| Collector's Corner April 2005
 The
Silence of the LambsStarring: Jodie Foster,
Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald, Ted Levine
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Theatrical release: 1991
DVD release: 2001
Video: Widescreen
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Released by: MGM Home Entertainment
It was a late-night flight from New
York to Los Angeles, and I couldn’t help watching the man in the aisle seat across
and up one row from me. He was reading a book, and growing more and more rigid as he read.
He held the book higher and higher as the reflexive tension in his arms increased.
Suddenly, he squealed, "Oh shit!!" and threw the book into the empty seat
next to him. He was pale, breathing hard, grasping his forehead.
Now you might think that, as a kind and caring fellow
passenger, I then leaned forward to ask if he was okay. Nope. I wanted to know what the
book was.
It was Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs.
Harris is a pudgy, balding, sweet-looking guy who, in the
1980s, wrote two consecutive nail-biters. Red Dragon and The Silence of the
Lambs both feature a psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter, who has a penchant for culinary
treats featuring human flesh. In both books, an FBI investigator, hot on the trail of a
rampant killer, goes to the imprisoned Lecter hoping to get clues. Each time, Lecter toys
with the agent’s neuroses.
Red Dragon was first made into a film -- a terrific
one, titled Manhunter
-- by Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral, The Insider, Ali), in
1986. In it, an emotional cripple dubbed "the Tooth Fairy" murders entire
families when the moon is full. Despite the fact that Mann was riding high on his hit
television series, Miami Vice, and although Manhunter was outstanding in
virtually every way imaginable, it did nearly zero business.
Two years later, Harris published The Silence of the
Lambs. As in Red Dragon, he gave us an impressively wacko bad guy. This time
it’s Jame Gumb, aka Buffalo Bill, a fictional cross between three real-life monsters.
Like Ted Bundy, Gumb would approach his victims while wearing an arm brace, and ask for
help loading something in his car; like Gary Heidnick, he would then chain his victims in
his basement; and, like Ed Gein, Gumb would skin his victims, stitch together their hides,
and wear them. This wasn’t family fare.
Once those of us who had read The Silence of the Lambs
heard there would be a film version, we would sit around endlessly talking about who would
direct, and who would play the pivotal roles of FBI agent Clarice Starling and Hannibal
Lecter. Jonathan Demme was a big surprise. Although he’d proved himself in directing
such films as Something Wild and Stop Making Sense, you had to go back to
the early 1970s, to Caged
Heat, to see anything remotely like Lambs. Rumors began to circulate that
Michelle Pfeiffer and Meg Ryan had been offered the role of Starling, both obviously
miscast. Pfeiffer turned down the role, saying it was too violent. We were all pretty
excited when we heard that Jodie Foster had politicked her way into the part.
The last choice was for the good Dr. Lecter. Gene Hackman
and Jeremy Irons turned the role down, and Demme thought about using Robert Duvall. The
obvious choice would have been for Brian Cox to reprise his masterful portrayal from Manhunter,
but he apparently wasn’t interested. Anthony Hopkins was a surprise choice. A
respected actor, he was known more for his work on stage and TV than in films. None of us
guessed what an ideal combination Demme, Foster, Hopkins, and Harris would make.
That included producer Dino De Laurentiis, who owned the
rights to The Silence of the Lambs. He had produced Manhunter and thought no
one would be interested in seeing another movie from a Harris novel, so he gave the rights
to Lambs to Orion Pictures -- for free. Orion was facing its own financial problems
at the time, but they wisely gave Demme free rein to follow his vision in creating a
modern monster movie.
One thing Demme was not interested in doing was
churning out another gore-fest such as the then-popular Friday the 13th or Nightmare
on Elm Street series. For a story revolving around a serial killer who mutilates
women, he and writer Ted Tally had to come up with some fancy maneuvers to generate terror
while still showing the victims some respect.
What rescues The Silence of the Lambs from being
just another excuse for misogynistic excess is the ultimate power of Clarice Starling, who
gets what she needs by facing her fears and allowing Lecter to verbally torture her. One
of the best routes into the tortured psyches of sociopaths is to encourage them to use the
defense mechanism of projection; Lecter never quite figures out that his alarming scare
tactics are less important to Clarice than getting the case solved. To her, fear and
torture become mere hurdles and impediments, like the physical ones at the obstacle course
at Quantico, which Demme shows Clarice overcoming in the film’s opening.
Demme concocted an ingenious way of drawing the audience in
to Starling’s struggles. He regularly switches the film’s point of view from
omniscience to what Clarice is seeing, thereby constantly involving the viewer in her
struggles. Another inspired device, one reminiscent of Hitchcock, is to substitute direct
film depictions of violence with verbal descriptions or still photos. In both cases, the
violence in the viewer’s mind far outstrips anything that could have been devised for
the camera. The one scene in which we are actually shown a badly decomposed body works
much as it would for someone in Starling’s position as an FBI agent in training: At
first, we’re revolted; then we look for clues.
But consider how well the following lead-in to
Starling’s first meeting with Lecter leaves you with a sense of dread: "I am
going to show you why we insist on such precautions," Dr. Chilton tells Clarice.
"On the evening of July 8, 1981, [Lecter] complained of chest pains and was taken to
the dispensary. His mouthpiece and restraints were removed for an EKG. When the nurse
leaned over him, he did this to her. [shows Starling a photograph] The doctors
managed to reset her jaw, more or less. Saved one of her eyes. His pulse never got above
85, even when he ate her tongue."
Whew!
While Starling represents strong women, the men in The
Silence of the Lambs are either moronic (all of the male law-enforcement officials),
unctuously oily (Medical Director Dr. Chilton, played perfectly by Anthony Heald), or
sex-starved (just about all the rest). The only men with power, intelligence, and some
respect for Starling’s intellect are her boss, Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), and
Hannibal Lecter himself -- and both manipulate her to gain their own ends. Yet somehow, in
the end, Starling’s purity of motivation trumps their intelligence and allows her to
win the day.
In 1991, The Silence of the Lambs joined It
Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as the only films
ever to win all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and
Writer. Lambs is still the most honored horror film ever made. Today, Anthony
Hopkins’ riveting performance has become so iconic that it is now hard to remember
how startlingly electric it was 14 years ago. Even more so when you realize that Hopkins
accomplished all of his quiet pyrotechnics in fewer than 16 minutes of screen time.
Jodie Foster’s performance is even better than I
remembered, filled with just the right shadings and realistic reactions. Has she ever been
better than in the scene in which Buffalo Bill shuts the lights off and we enter his point
of view, as seen through his night glasses? Foster’s entire performance is an
astonishing piece of work.
Two of the crew who should have been nominated for Oscars
but were not are cinematographer Tak Fujimoto and composer Howard Shore. Note
Fujimoto’s work when faces fill the screen, how the light and shadows draw you into
the characters’ emotions. Shore not only provided chilling music, but also
underscored the scariest moments with subwoofer-crunching pads that add immeasurably to
the overall eeriness.
The Silence of the Lambs has been released four
times on DVD in the few years since the format’s launch. Despite having no extras and
thus the most bits to work with, the first release, from Image Entertainment, has by far
the worst picture. The next version, from Criterion, remains the definitive one. Not
only does it have a gorgeous picture, but the copious extras include a commentary track by
the real-life FBI agent on which Scott Glenn’s character was based. Copies of this
version still change hands on eBay, and there are a few on Amazon.com. MGM Home
Entertainment’s Special Edition is still available, though with more than an
hour’s worth of extras, all of which should have been on a second disc, there is some
digit drain. Nor are those extras all that interesting, unless you want to marvel at how
smart Demme was in cutting the deleted scenes. The most recent version is less expensive,
has no extras, and is fullscreen (4:3). If you can find a copy and are willing to spend a
little extra, go for the Criterion.
But whichever version you get, The Silence of the
Lambs belongs in every collection. It has all the ingredients of a classic horror
film, from frightening psychopaths to nightmares of imprisonment to things that go bump in
the night. More than that, it has all the ingredients of great filmmaking: ideal casting
of characters we care about, relentless pacing, and a satisfying ending.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
