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.

WILD WILD WEST: Never Drum on a White Lady’s Boobies at a Big Redneck Dance

Wild Wild West (1999) – Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld – Starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Salma Hayek, Kenneth Branagh, M. Emmett Walsh, Bai Ling, and Ted Levine.

Sometimes a really talented and eclectic cast comes together and makes something magical.

This is not one of those times.

Oh, was that an obvious, easy, and incredibly lame attempt at humor? Well, imagine that for 105 minutes and you’ve got WILD WILD WEST, a film with lots of talent and not much to admire. Here’s what I like: Kevin Kline as President Grant. Here’s what I don’t like: almost everything else.

This is not to say that WILD WILD WEST isn’t worth a watch, because the effects are nice, the steampunk look is kinda cool, it’s paced exceedingly well, and … um, well, you get to see half of Salma Hayek’s ass. WILD WILD WEST almost works as a sort of bright, stupid, exaggerated cartoon, but it fails even in that regard because as evil as Dr. Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh) is, it gets a little old listening to Jim West (Will Smith) make crack after crack about Loveless missing his legs and Loveless making racial crack after racial crack at West’s expense. The jokes just aren’t that good, so it’s like listening to two idiots on the playground picking the most obvious target of their opponent and hitting it repeatedly.

The biggest problem with WEST, however, is that there is almost zero chemistry between Smith and Kevin Kline – at least, when Kevin Kline is playing Artemus Gordon instead of the President. Their team-up is just too manufactured – West is the headstrong, shoot first gunslinger and Gordon is the contemplative, shoot never scientist – and Smith and Kline just don’t compliment each other at all. It’s clear that Sonnenfeld is trying to replicate his Men in Black success by having Will Smith’s personality team up with a straight-laced white guy, but where the hardness of Tommy Lee Jones made for an appropriate foil for Smith, Kevin Kline’s comedic dopiness doesn’t.

Forget that nothing here feels like a Western, nothing here feels like it belongs together. Smith and Kline never get on the same page, and their silly, childish bickering throughout the film gets old before it even gets going.

It’s probably unfair to blame one of them over the other, but the problem is Smith’s Jim West. While there are plenty of problems with the conception of Kline’s Artemus Gordon, at least that character is consistent through the film. Smith’s West, on the other hand, is here and there, shifting between sullenness at the memory of his parents murder and making cheap jokes at someone else’s expense. Because the film isn’t all that interested in being serious, the treatment of West’s parents feels like it’s been shoehorned into the movie just because someone thought, “Hey, we need to have a serious back story.”

“Why?”

“Um … because we did that in Men in Black?”

The film would’ve been better without it, because the introduction of this story angle – that Loveless was responsible for the murder of an entire freed black town, including West’s parents – makes this a revenge flick, which puts that subplot at odds with the generally comedic presentation of the rest of the film.

Unfortunately for Smith (and us), a film like this needs a rock-solid center for the zaniness of the rest of the film to work against. Smith has an incredibly likable and personable persona, but the film would’ve been better toning Smith’s charm down and being the straight man to all of Sonnenfeld’s gags. Instead, Smith and Sonnenfeld conspire to have Jim West be the super-cool, self-contained gunslinger in one scene and the “I can’t believe this is happening!” screamer in the next. Compare that to Kline’s take on President Grant, who stoically stands there, facing down Loveless’ giant steampunk spider while everyone else runs away screaming. With Smith’s West, there’s just too much performance in the performance, and if he could have toned down his act, and made us believe in this character’s quest for revenge …

Well, maybe the studio thought that if you’re going to hire Will Smith, you might as well get Will Smith to do all the things that make people pay to see a Will Smith movie.

It’s a shame because Smith is obviously a talented, if non-risk-taking, performer.

None of this is to suggest that the fault for this entire movie lays at Smith’s feet. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no chemistry at all between Smith and Kline, and the awful script couldn’t have inspired them to give much of a crap beyond their professionalism. There’s a lot of infantile boob jokes (including the title of this review, which is one of the funnier lines in the film), including a numbing scene where they play a game of “touch my breast” with the fake boobs Gordon has made for his women’s costume.

Because he’s a master of disguise. He’s terrible at it, but I suppose that’s supposed to be funny.

Salma Hayek is a bright spot playing Rita, who cons the two guys into helping her by playing the damsel in distress. She tells them she wants to find her father, but it’s really her husband she’s after, and her eye-batting, exaggerated performance generally works to pit the two guys against each other. But it’s not nearly enough. Kenneth Branagh tries, too, in a truly ridiculous role that he nonetheless commits to playing to the nth degree, and it looks like he’s enjoying a chance to ham it up in what he realizes is a silly role in a silly movie.

Looking back at when WILD WILD WEST was released, I think part of the intensity of the negative reaction was that in 1999 it didn’t seem like Smith could do anything wrong, but then he releases a bad movie and a bad theme song, and it all felt a little too calculated. In hindsight, WILD WILD WEST is not a good film (and it’s especially not a good western as it feels about as “western” as Star Trek‘s alien planets feel alien – like it was all done on a sound stage), but it’s not the worst movie ever made, nor the worst movie any of the main actors associated with the film ever made. It’s just a bad film, and a misstep in Smith’s career. Obviously, the guy’s done okay for himself since then so he probably learned some lesson from making a bad movie, but I wish the lesson learned had got him to actually accept roles like Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and stop taking roles like Hitch.

Because Hitch really, really blows.

I need to take back the crack I made at WEST during my Jonah Hex review, which I titled, “Less Sucky than Wild Wild West, More Sucky Than Everything Else.” It’s more like a suckiness tie, really. My bad!

At least WILD WILD WEST has Ted Levine in it, so at the very least you can make the film better by adding, “Put the f*cking lotion in the basket!” or “Monk!” after every sentence he utters.