Hanna

"I found her. She can't speak English. She's from Sri Lanka."

Hanna is about a sixteen year old girl experiencing the world for the first time. Hanna, played by Saiorse Ronan (pronounced ‘Sersha’), was raised in a forest by her father Erik (Eric Bana) and has never seen the world outside. She knows the names of places and how many people live there but has never been to any of them. She has never heard music but knows how to explain what it sounds like and how you are supposed to feel when you hear it. She does not know how to carry a normal conversation with another person, and when first comes face to face with one, she awkwardly blurts out every detail about herself. Once Hanna leaves the forest, she is fascinated by everyone and everything she sees, and the audience is right there beside her when she hears music for the first time.

Hanna is exceptional at one thing, however. From the training received from her father (a former CIA agent), Hanna is a killing machine. She is sent from the forest on a mission to kill CIA agent Marissa Wiegler (played by an unchained Cate Blanchett) who has a complicated history with Hanna’s father. Marissa also has a vested interest in catching Hanna, and the story becomes a cat and mouse game with Hanna trying to find her father while Marissa and her cohorts attempt to hunt her down. Marissa is truly villainous, and as she becomes obsessed with finding Hanna, you can truly see her character unhinge from reality. Marissa is one of the best parts of the movie, and one scene where she interrogates a family on Hanna’s whereabouts is particularly noteworthy.

It is unclear whether you are intended to sympathize with Hanna or fear her as she is one of the scariest characters in the story. In the end, you do both. She kills people without hesitation and does not seem to understand the consequences of her actions. You feel bad for the people who are trying to find her because you know what’s going to happen to them when they do. As you spend more time with Hanna, however, you begin to understand her innocence and lack of understanding, and see that what she desires more than anything is to have a normal life and a family.

Hanna is beautifully filmed in Finland, Morocco and Germany (locations in Morocco double for the scenes in Spain). The locations change swiftly and illustrate the diversity of Hanna’s newfound world outside her forest cabin, from barren military facilities to empty deserts to abandoned amusement parks. Hanna is a colorful film, with many shots overexposed, allowing the scenery and habitants of each location to set the tone. There is not much dialogue in the film, and the camera allows Hanna’s face alone to communicate how she feels. The action scenes, though there are few, are expertly directed, and it makes a run for Children of Men’s crown on its use of extended takes.

The Chemical Brothers, one of my all-time favorite groups since I first heard Block Rockin Beats in 1997 on Big Shiny Tunes 2, provides the score for Hanna and they do not disappoint. This being their first full film score, the duo seizes the opportunity to show off their broad musical range.The lighthearted “Hanna’s theme” portrays Hanna as the innocent child she still is, while the nursery-rhyme-esque “the devil is in the details” seems misplaced at first, but you come to associate with one of Marissa’s lackeys hunting Hanna (he whistles the tune). The soundtrack overall is amazing and it has not left my iPod since I saw the film.

Hanna’s main fault as a film lies in its lack of ambition. The first-time screenwriter, Seth Lochhead (a film student from Vancouver), tried to keep the story to a minimum, and there is less there than expected. What is there, however, is quite good and the story is a successful fusion of fairy tale and action. Hanna’s character, unfortunately, screams for further exploration. The film also lacks any real resolution, which is not a fault in itself, but for a story like this, (spoilers) not finding out what happens to the family Hanna travels with, or Hanna herself for that matter, seems (to me) misguided. Hanna’s character also requires a suspension of disbelief in some instances, as in one scene she attempts to turn off a tea kettle with a TV remote but later knows how to use a computer to search the internet.

I enjoyed this film immensely, but I know and accept that not everyone will appreciate its blend of arthouse cinema and understated action-adventure. If you have an open mind, however, there is nothing quite like Hanna, and I expect when the year is over, it will be one of the films that has stayed with me the longest.