Manhunter (film) - Themes

Themes

Visually, Manhunter is driven by strong color cues and the use of tints, including the hallmark blue of Mann's work. Dante Spinotti has noted that these visual cues were meant to invoke different moods based on the tone of the scenes in which they were used: cool blue tones were used for the scenes shared between Will Graham and his wife Molly, and unsettling greens and magentas were used for the scenes with the killer Francis Dollarhyde. Steven Rybin has observed that "blue is associated with Molly, sex, and the Graham family home", while green denotes "searching and discovery", pointing out the color of Graham's shirt when the investigation begins and the green tone of the interior shots in the Atlanta police station. John Muir suggests that this helps identify the character of Graham with the "goodness" of the natural world, and Dollarhyde with the city, "where sickness thrives". This strongly stylized approach drew criticism from reviewers at first, but has since been seen as a hallmark of the film and viewed more positively.

Academic studies of the film tend to draw attention to the relationship between the characters of Graham and Dollarhyde, noting, for example, that the film "chooses to emphasize the novel's symbiotic relationships between Graham, Lecter and Dolarhyde by visual techniques and screen acting where subtlety plays a key role". In his book Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film, Tony Williams praises the depth of the film's characterizations, calling Dollarhyde a "victim of society" and his portrayal "undermining convenient barriers between monster and human". Philip L. Simpson echoes this sentiment in his book Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer through Contemporary American Film, calling Manhunter a "profoundly ambiguous and destabilizing film" which creates "uncomfortable affinities between protagonist and antagonist". Mark T. Conard's The Philosophy of Film Noir follows this same idea, claiming that the film presents the notion that "what it takes to catch a serial killer is tantamount to being one".