to interpretation–which seems to be what they liked doing with this film. I think if you asked the filmmakers to clarify these points, they wouldn’t want to. That’s what Eric said in one of the interviews–that he and Marissa maybe had some backstory, but he and Cate didn’t discuss it and both brought their own interpretation to the screen. I’m not generally a fan of *so* much ambiguity, but I do prefer a film that I can keep talking about to one that I immediately forget once I leave the theater…heh.
That’s an interesting parallel you make between Hanna’s mother’s death and Erik’s. Which makes it all the more heart-wrenching.
I think it’s probably out of the theaters here, so my second watch will have to be on DVD probably. Argh!
At the kissing scene with Hanna and the boy, for some odd reason i felt that he was a goon or a spy for the people chasing her, as did the flip she gave him with the suspicion.
At the scene where the family is held and the scene were the father was held up, i felt that they were not in fact dead, but the father was acting as if shot and killed, and the family hid/fought somehow to escape when the goons had to leave.
In the beginning, her quote “I just missed your heart.”, i felt that it would tie into the end as it did, as she said it to Marissa before she killed her,like the deer.
im guessing the “lesbian” scene between Hanna and Sophie was showing the friendship,the mutualism, and the awkwardness shown as they are friends and for the thankful perks of meeting sophie and her family.
Overall, i felt the movie wasnt as pieced together in some parts as it should be, but it is worth a second watch.the music was tied in perfectly with the movie, as i am hooked to it now.
i believe this is a pretty good movie, but i am confused with the age difference with the hanna during the movie making and the present hanna. during her beginning interviews, she is the age as she is in the movie, but in other interviews it seems she is an adult. why is that i wonder?
thank you for letting me express everything here.
-mystery800
(by Hanna interviews, i do not mean the ones in the movie, but the ones in real life. i hope this will help with clarification.)