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The Silence of the Lambs (1991) (Patreon)

Published:
2021-12-23 01:15:09
Imported:
2023-12
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Content

My patrons are sadistic. Who would have thought a movie with LAMB in the title would make my skin crawl off. I wasn't sure about this one, but dang you guys voted to start the year off with a bang. I'm not sure whether I should thank you or be terribly angry. This movie caught me off guard and I tried so hard to be prepared for its disturbing nature. Ok, I'll settle on thankfulness! Grateful for you!

Files

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Full Length Reaction

Thank you for supporting me on Patreon. *Full lengths are posted in a watch along style format so you will need your own copy of the episode / movie to watch along. Get the movie: https://amzn.to/3pjxKLx

Comments

Michael Nolan

Umm, what? I did the watchalong with Amazon Prime and typed out a long message about it in the early morning of the 23rd but I guess I forgot to post it? Sheesh, I am really that dumb. Basically I pointed out the three real life killers that Buffalo Bill was based on, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy and Gary Heidnik. I noted that Jodie Foster is a physically small person, and as you pointed out is often surrounded by very large men. I noted that the director often filmed shots from Agent Starling's POV, which made it creepily clear how often men just stare at her. I even told the embarrassing anecdote about the first time I watched this, in 1992. I was with a bunch of teenaged guys watching the movie on VHS. When Lecter revealed that it was him in the ambulance, wearing Sergeant Pembry's face, I literally screamed like a little child.

casualnerdreactions
>>74330165

Oh wow! Mixing the three killers worked very well. I love that they visually incorporated her height instead of disguising it. It was definitely a shocking moment. If I hadn’t made a mental note that his face was covered up and then had the scene from the office where Dwight did that to a mannequin… well, my reaction would have probably been about the same, but without the split second before realization.

Knights Who Say Sledge

This was very enjoyable to watch along in the passenger seat, if you will, with you - thank you. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this flick, but I will try to keep it brief-ish. I can still remember the view from my seat in the theatre watching this for the first time on the big screen as a teenager. It was unlike anything I'd seen before. It shook me but also captivated and surprised me and changed cinema and thriller/horror films and procedural TV shows forever after. We got at least 20 years of imitators after this movie (the really only noteworthy one being "Se7en" which - while far darker, far more graphic, and perhaps more implausible is still a really impactful and worthwhile film). The film stuck with me - haunted me - and I saw it in cinemas maybe 2 or 3 more times. The movie turned Anthony Hopkins (not yet then a Sir) from a British actor most familiar to fans of the English stage into an internationally recognized name and gave Jodi Foster her second Oscar. Director Jonathan Demme would go on to tremendous success with Philadelphia right after this but, then, arguably never make a noteworthy movie again after that, sadly. Before this he had made a handful of interesting films totally unlike this such as Married to the Mob, Something Wild, and Swing Shift (which is a movie I watched obsessively as a kid despite it really not being at all a kid's film). The Silence of the Lambs begat several other direct sequels and prequels but none of them - besides the TV show Hannibal (which was sadly cut short by a season) - is really worth anyone's time at all. Looking back at the movie now, seeing as we live in a media world very much shaped by the film, it occurs to me it may not look as landscape changing as it was, but I have to say the movie was a bolt out of the blue at the time. The first film since probably Hitchcock's Psycho (which similarly birthed decades of imitators and homages) to sit so fully in the space between thriller and horror and electrify and terrorize those who viewed it in such a culturally transformative manner. There are many elements worth discussing in the film, but the one that strikes me the most now is how stunning it is that director Jonathan Demme really understood how interlinked the casually predatory "socially acceptable" behavior of men towards women in our society is with the violently predatory behavior of men who kill women in our society. I think it's taken for granted now that when a woman goes missing that we first think to look at the husband or boyfriend as the likeliest cause of her disappearance or death - but society was not so casually savvy to that tragic pattern back in the early 90s. And as you and other viewers have pointed out, the director really makes a point of showing us how men treat Agent Starling in the movie in a way that indicates she is navigating lowkey predatory gazes in a manner not fully dissimilar from how the killer looks upon women. I'm not meaning to say that Demme or I are fully equating killing with the somewhat inappropriate actions of some of the men in the film towards Clarice, but there is a overlap in the social views that give space for "boys being boys" when men engage in unwanted and unprofessional commentary with women and the culture of violence towards women. I mention it here because it strikes me as being an observation that was ahead of the culture of the time period when the film came out. That's a big topic to unpack and I cannot do it justice here, but it's one of the elements of the film that stands out to me now in ways that it did not at the time of release and strikes me as one of the features that makes the movie shockingly pertinent and resonant still. Thank you again for watching this and sharing your viewing with us.

casualnerdreactions
>>74826946

You made a lot of really great points here. I didn't realize how influential this film really was. I think even the parts that bored me a bit (specifically the investigative portion where they travel as a team) only did so because I've seen so many procedural and such investigations before. The film does go out of its way to show the way most men treat Clarice. While not extreme as the actions of the killer it does speak to a similar predatory mindset, just a somewhat acceptable version of it. I mean how often has dating been compared to a hunt. Very interesting to think about and I appreciate your thoughts.