Silence of the Lambs - Essay Example

Kamran Harris Intro to Lit & Crit 14 December 2007 Silence of the Lambs Research In the world of cinema, directors are always looking for new and innovative ideas and techniques by which to make their next movies to make it stand out from the multitude of other productions. Often this involves researching into time-tested plots and stories to make the movies appealing to the audiences. A trend that became rampant just in the recent decades is the adaptation of books and novels that have been applauded by the readers into movies. This brings about a twist in the mood of the movie, as the plots and storylines are not run-of-the-mill, providing freshness and innovation to the movie and all the while giving a different taste of cinema to the audience, and audiences worldwide have increasing adapted to this culture of movie-making. However, this involves a greater effort and hard work from the whole team working at the project, as the technique of writing a novel is very different from the usual movie scripts, and directors have to be very careful about handling the story. It is a dangerous gamble, and very risky. More than often a movie fails just because the director did not provide that flow to it that should keep the audience on the edge of their seats, a very important factor in the success of any movie, or because the proper treatment was not given to the storyline. The genres that have proven to be the most grossing at the box office have been horror and thrillers_ action, suspense, and mystery inclusive, as they provide that crucial adrenaline shots to the audiences and find a common pulse with them, giving them a chance to escape into the world of fantasy and reel life, and an opportunity to unwind. A recent addition to this genre is the concept of psychological thrillers. For long film makers have relied on camera tricks and special effects, and costumes and scary background score when it comes to horror movies as the sole technique of being true to this category. Sometimes, theological themes and fantasized versions of mystical stories are woven into the plot to make it sound more believable and so more scary. The exorcist was and still is to this day the pinnacle of success in this regard, and still stands out to be the top most name in the list of scary movies of all times. But psychological thrillers bring in something more to horror than just the monsters; they bring to it the human factor. Audience worldwide have the tendency to relate to stories that are more in synch with their emotions, thinking patterns and psychology, and touch upon the matters of the human soul and spiritual development of people. Movies that explore this aspect hold a special place in the history of cinema. Weave it together with the essence of horror and suspense, and you have the perfect blend of cinematic taste that will be intensely savored by the audience, given that it is handled very sensitively and extremely carefully, for as much as it is the formula of success, if negligence be a part of it, it can fall flat on its face in the box office. Case in point of an all time success is the movie The Silence of the Lambs. In the winter of 1991 came a movie that went on to be nominated for scores of awards and claimed many accolades, a proof of its tremendous success. The distributors were the Orion Pictures, and the director was Jonathan Demme. The cast was an impressive combination of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. Foster had already proven her worth at several other projects that the public remembered her from, but most relevant to her role in this movie was perhaps the movie she had done earlier, called the Taxi Driver. That, combined with incidences from her private life gave a nice cocktail of expectations to the viewers. And Anthony Hopkins, of course, had already made his mark in the world of cinema. Such a movie required a very painstakingly written and sensitively approached screenplay, the services for which were provided by Ted Tally, a screenplay, based on the book of the same name by Thomas Harris, that would eventually earn him an Oscar. The movie was Silence of the Lambs, and it was to become a groundbreaking legend in the genre of thrillers, and especially psychological thrillers. Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, is a young, new, budding FBI Academy recruit training for her post in Virginia when she is suddenly called upon on a job that would have indelible effects on her psyche and change her life forever. Clarice is a strong woman, determined and hopeful, but her life isn't as serene as it seems, and in reality she is not as strong as she poses to be. She has had a disturbing childhood, and these childhood memories have ever since been haunting her day and night, and inside she is desperate to rid herself of those thoughts. Having lost both her parents at a tender age, the sight of her father's funeral sticks with her to this day, and every time she attend a funeral she is reminded of it. If that was not enough, when she moved under the care of a relative, she undergoes further dreadful experiences. Her new home has a slaughterhouse attached to it, and young Clarice, in her nave mind thinking that the lambs in that house were being tormented, desperately tries to rescue them but fails, and to this day she is continuously disturbed by the bleating of those lambs at night, and often she would startle herself out of sleep for the haunting of those noises. This is ironic in itself as would appear evident as the story unfolds. Her physical struggles, too, being part of her training in the Academy, and her daily drills, are symbolic to the struggle she has to undergo in her life to keep up with and fight her way through the manly world of secret service, and to prove herself from amongst her male peers in the Academy, she being the only female student. Midway through her training, she is called upon a case. A serial killer, going by the name of Buffalo Bill, played by Ted Levine, is terrorizing the community, going from state to state and never once revealing his identity. This mysterious killer does more than just kill his victims, which by the way, are all females_ he skins them, tearing their skins off in certain patterns and shapes. FBI is trying desperately to put an end to this psychotic killing spree, but has been unsuccessful to this day. Then Clarice's boss Jack Crawford, played by Scott Glenn, calls her for an unusual task. He proposes that to better understand the psychology of this killer which is critical in order to catch him, they must conduct a psychology analysis of many other similarly mentally disturbed killers incarcerated in jails around the country. This study would provide them with a insight into the mind of this killer and would make it possible for them to find out his whereabouts. Other such prisoners were being dealt with by other FBI agents, but keeping in view her meritorious profile, Clarice was asked to do a profile report on Hannibal Lecter, a notorious serial killer, imprisoned in Maryland, who was previously a brilliant psychiatrist himself. The catch is, he is a cannibal. Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, is an astonishingly sinister character that was developed by Thomas Harris, and stands out as the best villainous character of all times as named by the American Film Institute (Wikipedia 2007). On one side, he is extremely elegant, savvy, polite and sophisticated_ perfectly true to his descent, that of a European Count. And on the other side, he is a savage, having developed a keen taste for his murdered victims' flesh. But perhaps what is most dangerous and scary about him is his brilliance and wit, and the mysterious ways of his character. He is a cunning, sly killer who lures his bate into his web with so much dexterity that the victim never realizes when he has become a victim, and falls prey to his insanity unawares. Childhood dilemmas play a role in everyone's life, and Hannibal is no different. The circumstances and instances that one faces when as a child molds him for the person that he is going to be in his life. As a child, Hannibal saw some horrors that are not meant for a child's eye. He witnessed the cannibalism of a sibling (Wikipedia 2007), when his family was ridden with famine. Later, when he ran away from home, he grew up to be a man who had developed to be immune to normal feelings of compassion or pity, or moralities. Killing and then devouring his dead victims was an act as normal to him as it is horrifying for a normal person, as is evident by the incident in the movie when he fakes a chest pain to get out of his cell and then attacks and eats the tongue of his nurse, without his pulse getting raised to above eighty-five (Silence of the Lambs 1991). And that is what Jack Crawford and the head of the clinic for mentally disturbed prisoners, Dr Frederick Chilton, played by Anthony Heald, warns Clarice of_ to be on her guard all the time and not to disclose any of her personal life details to him. Hannibal has an unusually strong inclination to observe every single detail of the people around him, and get to know about their lives to a very unsettling degree, yet doing this so subtly that the person never figures out what dangerous waters he is waddling in till its too late. From the moment Clarice is given the case, she intuitively draws the conclusion that somehow Hannibal and Buffalo Bill are psychologically similar, and doing a psychological profile on Hannibal would definitely pave heir way towards the serial killer. What she doesn't realize is how her own life would be affected by this case. Perhaps the scene that the movie is best remembered for is the one when the Clarice and Hannibal meet for the first time in the old prison of Maryland where he is being kept (Wikipedia 2007), which incidentally, is also the opening scene for Hannibal when he first makes his entrance into the movie. As she moves towards his prison cell, she is verbally abused by another inmate named Miggs, which sets the mood for what is yet to come. But as she approaches Hannibal's mirrored cell, a pair of cool, blue eyes are shown to be staring at her with eerie attention, and a silent, still Hannibal, standing quietly in his cell greets her. The following conversation is plain enough, but when Hannibal says "You use Evian skin cream, and sometimes you wear L'Air du Temps, but not today" (Silence of the Lambs 1991), it becomes clear both to Clarice and the audience that he is a man of extreme observation and makes Clarice wary of him. However, every time she tries to query him in lieu of the questionnaire given to her by her boss, he waves it off and rebuts her with his customary psychological analysis and observations about her. Distressed, when she walks back from his cell, she is again abused by Miggs, due to which Hannibal calls her back and strikes a deal with her; he would tell her bits and pieces about the case and help her solve it, but in return she would have to give him details of her life. Although wary of the arrangement, Clarice is desperate to have the case solved for personal reasons, and hence begins a series of discussions and meetings between Hannibal and Clarice that eventually forge a strange bond between them. Psychological analysis and observation become an integral part of the movie henceforth, with both the characters behaving as two creatures living on the terms of mutualism/commensalism, with each one feeding off the other for its own benefit, and this becomes apparent as the movie proceeds. Soon each one becomes depended upon the other, in pursuit of his or her own goals and agendas, and it seems as if they are two parts of one subconscious mind. Clarice needs to get this case solved desperately. It is more than a job assignment for her, more important than proving herself worthy in front of her male counterparts in the Academy; it has a personal value attached to it. She has it figured out that the nightmares she has been having lately, about the bleating lambs, is associated with this case of Buffalo Bill. She thinks the lambs represent the women he is murdering, and just as she had tried to save the lambs from the slaughterhouse back in her childhood, so to silence the lambs now, she would have to save women from falling victim to the killer, by capturing him and putting an end to his killing spree. She knew unless she did this, more and more women would be slain by him, and she would never have a normal psychological life ever again. So with ever more determination, she probes deeper into her inquiries and incessantly questions Hannibal. Hannibal, on the other hand, shrewdly recognized this realization in Clarice, and takes full advantage of it. He knows Clarice would do anything to have this case solved, and she would not give up until he has spilled all that he knows about this killer to her. So he keeps his information small, and in bits, and in every meeting that he has with her, he gives her a riddle to solve, with which she is supposed to get closer and closer to her query. And in return of every riddle, he asks details of her life. Clarice is the kind of person that Hannibal would like to be. Hers is the personality that he fantasizes to have. To him, she is the ideal, and he wants to know as much about her as he can, for she provides him with a window to the world to look out of that he always wanted to have but never had. And now here she was, right in front of him; confident, strong, determined, brilliant and focused, though vulnerable and intimidated by his presence. He was never like her, never kept his ground with his patients, never kept himself together like she was doing with him. He lost his head over his patients, obsessed over them (Wikipedia 2007), and was never solid enough for his liking. She wasn't his bait like other victims he has had. She was his victim, but a victim to his scrutiny. Like an animal under observation, he was studying her. She was his inspiration, an idea of someone that he wanted to be, or maybe that he once was (The Assignment), a better angle to view the world with, and he was her power to crack the case. He probed her to dig deeper into herself and her judgment, to ask questions, to analyze the situation deeply and meticulously, and then to reach conclusions about the killer. He would ask her questions in order to get her thinking, to set her on the right track towards the killer's capture, yet never spoon feeding her. Like when he asked her, "First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself What is its nature What does he do, this man you seek" (Silence of the Lambs 1991), and when she doesn't give him a satisfactory answer, he continue, "He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice Do we seek out things to covet Make an effort to answer now" (Silence of the Lambs 1991). When she takes a long time in thinking about it, he says, "We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice And don't your eyes seek out the things you want" (Silence of the Lambs). He was cultivating in her the skills that he had as a genius psychiatrist. He became her mind, her subconscious, and he became hers. Or as Freud puts it, she became his Ego, a prized paradigm to view the world with, and he became her Superego, her subconscious, giving her directions and leading her on. The story continues as the killer captures the US Senator's daughter, and Hannibal is promised a transfer to a new cell as he desired if he would spill all the information that he had about the killer. Giving false information, Hannibal escapes from the prison. Clarice is left pouring over her case files (Wikipedia 2007) as she puts two and two together and hunts down the traces of the murderer whose real name she finds out to be James Gumb, a transsexual person who is cutting out skin patches from his victims to make himself a suite of real skin transforming him into a woman as he was denied sexual-reassignment surgery (Wikipedia 2007). She finally traces him down to a house outside of Chicago where he is going by the name of Jack Gordon. She discovers his real identity and in a climax action scene, shoots him to death just as he was about to shoot her. Later, in the end of the film, she receives a phone call from Hannibal from the Bahamas, over which he discloses to her his intention of cannibalizing Dr Chilton, but swears her to secrecy. Silence of the Lambs saw a phenomenal success. It is the only thriller to date to have won Oscars, and the third film to have won the five Oscars awards for best director, best film, best actor, best actress and best screenplay (Wikipedia 2007). It holds a tie with "HushHush, Sweet Charlotte" at the second place for a horror film having the most Oscar nominations, seven in total, with "Exorcism" holding the first spot with ten nominations. the actors won other awards for this movie too, like the Golden Globe and the Bafta Awards. However, the movie did see some protest from gay rights communities for projecting transsexuals the way it did, however, it was not the only movie that got this response from gay communities of attacking transsexuals (Wikipedia 2007). Clarice Starling was named as the sixth greatest hero of all times by the American Film Institute (Wikipedia 2007). Works Cited Loney, Amber. It Puts the Lotion on Its Skin. 24 September 2007. (The Given Assignment/Analysis). Silence of the Lambs. 13 December 2007. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 14 December 2007 . Silence of the Lambs. Rotten Tomatoes. 14 December 2007 < http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/silence_of_the_lambs/> The Silence of the Lambs. 15 March 1999. The Flick Filosopher. 14 December 2007 < http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/1999/03/the_silence_of_the_lambs_revie.html>. The Silence of the Lambs. 6 January 2003. Movie-gazette. 14 December 2007 < http://www.movie-gazette.com/cinereviews/203>. The Silence of the Lambs. Book Rags. 14 December 2007 < http://www.bookrags.com/research/the-silence-of-the-lambs-sjpc-04/>. The Silence of the Lambs. Good Among Directors. 14 December 2007 < http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scripts/lambs.shtml>. The Silence of the Lambs. IMDb-The Internet Movie Database. 14 December 2007 < http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/>. The Silence of the Lambs. Ruined Endings. 14 December 2007 < http://www.ruinedendings.com/film1160plot> The Silence of the Lambs. The Greatest Films. 14 December 2007 < http://www.filmsite.org/sile.html>. Read More