About The Silence

Post 840:

I needed something light and frothy to watch in what is proving to be the most trying, dehumanizing and perilous time in my life. There’s nothing like opening Netflix and having just the thing you need staring you in the face.

I couldn’t sleep last night, seriously. Too much crap going on. And thus, The Silence of the Lambs. If you like expertly constructed thrillers with just a little bit of psychotic whimsy and way too many POV camera takes from Jonathan Demme (I think it was a creepy obsession of his), then this is the film for you.

We’ve all seen it, but why is it so good? The obvious answer is Hannibal, and it’s also the right answer. I mean, because he’s so horrifically fun we had to endure one decent prequel, another movie that sucked, probably another couple movies that sucked that I can’t think of, and the show, which is shot beautifully and acted well but has more self-congratulatory slow motion and reused scenes than anything ever made in the history of things.

Ah, the price of success.

So we all know about Hannibal, but I want to talk about Jodie Foster’s character, more specifically, how we get to know her character.

This is the real genius of the film, and it’s so obvious I overlook it. We don’t need tedious exposition to find out about her past nor do we need tired flashbacks to see deeply into her psyche and identify with her. We find out about her life because it frigging makes sense in the story that we find out. She’s our heroine, but we know all the fears and hopes she brings to the table because of her chin-wagging sessions with Hannibal. He gets his rocks off on peering into a person’s soul; because he looks under the hood, we do as well.

You don’t even realize it’s happening. Frigging love it. The performances are grand, but it’s clever as hell and pulled off smooth. I hardly see a wrinkle. Maybe it’s hacky to use a therapist to find out about a character now, but I don’t feel like it was when this film came out. Besides, this is more than just having someone sit on the couch and tell their boring crap about not enough hugs. (Though hugs are important. Just saying.)

Clarice isn’t just an FBI agent. She’s courageous and scared and resourceful and focused. How do I know? Oh yeah, it was in the movie. I just forgot about how I found out because it doesn’t suck.

Nothing like clever character building that works in perfect harmony with the plot. That’s the crap that makes the nerd in me hap-hap-happy.

So well done from thirty years in the future. Still, I think to really know Clarice, it would’ve been better to do like a kick-ass montage of her training at the academy, explosions, her like taking out some big dude that was like making fun of her and giving a thumbs-up to her satisfied instructors looking on in the rain with like a toothy smile. (I’m thinking Johnny Utah from Point Break-ish)

But the way they did it works too.

Cheers and see you after.