With many of the movies on this list, I
enjoyed them more with later viewings. Sometimes, I really just
didn’t get them the when I first saw them. Sadly though, the
opposite has happened with Silence of the Lambs, as I began to
see its flaws. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great movie, but
it’s also a very emotionally manipulative film. Many scenes simply
ring false, with an assumption that there’s always an underlying
logic to all human behavior. However, I don’t want to focus on the
negative aspects of such an otherwise fine film. Besides, it’s not
as if Silence’s many imitators aren’t infinitely more
guilty of painting a picture of criminal profilers as some kind of
magicians.
To give the obligatory summary, FBI
trainee Clarice Starling (Jodi Foster) is sent to interview serial
killer and cannibal psychiatrist Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) to
get information on another serial killer nick-named Buffalo Bill (Ted
Levine) before he kills again. As we follow her, we witness Bill’s
latest kidnapping, and Hannibal plays mind games as he tries to
entertain himself and regain his freedom through any means necessary.
I think Hannibal Lector is a famous
villain mainly because most people imagine themselves to be such
special snowflakes that we don’t think he’d kill us. Even if we
don’t think he’d love us, we at least imagine he’d want to be
our friend in some way. We’re not the kind of “rude” assholes
he eats. We’re interesting subject’s he’d want to study
extensively. I, on the other hand, fully expect that he’d eat me,
either out of sheer boredom or annoyance.
Does this mean I don’t like him as a
villain? Hell no. He’s a brilliant chess master, always one step
ahead of everyone else. Anthony Hopkins absolutely steals the show
in portraying this cannibalistic madman. He’s funny and charming,
and always entertaining to watch… it’s just that I don’t want
to let him too close to me.
Of course, Hannibal himself is only a
small part of the equation that makes this film work. The movie as a
whole strikes a perfect balance between action and drama. The stakes
are kept high enough that dialogue scenes still resound with us and
we never grow bored. Foster and Hopkins both won Oscars for their
performances, but not nearly enough credit has been given to Ted
Levine and Brooke Smith as Buffalo Bill and his next victim. Smith
never comes across as weak while filling the role of a
damsel-in-distress. Levine on the other hand strikes a fascinating
dichotomy of a blue-collar hick crossed with a geek.
I should note that I sometimes find the
criminal profiler explanation of Buffalo Bill as somewhat at odds
with the person we see. I’m not sure where the disconnect is, but
the investigators see Bill as someone who creates his own world and
fills it with things he values... but then he shoves moth larvae down
the throats of his victims as some kind of message to investigators.
I feel like he should value the moths more than that. Perhaps this
was to show the fallibility of the investigators, I don’t know.
Maybe they didn't understand Bill as well as they thought they did.
That said, what we see works. Every
scene builds towards the climax. Every character encountered
contributes something to our understanding of the world and the
situation. Then, it all comes down to a simple confrontation in a
dark room.
I'm writing the final draft of this
review in September of 2015, to be uploaded in June of 2016. As of
now, the show Hannibal is
officially canceled, but the creators are still shopping it around to
other distributors, hoping they can still adapt the remaining books
in the series. If they succeed, then I imagine the show’s
writers will have a nightmare on their hands when they adapt Silence.
As it’s highly doubtful, even with a full season’s running time,
that they could come close to matching the original.
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