Release Date: February 14, 1991
Director: Jonathan Demme | MPAA Rating: R | LeavittLens Rating: 8.5/10
“Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes.” –Tarjei Vesaas
It seems fitting that, in a film whose central characters are obsessed with human bodies (for consumption and for wearing), we would find a body part play a central role in the telling of the tale. Jonathan Demme’s horror classic builds its image-making richness largely through one essential and vulnerable part of the human anatomy: the eyes.
Following a short character introduction to new FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), the film wastes no time in forcing audience eyes towards a steady descent into madness, quite literally. Clarice is tasked with interviewing captured serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter (played by Anthony Hopkins in a Top-5 all-time villain performance) to see if he can be of any help in tracking down another killer on the loose, the anonymous “Buffalo Bill” (Ted Levine). This requires her to enter Lecter’s high-security prison facility and descend down, down, down, eventually arriving the end of a long stone hallway. It’s as if she’s reached the bottom of humanity, the bottom of hell, by the time she pulls up a chair and introduces herself. And while the dialogue in their first exchange is certainly chilling, well-written and tightly edited, it’s the unblinking intensity of Lecter’s eyes–met by Clarice’s visibly rattled optic response, a stand-in for the audience’s own horror–that grabs a hold and never lets go. It’s as if this film, from the outset, is intent on communicating the unnerving and unavoidable reality of human existence, which is forced constantly to simply see: to see the horror of violence and evil, the horror of abuse and neglect, and even the horror of the patriarchal society with which women are constantly forced to reckon.
That final theme becomes clear as Clarice continues in her work investigating both Lecter and “Buffalo Bill.” Our eyes watch her eyes witness, often silently, office elevators filled only with men who loom over her, or dismissive looks and sexual comments from men whom she outranks, or simply the ugly truth of what the central male antagonists inflict upon the bodies of their female victims. Indeed, Clarice herself is forced to witness the terror of the investigation before her, all the while dealing with the dread of being a woman in a “man’s world.” In many ways this sort of subtextual scare is precisely what has allowed this film to transcend its stereotyped genre trappings, both as an awards-celebrated feature in 1991 and as a lasting cultural artifact in the decades since.
As she continues to navigate the unfolding ugliness of the case, Clarice’s eyes only stumble upon more of the wreckage of humanity: we learn along the way that these perpetrators, as heinous as they are, are also victims, products of abusive scenarios in which their own mental health has been devastated, seemingly beyond repair. In fact, that’s what makes the “monsters” of this film stack up with any of the greats from history. Right alongside Nosferatu and Frankenstein’s monster, Darth Vader and Norman Bates, Lecter and Bill seem to embody two essential characteristics: they act precisely according to their nature, and they are also deeply misunderstood. Demme manages to bring this twofold formula to life without unhealthily sympathizing with the evil; he provides the needed context for the audience’s eyes that prevents them from seeing the world in the black and white, good guy and bad guy manner to which we are often prone.
It’s fitting, then, that the finale to the movie involves a second descent, even culminating in a tension-filled POV shot of Bill staring longingly, nearly lovingly, upon a terrified Clarice in his dungeon of horrors. From beginning to end, our eyes are forced into seeing it all, just as Clarice’s eyes are, and the sountrack and brilliant image-making (who can forget the stitching together of human skin, the extracting of some foreign cocoon, or Lecter’s human mask) imprint this film onto the psyche long after the closing credits roll. Unnerving without becoming grotesque, chilling without relying on juvenile tricks, and memorable without being obvious, “Silence” lives up to its now 30 year old billing, a must-see nightmare that one can hardly wake up from.
The Leavitt Lens 