Silence of the Lambs (1991)

 

Channel 4’s “100 Scariest Moments” list #28:

 

 

Silence of the Lambs

(1991)

 

Serial killers are now such a part of our popular culture it’s actually kinda creepy. An obsession with a pure Fantasy, like the Zombie Apocalypse, is one thing, but fetishizing Ted Bundy? Oh ick.

 

And saying that, doesn’t mean I don’t watch the movies, like a lot.

 

We seem especially fond of serial killers who display a power and a prowess far beyond the pathetic creatures these Evil doers generally demonstrate in the real world, as if they were latter-day embodiments of the Noble Savage. And among these contrived fictions no name stands taller than Hannibal Lecter.

 

Based on, and quite faithful to, the Thomas Harris novel of the same name (first published in 1981) this movie took really bold risks. Hollywood knew they had a special property, and some of the-fits-and-starts during pre-production demonstrated both their commitment, and how easily this could’ve gone wrong.

 

Perhaps less-than half the audience knew this is in fact a sequel, and that the role of Hannibal Lecter was played extremely well by Brian Cox in the earlier "Manhunter" (1986). Cox was apparently never considered for the part here, nor was Dennis Farina called in for another character who appeared in both films. I assume it was an attempt to disguise the sequel-ness and thereby coverup the plot’s biggest improbability, that Hannibal, locked in a maximum-security cell for years, has personal knowledge of two active Serial Killers who seemed otherwise unconnected. I mean, what do these guys do? Hold annual conventions? "What you kill in Vegas stays in Vegas"?

 

For this film, the Hannibal-role was first offered to Gene Hackman, he wisely concluded that he was the wrong man for the job. Similarly, Michelle Pfeiffer was offered the female lead, Clarice Starling, and she also concluded it was a bad fit. The ultimate casting of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster as the leads would prove one of those once-in-a-generation masterstrokes, this difficult film rested largely on their shoulders, and the results were essentially flawless.

 

The film references a number of familiar storylines running through this, but the most memorable was the diabolical retelling of "Beauty and the Beast," brought to us, ironically, the same year as Disney’s more conventional, but equally masterful, animated version. What interesting book-ends this Crime/Horror film and the Kid’s movie made come Oscar time. Regarding the Horror film, both leads would pick up Oscars, as did director Jonathan Demme, screenwriter Ted Talley, plus it won Best Picture, and nominated for best editing and best sound. And this was 13 months after the release, unusual because big Oscar winners are generally still in theaters or new to video at Oscar time.

 

So, this is the set-up:

 

To solve a mystery, FBI SAC Jack Crawford, played by Scott Glenn taking over Farina’s part, and is perfectly cast, decides to test a theory that notorious-but-already-jailed serial killer Hannibal may have some inside knowledge of an active predator, "Buffalo Bill" (Ted Levine, who creates a strong impression with the underdeveloped character). Jack has some history with Hannibal’s mind-games, so he chooses to send in a novice agent, Clarice, on the errand. She’s initially ignorant of her role in the investigation because Jack wanted to assure that she’ll display no agenda that Hannibal could sniff out. Clarice is also smart and attractive, so she might just be able to slip through Hannibal’s finely-honed defenses.

 

The scene introducing Hannibal to Clarice is one of the most important in the film. Clarice was fed stories that prepared her to see an impossible monster, then she must walk down a long corridor. A long-ish POV reveals a prison that suggests the bowels of hell, at the end of which Hannibal will be revealed. The shot creates audience identification with her, yet we rarely see the world through her eyes again -- this is a film where, most often, the characters look directly at the camera, as if addressing the audience.

 

The film is much about the vulnerabilities Clarice has to overcome because of her youth, inexperience, and sex, and this is demonstrated by, for most of the rest of the film, we are watching her as others see her, and those others are generally taller, stronger, older, men. In the climax, when she goes into a dangerous house, the camera doesn’t follow her as it did in the prison scene, but waits for her, like an indifferent God viewing her at middle-distance. Then, when she enters the dark basement, we see her through the Buffalo Bill’s eyes, mimicking the predator’s God-like presumptions.

 

These mannerisms, so strong late in the film, are first introduced in some of the prison scenes. Though we are introduced to Hannibal through Clarice’s eyes, we are soon seeing her through his. There’s a telling visual trick, as he watches her, we see his expression revealed in his reflection of the plexiglass barrier between them.

 

At the end of the long walk, when Hannibal first comes into view, his not brutish like the other prisoners Clarice has just passed. He’s a handsome, middle-aged man, seen standing at attention physically fit, impeccable in appearance despite his prison garb, and speaking in a fatherly voice. His powers of observation are a key plot-point and he shows them right off, tilting his head, flaring his nostrils, and announcing, "Sometimes you use L'Air du Temps, but not today." His ear is attuned to the fact that she disguises a hillbilly accent. He is a man of exquisite sensitivity, but the sensitivity are gifts of his senses and the habits of the cultured, not the "sensitivity" we associate with virtuous. He very quickly reveals himself a snob, observing that Clarice is only "one generation up from white trash." And soon after, he brags of his monstrousness, "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti," followed by chilling, slithering, slurp.

 

Jack’s ploy seems to have worked even before Clarice knows what game she’s expected to play. Hannibal’s fascinated by her, and certainly needs the company, and agrees to help in the hunt...

 

But only if the girl bares all her secrets to him.

 

So begins a strange, but even more strangely unstrained, student/teacher relationship. Hannibal jokes, "People will say we're in love." But the editing reveals something, he’s in love, she’s only engaged. It’s on their faces as the dialogues unfold in back-and-forth close-ups. She shows interest when he displays his stunning intellect, desperation when he withholds the knowledge she needs to help a kidnaped girl, and strain when she’s asked to reveal something uncomfortable, but she always, wholly, herself. Smitten Hannibal displays less of a gamut because her every word increases his hunger.

 

Three narrative threads emerge: The conversations in jail; Clarice in the field, demonstrating her growing investigative aptitude, and exploring her professional relationship with her superior Jack; and the events unfolding in the dungeon-like home of Buffalo Bill.

 

Bill (inspired by real world serial killer Ed Gien) is kept distant from the audience, both in the novel and the film, and unlike Hannibal (inspired by real-world Alfredo Ballí Treviño, who most likely “only” killed one person), our only insights into him is the FBI’s clinical analysis. Notably, for the rest of the film, though there are very few shots from Clarice’s POV, those few that come are when she acts as detective, dissecting Buffalo Bill based on the evidence he left behind.

 

Though Hannibal is the most colorful character, the story is more about Clarice. Essential to the role is that Jodie Foster is blessed with a poker-faced intensity and great subtly. Clarice’s strength, fears, intelligence, and vulnerability are all revealed without having to let her professional mask slip. She doesn’t have very many big dramatic scenes, even in the focal one, when she finally confesses her most basic secret to Hannibal (the revelation of the meaning of the title) Foster shows restraint.

 

Anything but that iron restraint would’ve been a disservice Clarice’s character, because it would’ve separated her from her context and real challenges. Clarice is driven by intertwining of moral imperative and need to self-redefine. She embraced law enforcement both in a desire to defend to vulnerable and because the (presumably) shared code professional conduct should shield her from thoughtless bias. When the latter presumption proves flawed it creates an obstacle to the former desire.

 

She finds herself more comfortable speaking to a monster through plexiglass protection than with her fellow professionals where she’s constantly exposed. Hannibal becomes one of two mentors. The other, the more honorable Jack, is the one who disappoints her. Though he chose her because he recognized her strengths, at a vital juncture, he demonstrates less respect towards her than Hannibal does -- it’s a scene when she has to muster up courage to face roomful of lascivious lawmen. Having done so, she’s stripped of authority by a casual comment from Jack, who chose to overcome the barriers of professional class (fed vs local; advance degree vs community college) by playing to macho bonding. This throws her of balance, only momentarily, but significantly, and there’s a quick-cut flashback to her father’s funeral.

 

Roger Ebert wrote, "Never before in a movie have I been made more aware of the subtle sexual pressures placed upon women by men."

 

Clarice isn’t a weirdly testosterone-fueled female/man like many action movie heroines. She very female, but needs to erase her obvious and somewhat waif-like femininity in most professional contexts. There is the slightest sexual tension in her interaction with both her mentors, but she does not play to it in any way. She allows herself to enjoy a specifically romantic masculine attention only in one scene, with a nerdy, wholly non-threatening scientist, far removed from any place she feels she needs to prove anything. He’s played by Anthony Heald, who is really good in a really tiny part. The consistent strength of the cast, even in the smallest roles, is a tribute to the tremendous gifts of director Demme.

 

One of the film’s themes is about how an intelligent woman forced out-of-place by changing sex roles. The film has three significant female characters, and their isolation in a man’s world is demonstrated that they either hardly interact or don’t meet at all on-screen.

 

Unlike most Serial Killer films, the victims are not sexualized for the audience, but when the killer’s motives are fully fleshed out, it’s shown as a perverse plot to steal their identity and sexuality.

 

The female victim we get to see as a living soul was played by Brooke Smith. She’s overweight, stripped near naked, kneeling cold and filthy at the bottom of a well, utterly terrified. Buffalo Bill addresses her, not in the second person ("You will do this") but in a brutally objectified third ("The thing will do this"). Even so, she’s not yet broken, and committed to gaining some control over the clearly hopeless situation. She even has a pretty funny line when she gets pissed at her rescuer.

 

The third important woman is the victim’s mother, played by Diane Baker, hers in the smallest of the key female roles but even with her, the interplay of sex roles and power are central issues. She’s a United States Senator, a woman presumably with great authority, more than any other named character in the film, and certainly unaccustomed to being powerless. She also proves to be the easiest to manipulate. Her desperate need to believe she can play some role in saving her daughter makes her vulnerable to Hannibal’s incompetent and spite-driven physiatrist, played by Anthony Heald, and later to Hannibal himself.

 

In interviews, Foster holds this up as a favorite role, but it was Hopkins, with a mere 16 minutes of screen-time as Hannibal, who really captured the public’s imagination. He’s evil towards most people, dispassionate in his analysis, but warm towards his pupil.

 

Hopkins said that part of his inspiration was the computer HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968, HAL was voiced by Douglas Rain). Though he proves charming, the film doesn’t forget he’s monster (a mistake made in this movie’s sequel (2001) and prequel (2006) which transforms Hannibal into a gory Batman). He’s a master manipulator, able to control almost anyone except, ultimately, himself. Ebert again, "He bears comparison, indeed, with such other movie monsters as Nosferatu, Frankenstein (especially in "Bride of Frankenstein"), King Kong and Norman Bates...Nothing that these monsters do is ‘evil’ in any conventional moral sense, because they lack any moral sense. They are hard-wired to do what they do. They have no choice."

 

Hannibal’s moral emptiness is demonstrated by the fact that he’s chosen not to fight his compulsions, but to perfect them. With a perfect psychopath’s insight into other’s weaknesses, he boldly exploits circumstances created by the petty vanities of others to do what should’ve been impossible:

 

Escape.

 

The escape scene features the brutal murder of no less than four wholly innocent, perhaps even heroic, strangers (two federal officers and two EMTs). It also contains a stunningly revealing moment. Hannibal gets distracted during his expert butchering, to the sound of classic music, he gets swept into a fugue-state by the taste of blood. Mere seconds pass, any more and his audacious plan would’ve failed, but the expression on his face, one of blissful transcendence, burns into the audiences’ memory.

 

“Silence…” would prove to be the most influential Crime/Horror movie of the 1990s, and I think that one can safely say that all its imitators in both cinema and TV (it started a still-not-abated craze for tales of criminal profilers like Clarise’s character) pale in comparison. Hannibal himself became a franchise which, like all franchises, became an exercise in diminishing returns, but few franchises have ever been blessed with such lavish productions and notable talent even as it declined in quality.

 

The first film of the franchise, “Manhunter” (1986), is remarkably different in style and texture; both it and this are great works.

 

The third, “Hannibal” (2001) was inferior, but deliciously perverse and gorgeously executed.

 

“Manhunter” was then disappointingly remade as “Red Dragon” (2002), and this would be the last time Hopkins played Hannibal. Said Hopkins, "I made the mistake of doing two more [Hannibal movies] and I should have only done one."

 

A prequel, “Hannibal Rising” (2007) was dumber than cheese.

 

There was also a TV series (first aired 2014) which I have never watched.

 

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuX2MQeb8UM