2011 movie Hannah (streaming here on Peacock) is obviously an action movie, but you’ve probably never seen an action flick that plays with atmosphere like this. Hannah doing. Directed by Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Darkest hour) and moodily scored by The Chemical Brothers to block out a rockin’ beat (or, in quieter moments, a hallucinatory weave of lullaby ambience), seem to operate on a heightened, almost mystical plane of reality.
Surreal There might be a better description for how Hannah His predator-stalker frames the action, as Wright himself used the term to describe the vibe he was striving for in the first place. Inspired by the exotic atmosphere of films like David Lynch Blue Velvet And EraserheadWright steered the movie’s story of a teenage warrior on the run from dark forces by leaning heavily into the ominous emotional logic of scary fairy tales—stories like the eerie Brothers Grimm children’s classics. Hannah It pays clear homage in the moments after its climax.
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Saoirse gets “surreal” in Ronan HannahA runaway orphan fairy tale
on the surface, Hannah Nicolas Cage and a young Chloe Grace Moretz in 2010 have a setup you’ve probably seen elsewhere. Kick-AssOr maybe even between Aloy and stoic caretaker Rost in 2017 Horizon Zero Dawn — a game whose initial plot is very closely aligned HannahIt’s easy to suspect that the movie might be playing loops in the heads of its developers.
When not too old to vote Hannah Debuting in 2011, a then-16-year-old Saoirse Ronan stars as the film’s titular hero, a girl raised in primitive isolation in the snowy Finnish wilderness by a man named Erik (Erik Bana) who is most likely her father. Whatever it is, Eric obviously cares for Hanna, as he, like some junior super-soldier, is busy rehearsing her constantly for violent confrontations that most normal people only see in movies.
Of course, there’s more to their mysterious relationship than Hannah (or the audience at this point) knows, and soon the two are torn apart as she’s forced to move into the big, bad modern world with only her training – and her suspiciously sharp instincts – was for his protection. A shady CIA agent named Marissa (Cate Blanchett) leads a two-pronged push to track down both fugitives, setting off a tragic chain of events that finally gives Hanna answers about her parentage and her past. But it all comes with a heavy cost: by the end of the movie, Hannah has regained her freedom, but she’s lost almost everything she knows and loves.
Although it essentially plays out as a pair of action-heavy chase stories that cut between each other, HannahWright’s real magic is found in the way Wright allows the audience to see her world expand, as Hannah travels for the first time beyond the sheltered confines of her snowy childhood cottage. All the soldier training in the world couldn’t prepare her for her first real encounter with music, nor with meeting and mingling with Europe’s heterogeneous sea of faces, or absorbing the electric bustle of a busy Berlin streetscape. Wright elevates moments like that by leaning heavily into the dreamy hyper-reality of it all, citing his teenage fascination with David Lynch films as one of the movie’s key creative cues.
“It has an atmosphere that is somehow surreal and almost comes from the subconscious,” shared Wright. Film School Reject at the time of Hannah‘s release, admitting that Lynch – one of her “favourite filmmakers” – exemplified the vibe. Blue Velvet, “the most magical and extraordinary film I have ever seen” when Wright himself was a teenager. “Like fairy tales, (Lynch’s movies) deal with archetypes and the characters in the film are very archetypal characters… There’s a kind of darkness in those fairy tales that I’ve always admired.”
The film makes a direct reference to it Grimm’s Fairy Tales There is inspiration at times, but especially the atmosphere envelops the action as it nears its climax. Wright begins to evoke Lynch’s influence in a way that’s not too hard to miss, in scenes that play out eerily in an abandoned amusement park and even inside a fictional Berlin house, whose obscure owner’s name suggests — wait for it — “ Wilhelm Grimm.”
While the action reaches a violent crescendo at those points, Wright’s direction swaps Hanna’s desperate fight-or-flight conundrum for a slower and more surreal peek at how her heightened senses are processing it all. As shared separately with Wright IndiewireIt was a deliberate creative choice, which he also credits to Lynch.
“There is something quite mystical about his films, by which I mean something beyond rational appreciation,” he explained. “You really can’t reason with them and you shouldn’t even try. That is not their issue. And I really like that mysticism.”
Hannah is available to stream on Peacock here.
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