Among the furore IMDb caused when they shut down their
discussion boards – I am among many who have all but abandoned the long-beloved
site now as it became apparent that the forums were its main appeal and
function – I went in search of an alternative, finding MovieChat.org. It has
the advantage of having transferred all of the old existing IMDb discussions
over, so if we can remember the movies we enjoyed discussing, we can find our
old posts. On the boards recently, I found quite a bit of talk of The Silence
of the Lambs having become outdated; some even argued that Anthony Hopkins did
not deserve his Best Actor Oscar. This surprised me not only as a oldtimer
lover of the film, but as a general fan of cinema. This movie has been
considered for decades already, and it is a pretty contemporary picture. I
decided to revisit this old favourite of mine for a review.
At the age of 14, I went through a real tomboy phase, during
which I worked out profusely, wore boys’ clothes, and wanted to be a Mighty Morphin’
Power Ranger (had I not become a parent and found my energy levels depleted for
evermore, I would still probably be living this dream!), and Clarice Starling
became another ideal of this phase. A girlfriend and I obsessed over this
story, and more specifically the tangibly erotic relationship between Starling
and Lecter, which encapsulated pretty much all of our collective teenage
fantasies. I have always been into older guys, but some eleven years on, I
still get thrills from Hopkins as Lecter, and his undeniable sex appeal in the
face of psychosis. |
| Starling meets a match |
Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is a trainee at the FBI
academy – a serious, enthusiastic young woman, whose presence in the
patriarchal landscape of the federal agencies is underpinned with continual
clever use of cinematography. From being, in the words of Ebert, ‘a short woman
in an elevator full of tall men’, to her visual POV adopted by cameras during
verbal exchanges, in which her male counterparts break the fourth wall and talk
directly into the camera, while she retorts slightly off-camera. Starling,
notably, only finds three intellectual matches that warrant her direct eye
contact: her sole female colleague Ordelia (Kasi Lemmon), Hannibal Lecter, and
the wanted serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine).
Starling’s sharp wit and academic strength prompt her
superior Crawford (Scott Glenn) to recruit her assistance in the pursuit of
Buffalo Bill, who kidnaps fat women, skins them and dumps their bodies, and has
now captured the daughter (Brooke Smith) of Senator Martin (Diane Baker). It
becomes evident that the bureau guys think that at least Lecter’s professional
capacity as a psychiatrist will lend insight to the case – if not his direct
personal knowledge - and feel that Starling fills the specific criteria of being
physically endearing while being critically minded enough not to be manipulated
and remember to do her job.
 |
| Eyes that make you want to fuck |
In a chilling and prolonged game of cat and mouse, or quid
pro quo, Lecter guides Clarice cryptically to the identity of Buffalo Bill,
demanding personal anecdotes in return for his clues. Through his carrot-on-a-string
bargaining, Lecter wiggles his way into Clarice’s mind in a sinister but oddly
paternal fashion. When Lecter later escapes custody and kills several in the
effort, Clarice assures Ordelia that he will not target her, explaining that ‘he
would consider that rude’, and strangely, in spite of the several elaborately
executed murders we have now seen the doctor commit, we know this to be true.
There is some bizarre affection between Lecter and Starling that endears him to
her and guarantees her safety and success.
Jodie Foster won Best Actress at the Oscars for her
performance, fully establishing herself as perhaps the first and only really
successful transition from leading child actor to leading adult actor. Foster
is most remarkable in her simultaneous professionalism and friendliness. While
undoubtedly polished in her craft and a very serious committee to it, she is
charming, funny and approachable. On top of all of this, she is trilingual,
graduated an esteemed university at the standard age, all while maintaining a
hugely successful and publicly forward acting career.
Ted Levine is a tremendous talent, and what strikes me more
and more all the time is just how audacious he was to take such a role as
Buffalo Bill. Set among the height of the AIDS epidemic and an increasingly
mainstream gay culture, the film drew some criticism (as Verhoeven and Ezsterhas experienced a few years later with Basic Instinct) due to some overly sensitive
people considering it homophobic or transphobic. I wonder if now they would
even consider approaching such topics in such a politically correct world. But
even back then, it would seem that criticism was selective. In addition, every young actor knows not to be too bold in their role choices if they want to carry on, for fear of stigma. Levine storms the set and throws his all into Bill, and his subsequent success should stand as testament to his enormous daring and ability.
Lecter, speaking in learned psychological terms, explains to
Clarice that Bill believes he is a transsexual because of a much deeper seeded
need for transformation, as manifested in the symbolic moths he uses as calling
cards. Bill’s blurred sexual orientation and gender identity are made clear as
delusions consequent of his true psychotic condition, and because of this are
quite incidental. It continues to stun me when people jump to quick conclusions
that films are sexist because one female character is bad, or are racist
because one black character is idiotic. Based in some part on the antics of
mentally-scarred Mummy’s boy Ed Gein, logic need not apply, as we are looking
at a character who is not of the conventional psychological capacity. Bill may
like to apply make-up and tuck his penis between his thighs, but is that any
more relevant to his killing of women than his love of fluffy dogs or his
immense tailoring skills? In these terms, no. Consider the exchange in which
Lecter puts to Clarice, ‘what does Bill do?’ Her response is that he kills
women, but in psychological terms, that is not the answer. ‘He covets’, Lecter
explains. Bill’s rooted covetousness is the main driver of every other
characteristic. He covets that which he cannot be or have – the body of a woman
being his main focus. Within his mental arena, this same fixation could have
been upon children, animals, inanimate objects, whatever. But this twisted
character bending the barriers of conventional gender are in no way an
indication of wide held view of all gay/transgender people being psychotic
murderers. Case closed.
In spite of Lecter’s high regard as a figure of the horror genre,
it is questionable whether this is a horror story. It occurs entirely within
reality, and its format and focus is much more on the criminal perspective, the
investigative thrills. None of the horror sequences – mutilations, that is –
are either implied or occur off-screen, and in this way SOTL found its way into
the annals of classic horror, scarring people for years to come, in the same
way that Texas Chainsaw Massacre did, by allowing the audience to feel the
hysteria of the unknown. Had this been intended as a horror, we would see Bill ‘skin
his humps’, or Lecter literally deface (LOL, sorry) Sergeant Pembry. This is a
sophisticated crime thriller, and plays out in that way, with dramatic red
herrings popping up, diverting federal and audience attention, just as the
antagonist intends.
Hannibal Lecter – thanks to the collective works of Thomas
Harris, Anthony Hopkins and the various screenwriters who revised the script
that eventually ended up on the screen – has gone down in history as a horror
icon for one prominent reason: the shrewd intellectualism that renders him
practically invincible. We are used to the antagonists who pull of elaborate
action sequences and blow up opponents in crazy ways; we are used to the
retarded or otherwise faceless bogeymen that stalk neighbourhood babysitters
and high school girls. What we are not used to is a very human psychopath, who
actually can be reasoned with and is
capable of developing emotional attachments to other living beings. And we are
not used to them using so little violence, and so much intellect, in their
murderous endeavours. Hannibal Lecter embodies the level of mental capacity so
high that its perceptions border on the clairvoyant, that any audience member
surely envies in some way.
Hopkins’ later performance in Hannibal, that I could
never grow to love due to Julianne Moore’s replacement of Foster, ignited the
erotic tension that SOTL encapsulated. Although the movie deviated from the
novel, when Clarice handcuffs herself to Lecter in Krendler’s house and he
traps her hair in the fridge, and their faces are so close, and he asks her, ‘Would
you ever tell me, “Stop; if you loved me you’d stop”?’… that is the kind of
sexual tension I could get off to every night for the rest of my life. The
dynamic between Lecter and Starling is electrifying, and Hopkins and Foster
somehow hit on the most explosive formula. Their on-screen relationship is one
of those that seems so perfect that the universe must have prophesised it
millennia previously, like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, or Roy
Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss.
