“It rubs the lotion on Its skin or else It gets the hose again.” – Buffalo Bill
“Here sir, use mine.” – (famous last words) Lt. Boyle
The first time I saw Silence of the Lambs I was about 10 years old and my mother wasn’t home so I was sneaking in a viewing. The only way my little sister would let me get away with it was if I fast-forwarded through a lot of the scenes (fast forward – for all you youngins out there – is something you’d do with video tapes to skip ahead, and since I don’t have time to explain obsolete media formats for you all we are just gonna move on now).
I’ll admit, you miss a lot of the important stuff when you fast forward through a movie. And when you have to deal with a nagging younger sister who keeps threatening to tattle on you if you watch more than about five minutes of the movie at a time (I’ll also admit that it is AWESOME when said nagging sister gets grossed out because you stop fast forwarding at the exact moment someone is graphically murdered – timing is everything girls and boys!).
I could tell that Silence of the Lambs was creepy, and that people died in it, and that people in suits were very intense, but that was about the gist of what my 10-year-old brain understood. It was some years later, when I finally saw the movie in its entirety, that the full impact of the story, acting, and direction really got to me.
The plot of Silence of the Lambs basically breaks down like this: Young comely FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling (played by Jodi Foster) is chosen to try and weed out information on a notorious new serial killer from previous notorious serial killer Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). She’s all fresh-faced innocence trying to be steely and tough, he’s all classy intensity with a psychotic edge. It’s basically a match made in horror movie heaven! Clarice bares her soul, Hannibal bares his teeth, the serial killer dances about in a suit made of human skin, and eventually an epic showdown in a dark and creepy basement leads to a less than happily-ever-after ending.
So what can I saw about this film that hasn’t been said a thousand times before? Well probably not a whole lot. But I’ll lay down a few thoughts anyway.
I think that Silence of the Lambs is a practically perfect thriller. And one of the main reasons I think that is because I’ve seen it at least two dozen times now and yet it never gets old. I never get bored. I try to watch it as background noise while doing something else and find myself sucked in every time. I notice new things about it every time. It is just that freaking good.
Buffalo Bill is a creepy serial killer. He blew my mind the first time I saw the movie all the way through, but he blew my mind even more when I was older and had done some reading up on real-life serial killers and realized he was based on people that actually existed (Ted Bundy and Ed Gein in case you don’t have the extensive serial killer knowledge that I have somehow ended up with). That adds a whole new dimension to my emotional response to watching him. It’s one thing to watch a Big Bad safely in the knowledge that no one that awful could exist in real life. It is quite another to watch him and know that someone (two someones even!) in real life did exist and did do those horrible things.
I am a big fan of Manhunter, the first film version of Red Dragon, which also features Hannibal Lecter in all his sauve and sadistic glory. His seemingly weak and naïve foil in that story is Will Graham, a former FBI profiler with the distinct honor (if you can call it that) of being the man that caught (almost accidentally) – and was almost killed by – Hannibal Lecter. Watching Silence of the Lambs again after Manhunter it is very obvious how similar the Clarice Starling and Will Graham characters are. They are both so empathetic, both so desirous of catching Big Bads because it is the RIGHT THING TO DO. They both want to SAVE LIVES and MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. And they are both incredibly damaged individuals who fall right into Hannibal’s eagerly waiting hands. He wants something to play with, something to pull apart and inspect under a mental microscope. Something he can build up and then damage even further than it already was. With all his cultured knowledge and air of politeness and love of beauty and art, as well as his taste for human flesh and his sudden outbreaks of extreme and graphic violence, he is a much scarier entity than crazy ol’ Buffalo Bill – even with Bill’s skin suit.
Silence of the Lambs, 1991
Starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine, Brooke Smith
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Written by Ted Tally (screenplay), Thomas Harris (novel)
