Team Experience is revisiting 1991's Best Picture winner for its 25th Anniversary...
Previously... We learned about the case and met Clarice as she went on "an errand," Buffalo Bill caught his next victim, and Starling & Lecter played a game of Quid Pro Quo.
an FYC ad from the time
Pt. 4 by Jose Solis
When Nathaniel left us, Dr. Lecter was Scheherezade-ing the crap out of Clarice by telling her about Baltimore. Do you ever get a sense that just like the King from Arabian Nights, Agent Starling craves to return for more?
01:08:18 “Everything you need to find him is right there in those pages...” he says about the case files. As Clarice paces left to right, Dr. Lecter decides it’s time for another lesson by quoting Marcus Aurelius. He suggests Clarice decipher what is the nature of the killer. As she lists every reason why serial killers kill in lesser thrillers, the doctor loses his patience and gives her the answer.
01:08:57 “He covets”
01:09:45 Clarice begs him to help her out, as the philosophizing cannibal reminds her it’s her turn to share, after all “this is all the time we’ll ever have”.
01:10:28 Clarice recounts the tale which gives the book/film its name, as she shares a memory that haunts her from her days in the ranch in Montana with her relatives. Something woke her up early one day…
Hannibal: What was it?”
Clarice: It was screaming”
01:10:47 The camera zooms into Clarice’s face as she tells her tale...letting the doctor inside her head, as he asks her what she saw that traumatized her.
01:10:54 “Lambs, they were screaming”
01:11:39 “I thought if I could save just one” she explains. After failing to save the lamb, she was sent away to an orphanage and never saw the ranch again.
Trivia: The Spanish title for The Silence of the Lambs is The Silence of the Innocents, meaning if you grew up watching it in Spanish and not knowing the original title, this scene lost some of its symbolic power. One of my pet peeves growing up bilingual in Latin America, was how studios mess with the title translations...but that’s a story for another day.
You still wake up sometimes don’t you? Wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs...”
01:12:15 Don't we all, Doctor? Do you all love how Sir Anthony enunciates the word “lambs”?
01:13:09 After Clarice finishes her story, they come to show her out of the room. She demands he tell her the killer’s name as they pull her out, when Dr. Lecter reminds her she forgot her case file.
01:13:35 When she runs back to collect it, there is this Michelangelo-esque exchange. Is it expressing romantic love? Lust? Or merely the sign of someone who believes himself to be above nature, morality and the law attempting to make a connection with a mortal?
01:14:20 ...and here we have it. I had never noticed before that he draws her with three crosses in the back. Past the whole “lamb of god” connotations I wonder if he imagines Clarice as the Virgin Mary or Mary Magdalene.
01:15:32 Nat already mentioned the amazing cinematography, and how cool is this homage to Notorious?
It’s especially perverse considering in the Hitchcock film we’re rooting for the heroine to get away with it, was Demme suggesting the audience’s allegiance is shifting towards Lecter?
01:17:22 The doctor sets himself free and commits two of the most brutal murders in all of film history. It’s especially chilling to watch how his expression barely changes. He is enjoying the hell out of this.
01:20:04 Then a macabre discovery. For all of his refinement Dr. Lecter sure tends to be quite tacky in his decorative skills.
01:23:39 As more police officers arrive to try and contain the escaped cannibal they realize he’s outsmarted them once more. Officers shoot who they believe to be Lecter hiding above the elevator, only to realize Elvis has left the building.
01:24:53 Peek-a-boo!
01:25:29 Clarice learns of the doctor’s escape and comments on how he would consider it “rude” to come after her, so she isn’t worried about it. “It’s over, she’s dead” she comments about Catherine.
01:26:32 Eureka! As Clarice and Ardelia study the case, while sitting comfortably on washing machines (?!) they discover a pattern, “we covet what we see”, the first victim was someone Buffalo Bill knew!
01:28:51 Clarice arrives in Frederika’s house to ask her father more questions. Note the eerie picture of the smiling little girl behind him. She looks to him craving for justice. How could her dad lose sight of her? That’s probably also how her family choose to remember her, considering she never came home after vanishing.
01:29:34 A Madonna sighting is always worth screencapping (see also: 01:14:20)
01:31:51 After looking around and connecting the dots Clarice has another moment of gruesome enlightenment.
He’s making himself a woman’s suit, out of real women!”
Horrific couture -- continue on to Tim's write up of the finale...
Jose Solís Jose Solís wanted to write about film since he was a child which is why he followed the yellow brick road and moved to Oz (ahem NYC) to make his dream come true. He has been writing about film since 2003 and regularly contributes to The Film Experience and PopMatters. He is also having a torrid affair with Broadway and theatAH and writes about those at StageBuddy.com. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society. [Follow Jose on Twitter / All Jose articles]