directed by Jonathan Demme
screenplay by Ted Tally
based on the novel by Thomas Harris (1988)

Criterion Collection #13.

This is a much-overrated movie. It has touches of class that I think may have confused some people who don’t understand that one swallow does not a summer make, certainly not when an evil psychiatrist cannibal is helping to track a corpse-skinning pervert. What we have here is none other than an unreformed 80s-style thriller, the kind that ought to leave you feeling a little dirty. It is irredeemably grounded in the puerile pet fantasies of the genre, fixated on the baroque pathologies of outlandish serial killers just as shamelessly as superhero comics are fixated on skintight muscle suits. This is a movie where it turns out that coincidentally, Hannibal Lecter was once Buffalo Bill’s psychiatrist, and nobody thinks even to comment on the coincidence — because it’s a serial killer’s world; they probably run into each other all the time at serial killer bars. Just like nobody needs to comment on how wildly unlikely it is that Gotham City happens be home to a superhero and to any number of supervillains. A fantasy world populates itself according to its own fixations and hangups. Having seen this movie, a cruel, brilliant psychoanalyst like Hannibal Lecter could probably say a choice word or two about Thomas Harris. Not to mention the reading public.

And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In the interest of brotherly love, I should grant that there may be nothing wrong with the hangups to which this movie caters — they’re just not mine. That would be the high road, anyway… but my heart, Clarice, but my heart! My heart tells me this is extremely suspect stuff. I think for the character of Hannibal Lecter to resonate, you have to be the type of person who thinks the whole notion of “psychology” is intrinsically gothic and finds violent cannibalism perversely fascinating. I’m proud to say that’s just not me. I got no love for zombies, neither. However, inadvertent “gotcha” cannibalism of the albatross soup and Sweeney Todd variety is another story; that I can get behind. I think maybe it’s because the emphasis there is on inflicting self-disgust on another person, rather than the physical act of eating flesh. The latter just isn’t a very rich subject for me. I understand that there are people for whom it is, and I reserve the right to be a little suspicious of them.

Ditto cutting off people’s skin — emphatic ditto! There has to be a secret savor in a horror for it to be satisfying, beyond just being pushed toward something to which you are averse. You need to feel some kind of pull, as well. For me, too much of the stuff in this movie had no secret savor. Sometimes an “ick” is just an “ick.” Again, to each his own. Also again, if that’s your own, I am uncomfortable with you.

I have another, related gripe: the movie can’t decide whether or not it’s supposed to be fun. Hitchcockian naughtiness (“I’m having an old friend for dinner”) and Eszterhasian grandstanding “hardcore” crudeness (“I can smell your cunt!”) are incompatible paradigms. If you’re going to relish mincing words, you can’t also relish not mincing words. The whole idea of “not mincing words” is rejecting mince! This movie tries to have its mince and disdain it too.

Case in point: When Clarice is about to meet Lecter for the first time, the head of the institute warns her to keep her distance by saying that he went to the infirmary once and “when the nurse leaned over him, he did this to her” — and then pulls out a photo that we don’t see but Clarice does, and suddenly they are bathed in red light. So far so good, and Hitch would approve. But then he keeps talking. “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.” Well, now that’s pretty on-the-nose disgusting, isn’t it? Why don’t you just show us the damn picture, while you’re at it.

Speaking of which: consider the autopsy scene. After the body bag is opened, we only see their uneasy reactions. The corpse is just an unfocused foreground blur at the very bottom of the shot as we look up at Clarice examining it — but of course our imaginations are drawn directly to the gore that we can’t see. So far it’s reminiscent of the parallel autopsy scene in Jaws, where we are meant to be uncomfortably aware of what the characters are looking at, just out of our field of view. After much teasing, that scene climaxes when a gnawed forearm is lifted into frame for just a second — which after that buildup, feels like a considerable thing to bear. That one second is the whole payoff, and it’s the correct payoff, because Jaws is a mince relish movie, unequivocally and sure-footedly so.

Now back to the Silence of the Lambs autopsy. At first, as I said, we’re spared the gore and teased with a low angle. But as the scene goes on, we start to see parts of the body more clearly and directly; and then quite casually, without any fanfare, we’re shown it at full length on the table, bloated and rotting and repulsive. Oops! Guess this wasn’t “teasing and fun” like Jaws after all! I guess it’s more “unflinching and clinical” (= “lurid and sleazy” done up in its Sunday best). But if so, why does the scene start with the teaser low angle? It just feels like borrowed business, misunderstood.

The progression from averted to direct gaze does make a certain kind of abstract sense from a character-development perspective: as Clarice gains her nerve and begins to master her professional role, what began as too horrible to contemplate becomes matter-of-fact. But if that’s the concept, it’s a dumb concept, because that’s exactly the opposite of the effect it achieves for the audience. Clarice gradually comes to terms with the corpse because she does see it immediately. But we don’t see it, so that’s a journey we can’t go on with her. We spend that time having our own experience of ascending discomfort, as we slowly lose faith that the film has any actual interest in playful teasing, any actual intention of sparing us the grossness.

The scariest movies, for me, are the ones that I don’t trust. In a well-mannered movie — like, say, the Bourne movie we just watched on TV the other day — if a razor blade gets pulled out in the middle of a fistfight, I might worry for the character but I don’t really have to worry that the movie’s gonna go all chien Andalou on me, because good manners dictate that one imply such things obliquely (except for occasionally at climaxes). But a movie that has proven that it has no breeding, and may even have a few screws loose, is a genuinely dangerous movie, because anything could happen. In the final analysis, apart from a few minor faux-pas, The Silence of the Lambs turns out to be reasonably well-behaved, but its manners are just too erratic for comfort. I wouldn’t want it to be my date to anyplace nice. Like for example the Oscars!

The 80s were a particularly ill-bred time.

Jodie Foster’s commentary on the DVD is almost entirely Joseph Campbell-type stuff about her character’s mythic journey. Her conviction is that the movie does a great cultural service by presenting a true female hero. It’s easy to smirk at this sort of talk — especially since, while hearing it, you’re watching The Silence of the Lambs — but I think the point is basically sympathetic. If you’re in the movie business and you want to nudge the cultural norms, inserting some unremarkable but non-trivial feminism into the DNA of a pop-cinema genre is probably one of the best ways to do it. Maybe only effective if that movie becomes completely iconic, but luckily enough, this one did.

So like I said, I think the movie throws up a sort of quality smokescreen by having a few unexpected touches of taste and intelligence. What are those touches? For one, a graceful camera style that is more curious than salacious, a willingness to glance around and take things in. Like the occasional color cutaway to, say, a lawn whirligig shaped like a canoeing Indian, which is part of a light sprinkling of “American history” imagery that could easily provide a freshman with material for a serviceable two-page paper. Another interesting touch is the distinctive use of tight close-ups on characters speaking directly into the camera. I guess I’m complimenting the cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, here.

And, of course, the strongest point, and the real reason this movie took off, is the odd simplicity of all the “Yes, Clarissssse!” scenes. Anthony Hopkins says on the commentary that his very first scene was what appealed to him about the part, and that he built the whole performance outward from the character’s show of power in the speech where he calls her out as white trash and cuts her down. With this in mind, it’s striking how very theatrical in conception — and performance — those scenes are. The two characters are stationary and engaged in an impossibly heightened exchange; that’s like every play I’ve ever seen. I think a big reason that the scene has lodged itself so firmly in the cultural memory and has provoked so much loving parody is that it is so durably the stuff of the stage. It feels iconic because it feels ancestral — a holdover from the great mother art out of which the cinema was born. I think deep in our guts we all feel that the things people say to each other while standing still are the most human and lasting part of film. The camera moving around, lights flashing, color and sound and so forth — that’s all more artificial and thus more suspect — and thus, we feel, less substantive — than sheer old-fashioned thespianism. This inner bias doesn’t rise to the surface all that often, but it definitely affects the sweepstakes of icon-formation. The “greatest moments” in movie history, according to common consensus, are generally moments when two people are standing near each other and one of them says something to the other one, like, “Frankly, kid, I coulda been an offer that Kansas is made of.” (“And don’t call me Frankly!”). Generally, it seems like most of the stuff that gets the Oscar ceremonies all misty about the magic of cinema is the stuff that could have been done on stage.

Look, here they are in a photo shoot just last year, in which all extraneous elements have been removed. Doesn’t this look like it might be a good play — maybe even a better play than it was a movie? Certainly Clarice’s goofy lamb monologue would be easier to accept. I think it would work well in a black box theater where the audience sat real close. They’d cut most of the non-Lecter scenes and just have them described, or suggested abstractly with artsy projections. The play would be called Ovis and take itself super-seriously. Starring Tony-award-winners Denis O’Hare and Scarlett Johansson.

Dear world, if this all comes to pass I would like a “special thanks to” credit in the program.

The Criterion edition is out of print, so no Netflix, but it’s not rare enough that anyone has felt the need to put it online. So… I had to buy it. For 8 bucks I have no regrets. It’s clearly the product of the early years of DVD, having no subtitles, and with several of the bonus features consisting of onscreen text — FBI perspectives on various serial killer cases; much of it needlessly horrific stuff, frankly, though I did find it interesting to read about how profiling works in the real world.

The only really interesting “deleted scene” is a neat solo video performance by Jim Roche as a televangelist, a clip of which is briefly seen but not heard on a TV set in the film. The commentary track (unavailable on any other edition) was pleasant enough listening though not particularly deep. Jonathan Demme seems pretty down-to-earth and unpretentious. I was struck by the fact that absolutely nothing fond is said at any point about Ted Levine. Demme doesn’t mention him at the end when he lists all the great people he had the pleasure of working with. But his tiny little performance is what stuck with me most after my first viewing years ago, and I know I’m not alone in that. I still think the best scene in the movie is when she finally shows up at Bill’s house and they have a few creepy moments together in his kitchen before she pulls her gun out.

Composer Howard Shore is pretty good about dramaturgy, but as usual he seems to be composing with a jumbo quick-dry magic marker. I’ll never forgive him for those Lord of the Rings scores with their relentless lack of nuance. Here the lack of nuance is more forgivable, though part of me still feels like the ratio of notes to instruments playing could stand to be a good bit higher. Yes, a soundtrack was released.

The main title is full of sound effects, so your Criterion compilation track 13 is the End Titles. Awfully bare stuff, no? But it does what it needs to do, as long as you’re not paying much attention.

This took much longer to write than it did to watch. I’d rather it not be that way, if I can help it.

By the way, I happened to see Demme’s utterly different Rachel Getting Married right before watching this. It was much better.