Silence of the Lambs (1991)

“Hello Clarice”

Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991) is so good and so seminal that I cannot begin to discuss the film’s overall impact to pop culture without spoiling it. Moreover, it’s such a masterpiece that to try to speak of plot and performances that tiptoeing around potential plot spoilers would lessen my ability to speak to the themes of a perfect film I truly love. So massive spoiler warnings are to follow. If you haven’t seen this movie before, please stop reading. Go watch the movie and come back in two hours.

Briefly, Silence of the Lambs follows the story of FBI Agent-in-Training Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster). She is tasked by her boss Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) to give one psycho cannibal who maybe you’ve heard of as Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lector a test of his cognitive abilities. Crawford’s actual motive here was to tempt Lector with a sacrificial lamb who was obviously not ready for the moment to maybe extract some information regarding the identity and/or whereabouts of serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). Starlin, due to her incredible tenacity, honesty, and acumen, intrigues Lector enough to breadcrumb her to the identity of the killer.

If M (1931) gets credit for inventing the police procedural, Silence of the Lambs should get credit for modernizing it. Silence of the Lambs‘s lasting legacy can be seen on every police drama on television today. The color pallets, the strong female lead, and the monologues. All of it.

What Silence of the Lambs understands (more than anything) is male gaze. Demme makes a specific effort to frame Starlin—not as a fish out of water—a total enigma to the men around her. Demme captures Starlin’s point of view incredibly well with fisheye lenses, and odd upward angles. In a scene where she (an FBI agent) and her boss show up to a mortuary to examine the body of a murdered woman, her boss leaves her behind in a room of about 10 male officers. The camera POV shots you get all are angled upwards to make the men look very tall and Starlin very small. The men in that room do not understand or remotely respect her presence without even saying a word. In another scene, she takes a pupa of a moth to some scientists at a local university. They are obviously ogling her the entire time she is in her space.

When men gawk at Starlin, the viewer shares in that feeling of embarrassment. The movie never lets you forget how we (in society but men especially) treat competent women at all stops. Coddled at times for no reason, sexualized at every turn whether available or unavailable, and belittled for the audacity of challenging men in any way shape or form.

The entire film is about gender. Whether that be Starlin as a woman in a man’s world or whether that’s Buffalo Bill’s attempts to define himself, the story is constantly and unrelentingly focused on gender and identity. It has been and will be used in gender and film studies classes at the collegiate level for decades to come.

With that being said, this film is over 30 years old now. With that, there is certainly some issues with how the film speaks about trans people. A fair and good-faith watching will lead anyone to understand there was a level of care and nuance in not making trans people appear inherently deviant. However, I’m not sure having Hannibal Lector being the one to explain the difference between being trans and hating yourself entirely. It also does not do a great job of its distinction between being gay and not being an a duplicitous sex criminal. For a little more information on this, please check out Lindsey Ellis’s video about trans representation in film and television specifically with regards to Silence of the Lambs.

Silence of the Lambs will be remembered for a hundred years and maybe a hundred years more. The performances from Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are some of the best you’ll ever see. The film swept the Oscars that year and rightfully so. Best Actress. Best Actor. Best Director. Best Adapted Screenplay. Best Picture. It’s only happened 3 times in history and film in the past 20 years has even been close.

I don’t think I need to write much more about this one. Too many people whose literal job it is to write about movies have covered this one for us. Watch the movie

10/10

119 Minutes