31 Years, 31 Screams: Silence of the Lambs

Posted by J.D. Dunn on 10.21.2008

To enter the mind of a killer she must challenge the mind of a madman.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Director: Jonathan Demme
Writer: Ted Tally, from a novel by Thomas Harris
Starring: Jodie Foster, Ted Levine, Anthony Hopkins and Scott Glenn.
MPAA: [R]
Runtime: 118m.

Contrary to Jodie Foster's admonitions, this *does* wind up on quite a few "Greatest Horror Film" lists. Foster caused quite a stir among the Fangoria set when, in 1992, she proclaimed her Oscar-winning serial killer thriller "not a horror film." Sorry, but when you have a guy ripping off another guy's face and using it as a disguise, or a woman finding a severed head in a jar, or well, all of the rest of the movie really, you have yourself a horror film. But Foster's point is well taken. Horror fans really are an easy-to-please bunch, so when something comes along that is Oscar-caliber, it just can't be defined as a horror film. That would be an insult. The film's preproduction was a horror in itself. After Michael Mann's Manhunter bombed in theaters, Dino De Laurentiis had no desire to make a film out of Thomas Harris' second novel. He simply gave the film rights to Orion, and the rest is history. Maverick director Jonathan Demme came aboard and gave the film a far different feel from the sleek look Mann demanded. Many feel it was a step in the right direction. Foster plays Clarice Starling, an FBI agent in training who gets the call to question serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) about another killer targeting young college girls. The press calls him "Buffalo Bill" because "he likes to skin his humps." Lecter takes a liking to Starling but refuses to provide anything substantive without some personal information from her. That goes against Clarice's mandate, but when the insane killer in the next cell throws her a heater made of his own man-batter, Lecter thinks it rude and offers her a nugget of info. Clarice investigates and finds the head of a mutual acquaintance of Lecter and Bill. Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) is so impressed that he invites her along when the tip leads them to the next body. Clarice learns that a major reason she was selected was because Lecter might find her "cute" and charming. Crawford demonstrates this when he closes Starling out of the "old boys network." Starling asks him politely to give her the same respect he would a male trainee, and uses that snub as a driving force behind the rest of her investigation. The stakes are upped when Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith), the daughter of an influential senator, is kidnapped by Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). The FBI puts its full resources into finding Catherine. Clarice returns to Lecter and tells him about a traumatic incident from her childhood. After her father died, she went to live on a farm. While she loved the farmer, she couldn't sleep because of the braying of the lambs at night. She explains they sounded like they were screaming. One night, she snuck out and tried to lead one of the lambs to safety, but she wound up getting caught by the sheriff. The farmer was so angry, he sent her to live in an orphanage. Satisfied with this little tidbit of anguish, Lecter gives her some insight into the mind of Buffalo Bill. He reveals that Bill wanted a sex change but wasn't approved. Now, Bill is using the women's skin to affect his own sex change – by making a new bodysuit out of their skins! When Lecter escapes his cell, Clarice is left to her own devices, and the information he has given her, to find Catherine Martin before Bill decides to complete his suit. Stylistically, this film is worlds apart from Manhunter, and that probably owes much to the difference between the glossy, slick 1980s and the downbeat, grungy early 1990s. Remember, in the five-year interim between the two films, we went from "Kyrie" to "Smells Like Teen Spirit." In 1986, we were riding high economically and socially. By 1991, we were in the midst of a recession and social reaction against the greed and excess of the 1980s. The visual cue for the two films' styles is as simple as Lecter's cells. In Manhunter, he is in a spotless white cinderblock cell. In fact, Mann filmed those scenes in the High Museum of Art. In The Silence of the Lambs, the cell looks something akin to a hollowed-out cave. The film is also much more personal than its predecessor. While Will Graham "worked the clues," Clarice Starling undergoes something of a personal journey. As a cadet, she's clearly in over her head. The only reason she was selected to talk to Lecter was to exploit his libido, and Lecter knows this from the moment she steps in front of his cell. At the heart of it, The Silence of the Lambs is a feminist's story. Clarice has been locked out of "the good ol' boys club," and condescended to by everyone, including Lecter (who at least admires her). By sticking to her guns and to her training, Clarice overcomes the prejudices of the old guard in the FBI and winds up being much more successful than they are in tracking down Buffalo Bill. As she did with the character of Sarah Tobias in The Accused, Foster plays Clarice as both strong and vulnerable. Her cathartic outpouring to Lecter during the lambs story would seem silly and hackneyed (and that's because, if you read it on the page, it *is* silly and hackneyed) if spoken by a lesser actress. Foster makes it sound like a true confession, though. Foster's Clarice isn't just a maudlin wallflower, though. She's completely capable of being the hero if given the right clues. She's plucky, strong and determined. That sort of energetic moxie is something that is missing from Julianne Moore's performance in Hannibal (But, of course, it would be, considering that Moore's Clarice is more mature. Still, I think that lack of strong-willed naïveté hurts the later film.) The great performances didn't just end with Foster, as both she and Anthony Hopkins picked up Academy Awards for the film. Hopkins is in the film for only a brief period of time (the shortest ever for a Best Leading Actor winner), but he's certainly memorable in the role. His Hannibal Lecter spawned a number of catchphrases – "fava beans and chianti, sssslurp" and "Hello, Clarisse" (which he doesn't actually say) immediately come to mind. It's difficult to decide which of the actors, Brian Cox or Anthony Hopkins, plays Lecter the best. Cox is much more understated in his portrayal, and it certainly works with William Petersen's intensity. Hopkins seems overbearing when compared to Foster, almost seeming ready devour her at any moment – perhaps literally. While he took his over-the-top portrayal too far in the later films, it seems to work perfectly here. Fans of commentaries and trivia probably already know that Hopkins beat out a number of other famous actors for the role – most notably, Patrick Stewart, Robert Duvall and Jack Nicholson. The mind boggles at the thought of Jean-Luc Picard in the role of Hannibal the Cannibal.

The 411: One of the greatest thrillers of all time. It's a police procedural, it's a fish-out-of-water tale, it's a thriller, and yes, it's a horror movie. With fantastic performances, spot-on direction, a great score, and taut screenplay, Silence of the Lambs stands, not only as one of the greatest horror films of all time, but as one of the greatest films of all time period. A+