THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: You’re Not More Than One Generation From Poor White Trash, Are You?

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – Directed by Jonathan Demme – Starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine, Anthony Heald, Brooke Smith, Frankie Faison, Tracey Walter, Charles Napier, Roger Corman, Daniel von Bargen, and Chris Isaak.

When you take a look at a heralded movie like THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS 21 years after its release, the only way you’re going to bring something new to the table is if you offer a dramatic reassessment of the film. Like if I said, “You know, in hindsight, LAMBS is good, but it’s not that good. There’s some structural issues and the acting isn’t all that great and did it really deserve to win the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay? No. No, it didn’t.”

Well, I’m not going to say that. Jonathan Demme’s THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is an extraordinarily good movie, representing the absolute best in dramatic storytelling. LAMBS is every bit as brilliant now as it was back in 1991, and while I generally don’t give a flip about awards, if we’re going to have them, it’s films like LAMBS that deserve to be recognized.

The FBI is after a serial killer nicknamed “Buffalo Bill” (Ted Levine), who likes to kidnap women and then skin them before dumping the body in the river, and to assist in the investigation, Agent Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) recruits trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to interview imprisoned serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to see if he can help with the investigation. It’s a bit more complicated than that as Crawford doesn’t tell Starling exactly why he’s sending her in to interview Lecter because he doesn’t want Lecter to be able to pull that information from her brain. Lecter is, of course, the smartest guy in the movie, but it’s not like everyone else is a big dummy, and one of the joys in watching LAMBS is how smart people manipulate other smart people in order to attempt to get what they want.

For all of the much-deserved praised heaped on Hopkins and Lecter, Foster and Starling are every bit as fantastic. Starling is one of the most wonderfully well-rounded characters you’ll find, and just like Lecter, she is full of contradictions. Still a trainee, Starling has limited field experience and while she’s brave, she’s also perfectly frightened at times. When we see her freak out after a patient in the psych ward tosses his ejaculate at her face and then cry when she gets to her car, it makes the scenes where she forces her way into a storage shed stronger. Foster’s Starling proves you can be a strong, independent woman and still be less than perfect and afraid.

LAMBS employs a rather unique double narrative strategy as the Lecter and Buffalo Bill plots only brush up against one another; Starling has one plot going with the hunt for Bill and another going with her developing relationship with Lecter. Crawford wants Bill’s insight, but it’s not like he’s bringing Lecter in to for a Marvel Team-Up. Crawford and Lecter have an antagonistic relationship, so the FBI man uses the trainee to be his go-between. The real story of LAMBS is the rise of Clarice Starling, but it’s not the kind of arc where she rises from nothing to everything, but rather where she simply proves she can play her part and help solve the case.

I really dig that about LAMBS. Demme and his team see no need to push things to artificially-elevated levels in LAMBS. This is a simple story about a manhunt for a kidnapped girl who’s got a few days to live before her kidnapper kills her. There’s a natural urgency to the film that doesn’t need fancy camera tricks or editing to ratchet up the intensity of the situation. Combine this with the almost diversionary chats between Lecter and Starling and LAMBS is actually a very enjoyable film about a very horrible situation.

It’s the interviews between Lecter and Starling that truly make LAMBS a special film. Lecter revels in the discussion, which allows him to use his considerable brain power to slice apart people psychologically. The scripts best moments are when Starling is trying to get answers from Lecter about Bill and Lecter is trying to dig into Starling’s past. It’s a masterful set-up and execution as Lecter is always in control, even when he’s trapped behind bars and Starling is struggling to swim even when she can barely keep her head above water. Lecter has the freedom of knowing what he’s capable of doing, and Starling is hampered by not knowing.

Lecter digs into Starling’s past in a manner that’s psychologically aggressive, using fear and shame to dig the truth out of her. He mocks her accent, mocks her attire, questions her relationship with Crawford, and pushes her to dredge up all the worst aspects of her life. Lecter’s psychological deconstruction of Starling is the best part of the movie and largely relegates the manhunt to the background. Even during the latter stages of the film, after Lecter has escaped from containment and all-but-disappeared from the movie, his presence resonates.

As Starling gets information piecemealed out to her by Lecter, the investigation continues on its way. They realize Bill keeps the women he kidnaps alive for three days so he can starve them out a bit. He wants their skin to make himself a new flesh suit because he’s f*cking crazy.

LAMBS works by highlighting one-on-one interpersonal relationships: Starling and Lecter, Starling and Crawford, Lecter and Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald), and Bill and his latest kidnapped victim, Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith). While there are other characters in the film, it’s these four relationships that continually spin through the movie. It’s Bill who gets the best line in the movie, too. For all the verbal goodness that comes out of Lecter’s mouth, it’s Bill’s, “Put the f*cking lotion in the basket!” exclamation that I always feel like quoting for days afterward. (Not that I can; it doesn’t really work when you’re stuck in an administrative meeting to tell the idiot at the other end of the table to shut up and put the f*cking lotion in the basket. You can think it, but you can’t say it.)

Ted Levine’s performance as Bill is incredibly memorable for its outlandishness, just as Glenn’s performance as Crawford is memorable for its restraint. There’s a whole host of known actors in smaller roles peppered throughout LAMBS, too: Frankie Faison as Barney, a worker at the original hospital that holds Lecter captive; Charles Napier as a cop that Lecter murders; Roger Corman as an FBI director that gives Crawford a stern talking to; and Daniel von Bargen and Chris Isaak as members of the police team that attempts (and fails) to keep an escaped Lecter contained.

In the end, though, this is Jodie Foster’s movie. Tough and vulnerable, assured and frightened, Foster gives the performance of her career as Clarice Starling. As great as Hopkins is (and this is the performance of his career, too), it’s Foster that carries LAMBS. We might be fascinated by the monster, but it’s the protagonist who takes us home.

I wonder if THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS’ legacy hasn’t been a tad tarnished in some people’s eyes by all the craptacular sequels that followed. To this day, it’s the non-Hopkins film, Michael Mann’s Manhunter with Brian Cox as Hannibal “Lektor,” that comes closest to matching LAMBS’ brilliance. Bad sequels can’t really tarnish an original film, of course, just our perceptions of that film. If that’s happened to you with LAMBS, just go ahead and pop it in the DVD player. It won’t take long for you to remember its cinematic greatness.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is, quite simply, an American masterpiece.

SILVERADO: I Got There Just Short of Too Late

Silverado (1985) – Directed by Lawrence Kasdan – Starring Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Kevin Costner, Brian Dennehy, Linda Hunt, Jeff Goldblum, Rosanna Arquette, John Cleese, Ray Baker, Lynn Whitfield, and Jeff Fahey.

Lawrence Kasdan’s SILVERADO is determined to be both a classic Western and a non-traditional Western. The film contains plenty of gun fights, scoundrels, anti-heroes, shifty locals, revenge, testosterone, big shots of open spaces, and clustered shots of a small town built in the mud and out of wood, but it also steadfastly refuses to give us a traditional tough guy and it refuses to have any of the violence lead to any actual consequence.

Kasdan’s script is a technically proficient work that’s probably not taught in too many film schools anymore, but should be because everything in SILVERADO is here for a reason, a pretty solid achievement for a film that clocks in at over 2 hours. Kasdan also masterfully “tricks” you into his script. In the opening half hour where he introduces the main characters, Kasdan imbues SILVERADO with a whimsical energy (at least, whimsical for a Western, at least.) Paden (Kevin Kline) has a relaxed approach to life; left for dead in the middle of the desert by scoundrels who took his horse and possessions, leaving him with only his one-piece red undergarments, Paden has simply decided to lay in the sun and wait for the end.

Emmett (Scott Glenn) is established in the film’s firs scene as the traditional Western bad-ass, killing a group of men who’ve come to kill him, but the competently shot action scene where Emmett stays inside his shack and kills people through the walls and ceiling can’t compete with the image of Paden lying peacefully in the sand, and then his first words to Emmett, hoarsely whispered from his prone position: “Pleased to meet you.” Kline is so good as Paden that I’m willing to forgive his role in the mostly dreadful Wild Wild West.

When Paden and Emmett had first come to Turley, Paden sees the man who stole his horse and he goes into the nearest store to buy a gun to get the horse back. He takes the nicest gun out of the case but the only money he has is the single coin piece Emmett gave him to help out with some clothes, so he ends up leaving the store with the crummiest gun in the case. He moves to the middle of the street, still wearing only those red overall undies, putting bullets in the creaky gun as the horse thief rides down on him, shooting at Paden without success. One of the bullets goes through the undies right at the crotch, the thermals hanging low enough to not damage anything hanging. Paden finally gets his bullet in and shoots the man dead.

After Paden kills the guy, the scene cuts to him getting happily licked in the face by his horse. The army officer investigating the incident asks Paden why he should take his word that the horse is Paden’s.

“Can’t you see this horse loves?” Paden asks.

“I had a woman do that to me once,” the officer replies back, “but that didn’t make her my wife.”

The scene wonderfully blends violence with humor, presenting scene as amusing as it is violent, which seems to portend that SILVERADO is going to be more pleasant than anything else, with a West that’s clearly created for a Hollywood production.

This scene also introduces one of the film’s antagonists in Cobb (Brian Dennehy), a rough older guy in whose gang Paden used to ride. Dennehy gives the best performance in a film full of great performances; every scene he’s in he owns and the back-and-forth between him and Kline is a pure treat to watch, Cobb’s grinning wickedness perfectly countering with Paden’s outer calm.

Kline plays Paden as a perfectly affable guy, but though the exterior is cool, he’s wary of his insides burning too bright. He has a code, but it’s not the traditional tough guy code you might expect to find in a Western. Instead, when Emmett and Paden ride into the town of Turley, finding Emmett’s manchild-like brother Jake (Kevin Costner) arrested for murder and set to hang. Emmett tells Paden he’s going to break Jake out of jail and Paden tells Emmett somberly that he’s going to have to deal himself out. He doesn’t get too deep into why, but he Paden and Emmett head into a saloon, Paden sees the guy who stole his hat, and another thief gets gunned down by the calm Paden.

With Paden now in jail alongside Jake, he decides to help him escape.

Funny the things jail can do to a man.

Turley also contains another of Kasdan’s “tricks” into getting you to think SILVERADO is just going to be an enjoyable Western – John Cleese is the sheriff. Now, Cleese doesn’t do anything silly. In fact, he’s downright no nonsense. Paden and Emmett are having lunch at a saloon when Mal (Danny Glover) comes in and asks for a drink. This becomes a big deal because Danny Glover is black, which means Mal is black, which means there’s plenty of white folk that don’t take too kindly to his kind being around. The saloon keeper wants him gone, some local cowboys try to rough him up. Paden and Emmett just sit there and watch – it’s not their fight. That’s not to say they’re not moved by what’s going on, as Paden mentions to Emmett (apparently lost in his dinner plate but actually completely aware of what’s going on around him) that the situation seems downright unfair. Emmett wants to know, “Unfair to who?”

Showing that a dude on the frontier is a cool guy because he’s nice to a non-white is a a trope as old as white people have been on the American frontier, of course, and Paden and Emmett prove their progressiveness by taking Mal’s side (the truthful side) when Sheriff John Cleese shows up to figure out what’s what. Sheriff Langston lets Mal go but tells him to get out of town, then sits down at Emmett and Paden’s table, helps himself to some of their bread, and proceeds to interrogate them as to why they’re in town. “Just meeting a guy,” Emmett tells him, and describes his brother.

“I know where he is,” Langston tells him, and then we’re off to the jail.

Jake and Paden escape with some help from Emmett and the threw cowboys ride hard out of town, Langston and his posse hard on their trail. When the posse closes in, a gunshot is heard and bullets start hitting things near Langston. One of the deputies tells the sheriff they’re lucky this shooter is such a bad shot, but Langston calls him an idiot and says, “He’s hit everything he’s aimed at.” The shooter is Mal, paying Paden and Emmett back, and when he knocks Langston’s hat off his head, the sheriff remarks that, “Today, my jurisdiction ends right here.”

That moment is the demarcation point in the movie. Having suitably introduced his four heroes, and created a bond between them, Kasdan’s picture turns much more serious. SILVERADO doesn’t get glumly serious like Kasdan’s later Western, Wyatt Earp (which seems determined to have absolutely no fun), but the men ride to Silverado (helping a caravan along the way, in part so Paden can hit on Rosanna Arquette) and settle into their lives.

For Mal, it’s a visit to his parent’s homestead, where he finds the main building nearly burned to the ground and hordes of cattle grazing on the land. His parents are nowhere in sight, but later that night his father returns and tells him he’s being run off the land by the cattle rancher Ethan McKendrick (Ray Baker). After Mal scares off two of McKendrick’s thugs, they return the next day with more men and kill Mal’s dad.

For Emmett and Jake, it’s reconnecting with their sister’s family, but there’s pre-existing bad blood with McKendrick. Emmett went to jail for killing McKendrick’s father in self-defense years earlier, and while McKendrick says that’s in the past, he wouldn’t make a very good antagonist if that were true. McKendrick sends his men after Emmett and Jake, kidnapping their nephew in the process. Emmett only survives the ambush thanks to the intervention of Mal. The travelling companions have now been joined as allies against McKendrick. With Emmett to hurt to travel, Mal goes to town for him, but he’s betrayed by “Slick” Stanhope (Jeff Goldblum), a gambler who’s involved with Mal’s sister (Lynn Whitfield), and Cobb’s men get the jump on him.

Cobb is the would-be bigshot of Silverado, as he’s both the sheriff of the town and the owner of the main saloon. He hires Paden to help run the place, and uses Paden’s affection for Stella (Linda Hunt), the other co-manager of the place to keep Paden out of the conflict that’s coming between McKendrick and Emmett, Jake, and Mal. Paden agrees, but Stella won’t have it, and Paden asserts himself back into the fray.

What follows is a raid by Mal, Paden, and Emmett (Jake has been kidnapped by the McKendricks) on the McKendrick compound, and then a big gunfight in town that sees the four men emerge victorious and virtually unscathed. The film’s final action piece sees a showdown between Paden and Cobb that ends with Paden victorious.

If there’s a complaint about SILVERADO it’s this final sequence that sees all the good guys end up happy and alive, but then you realize that despite the serious themes since our protagonists left Turley, SILVERADO was never really meant to be a realistic Western as much as it’s meant to be a new kind of Hollywood Western, built on the classic model but infused with contemporary sensibilities. Westerns were out of style when Kasdan made SILVERADO, and so it’s a wise decision to play it relatively safe and give people a happy ending. That’s not to say SILVERADO is simplistic, because it’s not. Kasdan gives you plenty of stuff to chew on – far, far too much to get into here, but know this if you haven’t seen the movie – SILVERADO is a professional movie made by smart people and starring fantastic actors. Brian Dennehy gives the performance of his career, Kevin Kline gives one of his best, and the rest of the all-star cast is right there with him.

SILVERADO is one of those films that always seems to get overlooked or fails to get mentioned alongside the great Westerns, and while I certainly wouldn’t put it in the rarefied air category of Once Upon a Time in the West and Unforgiven, I wouldn’t put it all that far behind them, either. SILVERADO is an immensely satisfying and enjoyable film.

SUCKER PUNCH: 100 Minutes of Slightly Misogynist Fetish, 10 Minutes of Trying to Make You Feel Bad About It

Sucker Punch (Theatrical Cut, 2011) – Directed by Zach Snyder – Starring Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Jamie Chung, Vanessa Hudgens, Carla Gugino, Oscar Isaac, Scott Glenn, and John Hamm.

Other than Thor, Captain America, and Green Lantern, there’s probably not a single film I wanted to be good this year as much as SUCKER PUNCH. I’m a big Zach Snyder fan and love that he has such a unique cinematic vision. I like the idea that a Zach Snyder film looks like a Zach Snyder film and not like a By Anyone Else film.

I gave the film all the positive mojo I could muster: I didn’t watch it until I was ready to watch it, and it would be the first movie I’d watch on my new flatscreen, and I’m exactly the kind of idiot who thinks it matter what the first movie you watch on a new TV is, like it will somehow make your set all the cooler to start with Fellowship of the Ring instead of Superman Returns. (You think I’m kidding? I spent at least a half hour today trying to figure out what my first Blu-Ray purchase was going to be to christen the new Blu-Ray player. I ended up getting nothing.)

All of the good vibes were for not, however, as SUCKER PUNCH is something of a trainwreck of a movie. It’s neither as smart as it thinks it is, nor as visually stunning, thanks to Snyder’s decision to soak his film in dreary shades of grey and green.

The high concept is Wizard of Oz meets Brazil, as we get one of those “story within a story” movies. Which is fine. Unfortunately, much like the disappointing Inception, delving into one fantasy world isn’t enough, and we get more watered-down “fantasy within a fantasy” sequences, which inevitably comes across as a lack of faith in the original presentation of the story.

The three-layered world of SUCKER PUNCH operates like this:

1. THE REAL WORLD – This is the world where Baby Doll is institutionalized by her sexually and physically abusive stepfather into a mental asylum. The evil stepdad pays off Blue (an orderly) to forge some documents to have Baby Doll lobotomized.

2. THE WAKING FANTASY – This is the world Baby Doll creates to get through every day drudgery of life in the asylum. In this world, they are not in a nut house, but a brothel, run by Blue, who has become a mobster in this world. Doll and her fellow inmates are exotic dancers who are used as sexual playthings by Blue and his clients, and she convinces them she has a plan to escape so they can all leave this world behind. We enter this level when we see the Doctor about to lobotomize Baby Doll.

It can be a bit confusing because we see Baby Doll admitted, told the Doctor is coming within a week, and then immediately the Doctor is standing over her, ready to turn off her brain. Only then do we enter the Waking Fantasy, but what we see is a flashback of the time between her admittance and her lobotomy.

I think this is a huge mistake on Snyder’s part, because it clearly signals to us that everything we’re going to see is a fantasy moving forward. I’m not one of those people who say that stories within a story don’t count, but it robs us of the illusion (if we would have bought it anyway) and it robs the film of the titular “sucker punch.” When Hamm re-emerges at the end of the film, it’s like, “No kidding.”

3. THE SET-PIECE FANTASY – This is the deepest fantasy level. Baby Doll’s plan involves stealing four objects from around the brothel (I’m going to describe the locations/characters based on the reality level we’re in), which the others will steal while she dances to distract everyone’s attention. (In the real world, I believe these are the moments when Baby Doll is being sexually abused by the people around the asylum.) Apparently thinking it’s not enough to watch the dancers steal actual objects from the brothel instead of mental patients from an asylum, Snyder creates these huge action pieces that take place in faraway, exotic locations: a steampunk World War I trench battle, battling orcs in order to cut some crystals out of a dragon’s throat, fighting mechanical guards on a train, and feudal Japan to fight giants.

The set pieces are big, dramatic, and right in Snyder’s wheelhouse. As individual pieces they work quite well, but in the context of the film it divorces us another step from the reality of what these women are going through.

The obvious question is why? What’s gained by this other than seeing the women in fetish wear battling CGI enemies?

Did I just answer that question with the question?

This is the level that gets Snyder in trouble, because it’s at this level of reality that he most strongly fetishizes the violence and sexuality of the women, turning them into exaggerated dolls, all dressed up with plenty of men to kill. Of course, when you realize what’s going on (one level back Baby Doll is doing an exotic dance for the crowd, and one level back from that she’s likely being raped), it adds a level of discomfort to the pleasure of watching it unfold. This fetishized world seems created specifically for us – we get to watch hot women kicking ass – but inside the film this is the world Baby Doll creates. It’s a complex idea – the fetishized sexy killer being created by the abused woman and served up for our enjoyment.

Are we supposed to feel bad about it? Are we supposed to enjoy it? It just makes me feel uncomfortable, and the film’s ultimate, supposed sucker punch – that all of this is a fantasy is both completely obvious and completely self-serving on Snyder’s part.

SUCKER PUNCH would have been far more effective playing it straight, with no obvious hint that this is all Baby Doll’s fantastical representation of reality, in which Baby Doll and the others escape and then have to work their way through all of these set pieces on some grand quest in order to rescue one of their comrades left behind, and then delivering the Brazil-esque sucker punch at the end of the film. Or it would have been better more overtly stepping in between reality levels so we can see the immediate cause and effect of reality on the fantasies and vice versa.

As constructed in its theatrical release, however, SUCKER PUNCH feels like a film hiding its story from us rather than drawing us into its world. I hear there’s a director’s cut either out or coming out, and I hope that in the construction of that extended cut that we get more narrative and less fetish. I don’t have anything against fetish, but when a film that wants to be this smart (and definitely has some smart, intriguing concepts) doles out fetish and obfuscates the ugly truth at the core of the film, I get more annoyed than impresssed.

And yet, even after watching it and not liking it, I can feel the pull of Snyder’s style working on my brain. I’m already convincing myself it wasn’t as bad as I thought, that there’s more going on than I’m giving the film credit for, that it delivers its message in a more effective manner, that the set pieces are so gorgeous and awesome that they overcome the narrative flaws.

Guaranteed, by the time I see that director’s cut in the store, I’ll have convinced myself to buy it and give it another shot.