CONTENT WARNING. Also just a very long article.
I’ve gone round and round about writing this article, because who wants to read a review of a movie that’s 32 years old? But then I remembered that we’re still writing articles about books that were written hundreds of years ago, so I feel a little better.
I’ve concluded that this is a take-it-or-leave-it blog; I don’t know how people will feel about it, but I’m fascinated and full of thoughts, and that means I need to write. If horror isn’t your cup of tea, feel free to skip this one.
A quick caveat: I speak from the perspective of having seen only this movie and not the prequels or sequel, and I have not read the books but do have some awareness of what happens in them. I may pose questions that have been answered in either of the above, and I want to lay out my thoughts before I delve any further.
My Approach
I’ll start by answering the resounding question posited by my friends and family, who all know that I’m a lightweight when it comes to horror: Why would you do that to yourself?
They’re right that I generally don’t watch or read horror. And even my newly discovered fascinations with true crime and death care have not really changed that.
So how did I end up watching this movie one sunny Saturday afternoon?
In short, I was looking for a couple of cute cartoons and we didn’t have them. When I returned to the home screen, by some sinister workings, the algorithm demons threw The Silence of the Lambs on the list of suggestions.
I’d already been tossing around the idea of watching it sometime because it’s iconic and everyone who has seen it seems deeply affected by it. What’s more, it seemed to be something more than just horror; you don’t scare the crap out of somebody and still find them talking about it thirty years later, even if you got them really good. They’re on to their next rush long before then. So it seemed that some deeper nerve was touched, and I wanted to find out what it was.
However, I remembered my status as a horror lightweight and did some digging. I looked on those parent websites, where they tell you the darkest elements in a movie so you know whether to let your kids go see it. If I learned what I might see without giving too much of the plot away, I might be less affected.
Then I stopped and did some thinking. This movie had come out in the ‘90s, which meant a girl who was raised on cop shows that show full autopsies could probably at least handle the level of gore they would show. I knew some of the iconic lines (did I mention people still can’t shut up about this movie?) and the last scene. What was more, I knew the true story of Ed Gein, the serial killer on whom Buffalo Bill was based, from the true crime podcasts I listen to, and for some reason, I felt like knowing the reality made the fiction easier to take.
The one thing I knew I wasn’t fully prepared for and I truly believe nothing fully prepares you for was Anthony Hopkins’ performance. That was by far the most disturbing element, and no amount of ‘90s guardrails can shield you from it.
Thus, in no particular order, here are my thoughts and findings.
Meeting Dr. Lecter
What a fascinating character! It’s no wonder that nobody can forget Anthony Hopkins’ performance, nor that people have spent the last few decades trying to recapture the sensation that this movie produced. From what I gather, none have succeeded. I suspect part of the reason is that the secret sauce was a combination of Hopkins and Jodie Foster, not one or the other or just the concept, but I digress.
I think the biggest source of cognitive dissonance (the discomfort we feel when our deeply-held beliefs are challenged) we feel from this character is his strange combination of high intelligence, courtesy, and wit with the atrocities he’s committed and the callousness with which he seems to commit them, especially against people who have done nothing to deserve it (read: medical personnel minus Chilton). He is such a weird, mind-bending juxtaposition of the gentleman and the barbarian that we can hardly process the two at once, but that’s where he exists, thoroughly and deeply both.
I was especially glad to have skimmed some commentary before I watched the movie, because if I had come to this conclusion on my own with no support, I would’ve lain awake at night questioning my sanity, but I found one writer who stated simply that Dr. Lecter is, in his way, oddly likable. Horrifically twisted, but likable.
The order of events through which we meet this character also contributes to the cognitive dissonance. If you’re a true crime junkie, you know the usual sequence for serial killer stories. They’ll usually either start with a crime and work their way backwards or start at the beginning of the killer’s life and show the progression till its horrific conclusion, and both end with justice being served. We feel discomfort at how a human being could commit such horrible crimes and are set completely against the perpetrator because we know how the story ends.
Not so with Dr. Lecter.
We meet him not as an active case or even as a child who grows up to be a monster, but as someone for whom justice has already been served. He’s serving his time and is in a period of “Now what?” in his life, with nothing to do but terrorize the people who keep him in his reinforced goldfish bowl and toy with the ones who attempt to study him.
We know that he is a serial killer and a few salient details (read: cannibalism), but we don’t know any of the typical stats: his victim profile, body count, modus operandi, etc. We are given the basics we need to know, have its relevance reinforced with the story of what he did to the nurse he attacked while in prison, and move on to meeting him as an inmate.
And from the moment he bids Clarice good morning, it feels completely contrary to our expectations.
He does try to play games with her mind, but that was to be expected. The strangeness comes from his lucidity, his courtesy, and his intelligence. He continuously does things to keep Clarice off balance, such as asking her about what Miggs said to her, but seems, for the moment, to have put aside his violence. But it’s always there, a threat lurking in the background, making his calm even more unnerving.
What’s interesting to me is that Dr. Lecter seems to have a few unspoken rules, and once Clarice learns them, she has no trouble with him: be courteous, don’t assume things, and don’t have a hidden agenda. It seems that Barney, one of his caretakers, has also come to this understanding with him. This is when we see Dr. Lecter return their courtesy, offer help (if only quid pro quo), and even show some form of care for them.
It’s weird: the first thing you know of him is violence, but if you can set that aside and keep calm and courteous, you’re golden. When you start from a place of animosity and then find he’s almost trustworthy when you abide by these rules, the cordiality is astonishing.
It reminds me a little of that quote by Steve Irwin: “Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.” With Dr. Lecter, there is no pretending. He starts at “kill and eat” but occasionally moves to friendship. That’s part of what makes him such a trip.
What Makes Clarice Extraordinary
I was astonished at how much I liked this movie, and primarily because of Clarice. Not only does she handle very relatable sexism and inappropriate treatment in a male-dominated field with simple grace, but she’s beautifully realistic. Her experience was handled better in this movie than those of women in dozens since, and the biggest reason is that while she’s courageous, she’s allowed to be human.
In my lifetime, “strong female character” has come to mean “sexy female character with combat skills who shows no emotions until they further a romance.” Clarice, meanwhile, resembles the brave women I meet in real life, whose courage is the kind that brings powerful entities to their knees with a humility and power they don’t even understand.
For example, when she meets Dr. Lecter, some of his comments clearly hit their mark; she can’t hide her horror. And after Miggs’ disgusting actions, she has to go to her car and cry it out. But she always gets back up and is never put off of the investigation. Further, when she’s being hunted in Buffalo Bill’s basement in complete darkness, she is shaking like a leaf, but continues to keep her head and push forward.
She’s allowed to feel all of her emotions and we’re allowed to sit with her while she processes them, but she never lets them get the better of her. She’s not made of stone, but of something stronger in that it can respond and even yield to circumstances but always spring back. It puts me in mind of what my dad told me about trees in a storm; the ones that don’t move at all during the worst of the storm end up falling later at the slightest breeze, but the ones that bend in the wind without falling survive.
Another key trap Clarice doesn’t fall into is letting her friends fall out of the loop. I’ve noticed this troubling trope even in Disney movies; ever notice how Disney princesses never have female friends to say, “Hey, maybe don’t marry a guy you met once in the forest”? Whenever heroes start to try to do everything alone, they run into trouble. You need other smart people to watch your back.
We don’t even realize she’s been keeping her friends up to date until it’s revealed that the deal she offered Dr. Lecter was a sham and that Crawford was in on it the whole time. This means they’ve been conferring behind the scenes, and even though she broke his primary rule of not revealing anything personal to Dr. Lecter, she’s stayed in contact with Crawford and allowed him to guide her. Even after she’s kicked off of the case, her friend Ardelia helps her work through both the case and her feelings.
The other most powerful aspect of Clarice is her approach to Dr. Lecter. She floored me when she still used his title – of all the things he deserves to have lost! But her courtesy got through to him in a way none of the others could. She didn’t throw his crimes in his face, but still acknowledged them in a pragmatic way when they came up. In short, she allowed him to be both sides of himself at once: the barbarian and the gentleman.
What really captured my imagination was that the very approach she used in her interviews with him was the same one that allowed a fraidy cat like me to watch the movie in the first place. I had to take a step back and analyze everything that happened: “Yes, he just said something really disturbing. Now, why did he do that? What is he trying to do?” When I can spot the method behind the madness, it makes me less afraid and more analytical and able to understand.
I adore the moment when Clarice first breaks through with Dr. Lecter; he tries to scare her by reminding her he ate his victims, and she cocks her head and acknowledges the fact with curiosity and thoughtfulness, rather than revulsion. And for the first time, his eyes soften.
This aspect of her was one that made me want to stand up and cheer. It’s so easy when we encounter the darkest of the criminal world and most twisted of human minds to slam the door and say, “I couldn’t possibly understand.” I wish people would allow themselves to finish that thought: “Because what would that say about me?”
Clarice is able to not only accept the horrific things Dr. Lecter has done, but to set them aside and allow him to be more than that. Behind the smokescreen of fear and cunning unpredictability is just a man, and one with a reputation to keep up. Whenever she gets too calm, he reminds her of what he’s done, first to the census taker and later to Miggs. It’s as if he’s saying, “Don’t forget what I’ve done – I’m a monster, you know.” He wants to keep her off balance and afraid, but it gets progressively harder to do because she’s so determined to understand him if she can, or at least to learn something from him.
She approaches him with an easy kindness and respect and the humility of the scientist, knowing that there is no one who can’t teach her something worth knowing, and nobody is beneath her notice. I believe this quality is what draws psychology nerds to the scariest people and their cases, and what makes everyone else draw back: we resist the very human impulse to run away and follow an even stronger desire to understand. It’s a feeling I know, and what draws me to both psychology and true crime. Whenever something frightens me or captures my imagination, the only relief I find is in learning about what I fear and understanding it.
I wonder how long it had been since someone had shown a genuine desire to understand Dr. Lecter. Let me be clear: he’s not a victim here. He made his bed and now he has to lie in it, but the fact that her honesty, courtesy, and kindness made such an impression on him gives a little taste of what his life must’ve been like in Dr. Chilton’s care.
It’s powerful watching Clarice continue to converse with him until those moments where she gets a glimpse behind the mask. He has committed atrocities, and he leans into that reputation and keeps it up with his unpredictable and indiscriminate violence, and when he can’t physically reach Clarice, he reminds her of his previous actions.
But she continues to press forward, and in the moments that she makes contact in a meaningful way, there is a strange feeling of some subliminal noise falling silent or an unseen torrent giving way to sudden calm. She has breached the smokescreen. Suddenly, he is no longer a monster in a cage, but a man behind a wall of glass – imprisoned, but clearly visible to her in a way he isn’t to anyone else. Reachable.
And though he keeps it close to the vest, her courage floors him.
The Lamb and the Dire Wolf
I love seeing Dr. Lecter’s perspective of Clarice in his drawing of her after she talks to him in person for the last time: a noble-faced young woman with a lamb in her arms and crosses in the background. She looks like a Renaissance painting. I find it interesting that though in her story she was a little girl rescuing a lamb she could barely carry, he draws her as an adult holding a lamb. Of course, he explains this: he sees Catherine, the girl she is trying to rescue, as her new lamb, hopefully the one she can save and stop suffering from her memories of the ones she couldn’t.
But this resounding shepherd imagery reminds me of something I think is lost in later renditions of Clarice: While shepherds do carry lambs in their arms, they also break the jaws of lions who try to harm their flock. Her staunch sense of justice and integrity are what make the audience and even Dr. Lecter respect her.
Therefore, I propose a new image in place of his, one which I don’t have the talent to render myself: Back to back, I would show two versions of Clarice. On the left, a young Clarice carrying a lamb that looks huge in her arms. She’s not dressed warmly enough, but her cheeks are flushed from exertion and she’s got cuts on her arms and leaves in her hair from her flight through the woods. There is weariness and fear but also determination in her eyes, a desperation to do right by this vulnerable creature if she can. Perhaps the lighting is the blinding glare of the flashlight of the sheriff who picked her up.
On the right, I would show a grown Clarice, wearing her gun and FBI jacket. There is a forest in the background, but this time she is seated with her back to the younger version of herself, and lying with its head in her lap is a dire wolf. She will not cease to defend the flock, nor will the wolf be likely to stop hunting them, but their understanding and mutual respect allows them to share a moment of companionship.
Of course I couldn’t let the imagery go after that. I also picture what Clarice looks like in that shepherd-sheep-wolf metaphor through Dr. Lecter’s eyes, and another picture emerges. He’d be the wolf in a cage, momentarily subdued but always ready to strike. Then along comes Clarice, a mere lamb in his eyes. She’s small, innocent, young, and cute, yet she possesses a calm grace and shows courage where even another wolf would skulk away.
He decides to test her, snarling or lunging in the usual way. But though she is frightened, she always comes back, stamping her little hoof and demanding not to be ignored. He is first amused, then taken aback, humbled, and finally comes to admire her. Gradually, the lamb fades away to reveal the lionhearted shepherd she truly is, one who could possibly break his jaw if he were to go after the right lamb.
And all of a sudden, there is a sheep whose life he values, a lamb he’d go to great lengths to protect, and a shepherd he knows better than to underestimate, all in the shape of this young woman.
Dissecting the Disturbing Elements
I want to take a minute to talk about the stuff that gets stuck in your brain and jangles your nerves long after the credits roll. One of the primary ones here is Dr. Lecter’s biting habit.
What is it about a human being biting another human being that’s so uniquely disturbing? It causes less damage than, say, a gunshot, but it’s so much more harrowing in a way. I mulled this over a lot after I watched the movie the first time and came to the conclusion that it’s because it breaks such basic social rules.
Think about it: if you were stuck in a room with a drug kingpin or some other known violent offender, you might expect them to do any number of horrible things to you. But you can reasonably expect them not to bite you. Why? Because it’s just not something that civilized people do. As omnivores, we’ve got the teeth for it and probably the bite force, but we just don’t. It’s one of our most basic tacit agreements, and when someone breaks that, it opens up a whole new world of disturbing possibilities. It’s an animalistic act of savagery, and even though it doesn’t kill, it frightens us in a unique way. (Also, if you’ve ever seen the GIF of Anthony Hopkins coming at the camera for that shot…yeah. That’s the stuff of nightmares.)
It’s in keeping with Dr. Lecter’s character. Think about the bite that we see during the prison break. It’s not an overly effective tactic as far as causing damage; he just worries the man’s face a little. A jagged wound on the cheek, but hardly the deathblow. The pepper spray might’ve hurt more. But it’s horrifying. It’s a fear tactic. And it worked. It worked on all of us. Dr. Lecter goes out of his way to strike terror into people’s very core by a number of methods, often by shocking us. He’s got a flair for the dramatic and he uses it well.
Another place we can see his dramatic puppeteering is through the disturbing images he creates when he speaks. When the only weapon left to him is his words, he makes sure everyone regrets that his bite shield doesn’t also shut him up. He often pairs two images that are upsetting when put together and then watches his hapless victim try and detach herself from it like a cat with a wad of tape stuck to its paw. Quite simply, it amuses him. He does this when he asks Clarice if she thinks Jack Crawford, her mentor, wants her sexually, and again when he torments the senator. He paints a very memorable picture that nobody wants to see and then sits back and watches the show. (And as someone with intrusive thoughts and a very vivid imagination, I feel compelled to point out that that’s a VERY MEAN THING TO DO.)
Another aspect of this movie that preys on our deepest fears is the fact that Dr. Lecter was a psychiatrist. Yes, we all get a little squirmy about someone trying to understand our thoughts and perhaps judging us from behind a clipboard, but I think there is a deeper reason why Dr. Lecter’s profession adds so much to his horrifying mystique. Actually, it’s the same reason that Dr. Chilton icks me out so much, and that is that a psychiatrist is in a unique position of trust. When we open our hearts and minds to someone, we are at our most vulnerable, and to think that someone who held that place in many people’s lives committed such atrocities behind the scenes is almost unthinkable.
As a result, as much as Dr. Lecter distresses me, I also find Dr. Chilton reprehensible. While Dr. Lecter seems to have had two sides, the doctor and the monster, Dr. Chilton openly brings his own vanity and cruelty into cells full of people who have no protection from him. Dr. Lecter is no innocent victim, but as a prisoner and someone who I gather was declared “insane,” he is a protected public. He’s someone whose rights and freedoms are sharply limited, which puts his caregivers and guards in a unique position of responsibility. Just imagining someone taking that position and tormenting the people in his care sends me into a frenzy of indignation every time I think about it.
(Confession time: I busted out laughing when I realized Dr. Chilton was the “old friend” Dr. Lecter planned to have for dinner at the end. I’d heard the line but didn’t realize we get to know who he’s talking about. Look, sometimes even Hannibal Lecter gets to drive the karma bus. I don’t make the rules.)
Controversial Opinions
I don’t believe Dr. Lecter is a psychopath.
Calm yourself and hear me out.
First of all, let’s dispense with the common usage of the word “psychopath,” which has become diluted to just mean “crazy person” or, if we’re being even more honest, “person I fear and highly disapprove of and don’t want to understand.”
What psychopath actually means is someone who cannot experience empathy. That means that, for instance, they’re not going to feel other people’s feelings and moods. That little tug in your mind to feel down when you’re with someone who’s feeling down? They don’t have that.
I can see the argument for Dr. Lecter being a psychopath. The best piece of evidence from the movie is when he attacked that nurse and destroyed her face and ate her tongue without his pulse getting above around 80 beats per minute. It doesn’t seem to bother him to harm other people, nor even to excite his nervous system.
I did a little poking around about his background, and while I haven’t fully immersed myself in the sordid details, a theory has emerged, one which I may compare against the books if I ever have the guts to try and read them.
When a person is physically burned severely enough, it kills the nerve endings and they can no longer feel anything in that area. What if the severe trauma he experienced as a child scalded his mind and heart so severely that his ability to feel for other people is extremely limited, but occasionally breaks through?
We see tiny glimmers of empathy out of him, and I think he is capable of feeling empathy; he just does so selectively. It’s like he’s got a handful of people in the world he does care about (Clarice, Barney, and once upon a time, his baby sister) and everyone else is meaningless to him. When Clarice tells him about her childhood trauma, there are momentarily tears in his eyes. My immediate thought was that he was faking emotions to manipulate her, but then I realized you only see the tears when he has his face turned away from her and he doesn’t ever let her see them. At other moments, when she really makes a connection with him and bridges the gap to reach his humanity, his eyes soften. Scant evidence, I’m aware, and I’m sure the book would tell me more, but it was enough to give me pause.
But what’s even more convincing to me that he can, in fact, experience empathy, is the little moments when he oversells being a monster. There are times when Clarice isn’t sufficiently intimidated and he tries to regain his street cred, as it were. When she deflects his lewd remarks by comparing him to Miggs, he reminds her that he killed him. When she stands up to his probing and refuses to be scared off the first time they meet, he tells her what he did to the census taker. When she brings him to tears with her lamb story, he demands they bring him lamb chops, extra rare, as if to remind himself that he’s an unfeeling monster and cast off the softness she brought out in him. The interesting thing about that incident is that she isn’t there to impress. The guards who bring his food don’t know the significance of it. But we do. And he does.
I also find it curious that he waited so long to make an escape attempt. He got a hold of Dr. Chilton’s pen back in Baltimore, but he didn’t make use of it until much later. Why? I thought initially that the transition would’ve been an easier time to escape, but with everyone on high alert, it makes more sense for him to wait. The big reason, I think, is that he wanted to see Clarice again. This is supported by the fact that not only did he wait until he did see her, but it was immediately after he knew she wouldn’t be allowed to see him again that he made his move.
Also, that soft little caress of her hand? Would’ve been creepy if it had been at any other moment or toward any other character, but there seemed to be true affection in the touch. That powerful moment when he merely stroked her finger contained more meaning than an embrace. (Take a number, The Last Jedi.)
Controversial opinion number two: I don’t believe Dr. Lecter is insane.
I’ll give you a minute to calm down.
Once again, let’s revisit what we mean by the word “insane.” In common language, we tend to use “insane” as a blanket term for “incomprehensible to me.” In law, there are two main definitions of insanity. First, that the person didn’t know what they were doing. I think we can rule that out. Second is that they didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong. Yeah, I don’t buy that one either. Long story short, I need to read the books and find out how the hell Dr. Lecter didn’t receive the death penalty, but he’s clever and I’ll allow that he could’ve convinced a courtroom of dismayed onlookers that someone who committed those crimes could only have been out of his mind. I’m glad he got to live to meet Clarice, even if it may have been a hiccup of justice.
Odds and Ends
I might reduce these to bullet points because they’re not connected to anything.
- I appreciate that Catherine Martin, the young woman Clarice is trying to save from Buffalo Bill, is such a badass. She wasn’t a hapless victim. She was clever, appealing to her captor by talking about her mom and the possibility of a reward, trying to reason with him, and finally, by stomping on his Achilles’ heel by getting a hold of Precious. I was so proud of her!
- Catherine tugs on my heartstrings because she is so lifelike. Single lady singing along with the radio on her way home to her cat with a bag of groceries? Just put my name on it next time. And the fact that she offered to help a stranger? It breaks my heart that he used that as a way to lure her in. Literally a Ted Bundy move, wearing a fake arm cast and getting a woman to help him.
- I actually love that this movie was made in the 90s, because I know if it was made now, the gore would’ve been so much worse. Granted, I grew up watching cop shows with full autopsy scenes where they take organs out and look at them, but I don’t want to get any closer. I think that when there is so much psychological horror, less is more in the gore department. One runs the risk of going too far and numbing the audience with too much. There are moments where the audience was tastefully shielded from an image that would’ve taken it too far, but without losing the impact of what is being seen. Case in point: when Clarice holds up the photograph of the nurse Dr. Lecter attacked, Chilton’s description is harrowing enough, and we watch her face but are not subjected to the image itself. This happens again when we see the body of a victim in the morgue. Clarice takes a long moment to breathe and prepare herself, which allows us to do so as well, and then we hear her descriptions and watch her face instead of seeing how realistic of a corpse the producers can get away with onscreen. She is allowed to emote for us, and we process our feelings alongside her.
- Look, I only know so much, but when I do know something, I have to give myself a moment in the sun, so let me point out the only true oops I caught. When we see the photos of Buffalo Bill’s victims after they were pulled out of the rivers, their eyes are crystal clear. Cinematography-wise, I get it: they stare into Clarice’s soul, and thus into ours. It’s haunting and lifelike. But I know just enough about decomposition to know that the eyes fog up very early in the process, so the fact that their eyes are clear days after death is a mistake.
So…How Did It Go?
This experiment with the limitations of my anxiety medication began back in October, when I watched The Silence of the Lambs for the first time. I knew going in that it was going to deeply affect me; after all, everyone I’d talked to who had seen it got this haunted look in their eyes and briefly unloaded thirty years of trauma to me. I also knew that I would probably obsess over it for a while. That’s what I do; when something interests, fascinates, scares, hurts, or enchants me, I marinate on it for weeks, months, or years at a time before I can properly file it away.
But since I knew this would be a disturbing subject and that many of the people I love might disapprove of my delving into it in the first place, I had to face the prospect of a new obsession head-on. I often make the mistake of berating myself for obsessing over a new interest for so long, especially if it’s a distressing subject. But this time I decided to just accept that this was going to take a long time to process and that analysis is the way I do it. Living alone helps because I can rant to myself or an invisible audience about whatever I want without people wondering if they need to call someone. Having a long, delicious soak in my thoughts, even the dark ones, is one of life’s many delights.
I slept fine. I don’t have nightmares. But these characters have been my constant companions. As I’ve said, I know something about the direction the series took after this, and I don’t like it very much. I like the end, but not how we get there. We’ll see if I ever get up the courage to read the books. I survived the movie, but a book is a much more prolonged and intimate experience, and as Jack Crawford warned us, you don’t want Hannibal Lecter inside your head. On the one hand, he’s already here, but on the other, I don’t know how much I trust the author. This first part of the story was stunning, but it seems its later installments were not well-received and possibly with good reason. In short, I’ve spent the last six months thinking how I would’ve done it.
I came into this experience wanting to know what deeper nerve this movie had touched. Now I get it. The way it makes you feel and forces you to think is both exhilarating and terrifying. Between incredible acting, a darkly fascinating story, and characters that speak to the soul, it’s no wonder they swept the Oscars that year. I watched the movie a third time in order to finally finish this article, and though I can’t just throw it in on a random Friday night, it’s definitely won a place among my favorites.
