Best Picture: # 64
Original Release Date: February 14, 1991
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 58 minutes
Director: Jonathan Demme
Quick Impressions:
The Silence of the Lambs is one of my favorite Best Picture winners because it’s just so watchable. I’m tempted to say, “It’s impossible not to like this movie,” but that’s not true. My own grandparents despised it!
“Why do you want to watch that again?” my grandma would wail with a shudder when my sister and I were watching it again (and again and again). “It’s an awful thing!” Unfortunately for her, HBO was on our side. In the spring of 1992, The Silence of the Lambs won Best Picture, and that year HBO showed it all the time. (Plus I think my mom taped it the first time, so we had it on VHS.) Though less viscerally horrified than my grandma, my grandpa shared her disdain for the film. They considered The Silence of the Lambs sensationalist garbage, inappropriately frightening, likely to traumatize children. What was their choice for Best Picture that year? The Prince of Tides.
“Seriously?” I would complain. “But that’s likely to traumatize children, too! It’s about childhood trauma! The Prince of Tides disturbed me a lot more.”
My grandma thought I was just winding her up, but I was serious. (Have you seen The Prince of Tides? What happens to Tom when he’s a child is very frightening, and that could happen to anyone at any time. How likely are you to meet a cannibal therapist or a serial killer who wants to make you a dress? The Prince of Tides is a good film, too, but the traumatic events it dramatizes are much more realistic and worrying.) But as far as my grandparents were concerned, Barbra Streisand had made a beautiful film (and she did), and The Silence of the Lambs was absolute garbage that would torment children.
If that’s true, it seems odd that my sister and I kept watching it all the time for pleasure. I had just turned thirteen by then, but she was only seven! We loved watching The Silence of the Lambs. Had it been marring our souls with unspeakable horror, surely we would have turned it off! (Granted seven is young to watch this film, but my sister was sort of precocious—in that she believed we were the same age and always behaved accordingly. In fact, based on our personalities, you would have thought our ages were reversed, that she was the older one. A few years later, when she was more like eleven, we’d stay home together while our parents went to choir practice up at church. We’d take turns choosing movies, alternating weeks. One week I chose Adventures in Babysitting. The next, she picked Leaving Las Vegas.)
To be clear, my six-year-old son did not watch this movie with us. Still back in 1992, my seven-year-old sister was pretty into it. Even when we weren’t watching the movie, we’d play The Silence of the Lambs. I’d frequently pretend to be both Dr. Lecter and Clarice having a conversation. No matter what inane thing they were talking about in my game (buying school supplies, going bowling), he would get progressively more disturbing, she more disturbed. My sister would plead, “Stop! Stop!” Then she’d beg, “Do it again!” At that point, I loved studying abnormal psychology and wanted to be a novelist and a psychologist when I grew up. And my sister wanted constant entertainment. We were always getting dragged around places and asked to wait quietly and behave.
I was absolutely thrilled to see The Silence of the Lambs win so many Oscars (Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, Adapted Screenplay). I was already an enormous fan of Jodie Foster since my mother and I inordinately loved the 1976 version of Freaky Friday. (We watched it all the time when I was kid and quoted it endlessly.) This was the first time I became aware of Anthony Hopkins, but (like a lot of people) I loved his performance as Hannibal Lecter. (Small wonder! I loved Katharine Hepburn but didn’t realize at the time that Hopkins had based Lecter’s cadence in part on the way Hepburn plays Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter. Anyone who hasn’t seen that film should watch it immediately. Hopkins plays Eleanor’s son Richard.)
My daughter had never seen this movie, which is surprising given how much I like it. That probably happened because she’s only just now twelve, and we were always careful never to watch it with her older brother. His mom (who has a BA in criminology and a penchant for serial killer material) also particularly loves The Silence of the Lambs, so she wanted to show it to him for the first time herself when he was old enough.
The Good:
Watching this movie as a young teen, I thought, “Wow, I want to be a psychologist!”
Watching this time, I realized, “Hmm. I need therapy.”
“I wish I knew him,” I said to my daughter, as Hannibal and Clarice finally quid pro quoed their way all the way back to the lambs. “He’s so good. He has so little time with her, but they’re really making progress! I’m not getting anywhere questioning myself. Seriously, I need to meet a cannibal.”
“One like him, though,” my daughter cautioned, “not just any cannibal.”
“Yes, a very specific cannibal,” I agreed. “There’s not a word for what he is.”
My daughter remained skeptical. Can you imagine trying to find a therapist like Hannibal Lecter? It can’t be easy. Under any circumstances, it’s hard to find a doctor who’s a good fit. I lucked into a wonderful psychiatrist decades ago. I can’t imagine going from practice to practice inquiring politely, “Excuse me, do you happen to have anyone on staff here who is both a licensed therapist and a cannibal serial killer?” (If I actually did that, I’m sure I’d get prompt medical attention from someone!)
The thing is, Anthony Hopkins makes Hannibal Lecter so exciting. If you speak to more conventional therapists, they’re only going to ask you the same old things. Who knows what Dr. Lecter might ask! He’s really outside the box (especially once he gets his hands on a pen). You’d get genuine insights from him. You would learn something (if not about yourself, then at least about Buffalo Bill). It’s the best kind of therapy, so high stakes. The senator’s daughter is trapped in a pit, clutching a tiny, noisy, fluffy white creature. If you’re not completely honest with Dr. Lecter, Catherine Martin will die! I’ll bet that kind of ticking clock would expedite the whole process. No wonder Clarice only takes up about twenty minutes of his time. With stakes like that, you can’t afford a full hour!
One thing I’ve always liked about this movie is the electrifying screen chemistry of Hopkins and Foster, so captivating in their intense interactions. Most Hollywood movies feature a central (or side) romance. This isn’t a romance at all, but it’s more riveting on screen than many relationships that are. When asked about Lecter, Clarice says, “They don’t have a name for what he is.” Their relationship is similarly hard to define. It’s not a typical dynamic. (The degree of understatement there is almost comical.) They are not in love. He’s giving her excellent therapy and perhaps psychologically torturing her at the same time, but respectfully, always respectfully. He’s also helping her solve a case, as long as she submits to his highly personal questions about her past, quid pro quo. In a twist that might surprise others, Dr. Lecter does not care when Clarice lies to him in general as long as she tells him the truth about herself. He gives her what she needs to find Buffalo Bill, in large part the confidence in her own ability to solve the case using material she already has (but also some sizable hints about his identity).
It’s one of the most electrifying, fascinating relationships I’ve ever seen on screen. The only other on-screen relationship that offers something even close to this level of riveting intensity that I can think of offhand is the first pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. That is a romantic relationship, both on screen and off. Since the two of them were actually in love, it’s understandable that some of that energy would be coming through. But I don’t know why what’s happening with Hannibal and Clarice feels like this to the audience.
Well, surely part of it is the cinematography. “Why is the camera always up in everyone’s face?” my daughter asked repeatedly. It’s hard not to find Lecter captivating when he stares right into our eyes. Because of the way the scenes are shot, the camera lets us share in the intense interactions of Hannibal and Clarice. When he talks to her, he looks right at us.
And this doesn’t happen only during their supercharged scenes together. Almost every time someone talks to Clarice, we get a close-up of the other person’s face. This is not something that has gone unnoticed about the movie. It’s mentioned all the time (and not just by my daughter). But her relentless comments about that topic made me realize that the first time I watched the movie, I didn’t pay enough attention to the technique. I just passively absorbed the effect.
“I like the way we always get a close up of everyone’s face,” she finally decided after the film.
“I always used to take home videos that way, too,” I said. “I wonder where those are.”
Not until writing this review (if you want to call it that) did I realize that the home videos I took that way were all made from 1992-1994, at a period of my life when I was quite taken with The Silence of the Lambs. Surely on some level I was copying the technique. At a Thanksgiving gathering for my dad’s entire family, the video I took elicited strong feedback from everyone. They found it endearingly funny that I seemed to prefer tight close-ups of everyone’s face, and my extreme methods became a running joke.
Of course, one reason I took so much video in the first place is that I’m quite shy and feel overwhelmed by large social gatherings. You never see my face. It’s hidden by a very large video camera. But you do see me in the video because what I focus on replicates my experience of the weekend. We had less interaction with my dad’s side of the family than my mom’s. I didn’t know everybody well. And I was going through a particularly shy, self-conscious phase (which has continued up to the present). I took the video as a method of interacting, of finding meaning in a large sea of confusion. Unable to make sense of the entire room, I was much happier to consider each person, one face at a time. Various relatives joked that my recording style put them in the spotlight more than they had hoped. But when you talk, people are listening to you and looking at you, whether you choose to realize it or not.
That last line sounds unintentionally sinister. Most likely, my camera technique had more to do with my need to control my own focus than with a desire to force my relatives to take a long look at themselves as they spoke. But surely in The Silence of the Lambs, this technique is being used on purpose to achieve a result. (Well, I know it is. This is not a new insight unique to me.)
There’s another movie I love that uses similar cinematography, the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express. We get a lot of close-ups of everyone’s faces in that film, too. It makes sense. A murder has been committed on the train, and Hercule Poirot is questioning each of the passengers in turn. Poirot has a skillset very similar to Clarice Starling’s (and Hannibal Lecter’s). He’s profiling suspects to solve a murder, too. Like Lecter and Clarice, Poirot isn’t just interested in who committed the crime. He also needs to know why they committed the crime. He truly wants to understand the motivations of the suspects. What everybody thinks they’re doing makes a huge difference to Poirot.
This type of cinematography happens to work very well for me because it’s how I survive reality, one person, one conversation at a time. I have to narrow my focus, or I panic. So, naturally, The Silence of the Lambs with all of its up-in-your-face conversations really appeals to me. Honestly that’s how I experience the world. Over the years, I’ve learned to force myself not to get lost in action sequences. When our oldest son was little, I discovered something I found fascinating by going to the movies with him. Neither of us liked the boring parts of movies, the times when nothing was happening. But he defined the boring parts as the conversations, and I defined the boring parts as the action sequences. To me, intense conversations are fascinating, and they happen so often in this movie.
When I watched in seventh grade, I found the disconnect between Lecter’s cerebral charm (such insight and wit!) and his horrific acts of violence disconcerting. Well, more than disconcerting. He’s such a compelling character, so clever. Early on, it’s hard not to be charmed by him. Yes, hearing what happens to Miggs is awful, but Miggs is kind of a creep! (I told my daughter, “You know, I don’t think I would have handled that as well as she did. I would probably pour hand sanitizer over my head…and set myself on fire.” I’ve been known to have a panic attack just because someone coughed near me. In fact, someone in my own extended family once used a regular-sized spoon while having a cold sore over five years ago, and I’ve only eaten with soup spoons ever since.)
When I was thirteen, I thought, “Hmm Sarah, you’re kind of awful,” when Clarice found out what Lecter did to Miggs because my initial reaction was, “Good.” (Isn’t that horrible?) The difference between Miggs and Lecter is so stark, though, in terms of the way they treat Clarice. What Miggs says to Clarice is rude, but by that logic, Lecter’s comments on his remark are rude, too. (I mean when he describes Clarice’s complex aroma, what he can and can’t smell.) Yet I’ve always found Lecter’s comments delightfully amusing. (My daughter also laughed out loud listening to him for the first time, without any encouragement from me.) But the difference between their comments, of course, is that Lecter is actually taking the trouble to smell Clarice, giving an accurate description of her scent instead of just reading scents onto her to be aggressively offensive. What Lecter says is practically a thoughtful greeting. It’s considerate of him to remind her that he is, in fact, the cannibal lunatic she’s heard so much about in such a polite, charming way. He doesn’t pretend he’s normal. He warns her about whom she’s dealing with right up front.
Hopkins brings Lecter to life in such a compelling way, and the movie does everything it can to showcase his intense performance. Of course I liked him a lot in the beginning. You’re supposed to. He treats Clarice conspicuously better than not only the other inmates, but most of the other men in the movie, too. In case we don’t notice this, the movie brings in good ol’ Dr. Chilton, the man whose grin kept prompting my daughter to squeal, “Stab him!”
It’s pretty funny that Clarice’s interactions with Chilton made my daughter far more uncomfortable than her conversation with Lecter. Obviously, we’re supposed to have that reaction. My daughter was already annoyed with all the men in the movie at that point, and we hadn’t even gotten to the first conversation with Lecter yet. (She started out irritated with Crawford because he urgently needed to see Clarice in his office, then wasn’t around when she got there. She snickered when Crawford told her he had “an interesting errand” for her. “An interesting errand!” my daughter repeated. “In other words, you won’t be getting paid!”)
But she really couldn’t stand Dr. Chilton whose method of preparing Clarice to meet Lecter is repeatedly asking her out, then announcing that Lecter sees him as his nemesis. (“Translation,” I said, “I want to be his nemesis…and if you want me to eat your tongue, just let me know, and I will show you around Baltimore.” My daughter kept saying, “I feel like he should be stabbed. Right now.” “How about possibly eaten?” I asked. “How do you feel about that?” She answered, “Just great,” and I assured her, “That bodes well for your future enjoyment of this film.”) Anthony Heald probably deserves more credit for making Dr. Chilton look like such a satisfying snack to the audience.
Surely everybody who loves The Silence of the Lambs is captivated by Hannibal Lecter, and as a young teen, I was, too, during the film’s early scenes. But later when Hannibal makes his escape, and thirteen-year-old me was confronted with the gory reality of what being a cannibal serial killer means, I felt intense revulsion, disgust, horror. After such a dazzling display of charm, that bloody, flesh-eating mouth was a shock.
Worryingly, this time I watched Lecter’s escape scene, I thought, “I want to be a cannibal!” (I don’t think that’s the intended audience reaction.) There’s a certain elegant simplicity to the cannibal life, though. Why not just eat everyone who stands in your way? You’ll notice, we spend the whole movie trying to get to the heart of what’s bothering and motivating Clarice. The movie spends absolutely no time exploring why Hannibal eats people. He just does. Clarice needs answers, so he asks her a bunch of questions. The quid pro quo bit is misdirection, really. He helps Clarice solve her case, and he gives her therapy. All he wants from her is the pleasure of helping her work through her problems. He has to know more about her so that he can discover how to help her solve the case herself. He never expects Clarice to get him out of prison. He has teeth for that. It’s hard not to envy his ability to eat his way out of his problems.
I’m not actually advocating cannibalism (just considering it) (just kidding). It’s come to my attention recently that being a cannibal doesn’t usually work to your advantage when people find out about it (which is why if you’re going to eat them, don’t just talk about it). (I’m seriously not advocating being a cannibal in any way. But I do hope they release the movie Death on the Nile eventually. I still want to see it. My mom was so excited about it.)
I do find it interesting that people in general (the characters in this movie, I mean) are pretty dismissive when it comes to Dr. Lecter. They never stress his brilliance as a psychiatrist and leave it at that. Nope, he’s a cannibal, and that’s really what people tend to focus on.
Clarice Starling is also good at solving cases, but she’s something people can’t resist remarking on, too. She’s a woman. I love how the film draws this comparison, highlighting the way both Lecter and Starling are perceived as something strange by others. It’s very distracting to be interacting with someone who is a cannibal. Apparently (as this film shows us time and again) it is equally distracting to be interacting with someone who is a woman.
Clarice is very good at what she does, but everywhere she goes, people immediately say, “Hey do you want to date me?” Some of these men are much creepier than others. (Dr. Chilton wins, for sure.) But she gets asked out left and right in this movie (because there’s nothing as romantic as solving a series of brutally graphic flayings). My daughter even despised Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn). I don’t think he’s quite as bad as everyone else. I mean, yes, he might be romantically interested in Clarice. (Lecter calls the audience’s attention to that early on. Possibly he mentions it because he senses that Clarice is concerned about it.) But at least Crawford has the decency to be even more interested in exploiting Clarice to help solve his case. (I don’t know why that should make anything better. I guess because I would be worried if Crawford weren’t prioritizing solving the case. Catherine Martin’s down there dognapping in a hole. Somebody had better be trying to solve the case!)
I just think it’s funny. Yes, Lecter has a brilliant mind, but all anyone can think about is that he’s a cannibal. Yes, Clarice has a brilliant mind, but all anyone can think about is that she’s a woman. As if being a cannibal and being a woman are equally outrageous, anomalous things! Apparently, they’re equally distracting to all the men! Certainly, Clarice is not thrilled when Crawford calls attention to her being a woman for his own purposes, in much the same way as he plays up Lecter’s cannibal status when it suits him.
What I didn’t even notice until this viewing is that Clarice’s friend Ardelia actually is quite helpful when it comes to solving the case, too. In one scene, Clarice bounces questions off her, and Ardelia comes up with all the correct answers. Possibly Clarice would come up with all of these connections on her own, it’s true. But she doesn’t need to because Ardelia is standing there telling them to her. And Ardelia gets no credit for anything! So with the help of a cannibal serial killer and a woman of color, a young female cadet solves the whole case, and then her boss tells her he won’t forget her contribution. My daughter and I laughed at that, asking ourselves, “What exactly was your contribution? Flying to the wrong house?” Crawford starts giving her this big, “We wouldn’t have found him without you,” speech, and for my daughter’s amusement, I continued, “When I make my woman suit Starling, you’re going to be the right sleeve!” Though I enjoy making her laugh, I must add that her disdain for Crawford greatly exceeds my own. Clarice couldn’t possibly have solved the case if Crawford hadn’t given her the case file in the first place. The way things play out is just funny.
What I find perhaps funniest of all is that Buffalo Bill is abducting women to make a dress (well an entire woman suit) out of human skin, and yet he is somehow the least interesting character in the movie. I’m not saying he’s not interesting. Anyone who likes thinking about serial killers will no doubt devote some mental energy to his storyline. But he’s nowhere near as fascinating as Hannibal and Clarice. To me, the most interesting thing about the Death’s-Head Hawk-Moth and Bill’s chosen imagery of metamorphosis is that he never completes his transformation. I joked to my daughter, “And so it was Clarice who became a butterfly.” It’s true, though. Clarice really benefits from her cannibal therapy sessions. My daughter loved the fact that Catherine Martin cries out to Clarice for help, in just the same way that the lambs wouldn’t stop screaming. There’s a lot of symbolism packed into the end of this movie.
Actually, I find Buffalo Bill really frightening—much more frightening than Hannibal, almost as scary as The Prince of Tides—mainly because he’s such a failure. I told my daughter, “I wish I were Hannibal Lecter, but I worry I’m Buffalo Bill, screaming down holes!” He’s scarier than Hannibal Lecter for three reasons. 1) He’s a terrible conversationalist. There’s no reasoning with him or having any kind of sincere exchange of ideas with him. 2) There’s no quid pro quo with Buffalo Bill. When you try to help him, he repays you by hurting you. What happens to Catherine Martin is enough to send a chill down the spine of Good Samaritans everywhere. Lecter, on the other hand, does help Clarice even though his methods are vaguely creepy. 3.) Buffalo Bill hates himself as he is. Whatever his flaws, Hannibal Lecter seems delighted to be himself (at least in this movie). (I think this last point is mainly scary because at moments when I don’t like myself, I worry that I might be like Buffalo Bill. I don’t mean that I have any desire to be a serial killer, just that he’s such a perfect example of being a psychologically damaged failure.)
The other thing I find fascinating about this film is the surety that I always had that Lecter would never come after Clarice. Obviously I know that he doesn’t come after her now (after seeing the movie a zillion times), but I don’t recall ever worrying that he would come after her. Clarice herself dismisses the idea saying, “He would consider that rude.” And we believe she’s right. I find that surprising because on paper, someone like Hannibal Lecter seems pretty hard to trust. Isn’t there at least an outside possibility that he might hurt Clarice? He seems very charming during their conversations, but the way he attacks his guards during his escape is a lot less charming. Yet I don’t remember ever entertaining the notion that Lecter would hurt Clarice. If anything, I was hoping he would find Clarice, even the first time I saw the film. (I think it’s because they’re so entertaining together. You don’t want him to disappear from the story completely.)
Best Scene:
All the scenes of Hopkins and Foster together are the best parts of the movie. I’ve read that Anthony Hopkins has less than twenty-five minutes of screentime in this film which seems impossible given the way his character dominates the entire movie. I can’t decide which of their conversations I like the best. They’re all supercharged with energy.
I haven’t talked as much about Foster as I have Hopkins, but her performance is wonderful, too. I used to retell the story about the lambs to my sister, trying to copy Foster’s accent and speech patterns as best I could (which was badly). Foster shows us Clarice’s vulnerability but never makes it seem like a disadvantage.
Best Action Sequence:
I love Lecter’s escape. The brutality of it used to alarm me as I said. But his clever trick delights me far more than it should. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen the movie so many times that I think of him as the protagonist and root for him accordingly. I love the way the movie teases the audience here, stringing us along, not letting us in on the secret but giving us ample reason to be suspicious.
It’s actually quite funny that Lecter escaping turns out to have no effect on what happens with the Catherine Martin/Buffalo Bill situation. I guess it’s like any movie (or book) featuring a wise mentor figure. So often the mentor figure gets killed just before the story’s resolution, so the protagonist can make a leap and solve the problem on their own. It’s just funny that Clarice’s mentor isn’t a teacher who dies but a cannibal on the lam.
Best Scene Visually:
Lots of images stand out. One of my favorite moments in the film comes when Clarice suddenly wanders into her father’s funeral. If we didn’t already know, this lets us see that she’s solving more than one mystery. We see how much her past influences her present, and I like the way the film shows us the blurred boundaries there.
Another great image is Lecter’s arrival to meet with Senator Martin (Diane Baker), which always makes me remember the Oscar ceremony that year. (That’s a good scene, too. Senator Martin is an interesting character, especially for someone who’s in the film so briefly.)
The other image I just can’t shake is that big pit full of Catherine Martin. Brooke Smith’s conversations with Ted Levine are in many ways the antithesis of the conversations between Foster and Hopkins. Clarice and Lecter are always staring each other in the eyes, having quid pro quo exchanges. Meanwhile, Buffalo Bill puts Catherine Martin down in a hole and calls her “it,” while she screams at him and threatens his dog. I have to admit that Catherine in the pit and Buffalo Bill dancing around talking to himself are images from this movie just as memorable as the moments with Dr. Lecter and Clarice. It’s just that they’re unpleasant to recall.
The Negatives:
One thing has always bothered me about this movie. What kind of idiots do they have working at the FBI? Why do they even need Hannibal Lecter to help solve this case? (Or is Crawford thinking, “Clarice Starling shows so much promise, but she needs therapy. I know!”) That last thing Clarice (and Ardelia) discover about Buffalo Bill (after being nudged by Lecter) is really nothing Clarice couldn’t have discovered on her own. The idea that there’s no pattern—unless one piece of data is thrown out…Wouldn’t real FBI agents just say, “I have an idea. Let’s throw out this one piece that doesn’t fit!” If you talk to a group of geniuses, usually problems like this get solved. I feel like you could take the map of these crimes to a high school honors math class, ask, “Why isn’t this forming a pattern?” and have a pretty good answer by the end of the period. (Now, I will grant you, there is much more to solving the case than simply saying, “Oh look! The first victim throws off the pattern!” Lecter helps a lot. I’m just saying that the case file Clarice is given seems to contain most of the information necessary for solving the case already. I’m surprised the FBI decided they wanted to involve Hannibal Lecter given how much trouble he is. Or did Crawford just want to find a way to involve Clarice?)
Another potential problem, of course, is that the killer Clarice is hunting wants to make himself a woman suit. The movie is very careful to tell us that transgendered people are not typically violent and then to tell us that Buffalo Bill isn’t transgendered. He just thinks he’s transgendered. Were I trans myself, I might find that a bit inadequate. It seems easily twisted. Someone with an anti-trans agenda could easily say, “Trans people won’t attack you in the bathroom, but people who mistakenly think they’re trans will,” and then go onto argue that all people who think they’re trans think so mistakenly. I can see how some people might not like The Silence of the Lambs for that reason. Then again, why not argue that you shouldn’t risk getting counselling because your therapist might eat you? (You never know! Some brilliant psychiatrists are cannibal serial killers, according to this movie!) People really should not base arguments about practical, day-to-day matters on The Silence of the Lambs, but I’ll acknowledge that this aspect of the movie is somewhat problematic. I don’t think the dialogue thrown in to address that issue completely solves the problem. Intentionally or not, the movie does leave viewers with the impression that someone experiencing body dysmorphia is likely to flay women to make a woman suit. There are two serial killers featured in this film, and the one experiencing body dysmorphia is the one portrayed as a creepy weirdo. I don’t know how that can be fixed at this point. (Maybe Eddie Izzard would know. It does remind me of some jokes from Dress to Kill.)
Finally, given my own nascent desire to be a cannibal, I do have to agree with my grandparents about one thing. This movie makes being a cannibal look more attractive than it probably should. One of the serial killers in The Silence of the Lambs looks awfully appealing. (Somewhere out there, somebody’s probably reading along thinking, “And it’s Buffalo Bill! He’s my hero! He’s just like me!”) This problem, though, is not exactly unique to The Silence of the Lambs. All forms of entertainment (TV shows, movies, books) about serial killers makes them entirely too irresistible. But that’s serial killers for you! A lot of them are sociopaths, and sociopaths are notorious for their magnetism and ability to charm. Being a cannibal does look like fun. If you could do it without hurting people, I’d be all for it. The thing is, I’m joking. When I say, “I wish I were a cannibal,” what I mean is, “I want not to feel pain.” Causing harm to others is entirely unappealing to me. So I will admit that the movie glamorizes evil. (But I mean, it’s far from the only movie that does that!) It also glamorizes being a brilliant female FBI profiler in a world where people are depending on you to save their lives and every man you encounter professionally begins the conversation by hitting on you. Glamorizing hard working women seems less problematic to me. If you have to glamorize a cannibal or two in the process, that’s probably fine. (I didn’t know how to end that sentence.)
Overall:
I love The Silence of the Lambs. It’s a great movie that has broader appeal than many other Best Picture winners. Both Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins give outstanding performances as characters who are mesmerizing on screen and pretty much impossible to forget. My daughter also gave it an A+ for its use of symbolism (which she deemed pronounced but not obnoxious). If you haven’t seen the movie, I’m very surprised because I feel like everyone I know loves this movie and has seen it countless times. We’re planning to watch it again with my husband when my daughter gets home from visiting my husband’s parents.