64. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Plot Intro

FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is assigned to interview imprisoned cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) in the hopes of gaining information about another serial killer whom the FBI are trying to catch nicknamed Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). In the process, Starling and Lector become slowly fascinated with each other, and Lector agrees to help Starling in her investigations - as long as she reveals her innermost demons to him…

Paul says...

Horror is a genre that doesn’t get much of a look-in at the Oscars. Before 1991, The Exorcist and Jaws were the only Best Picture nominees to fit into this category. Then along came The Silence of the Lambs. Not only did it become the third and, so far, final film to achieve an Oscar Grand Slam (winning Best Director, Screenplay, Picture, Actor and Actress), but it is also the only Best Picture winner to be legitimately described as “shit-scary”.

This is one of the darkest horror-thrillers ever made, and it unashamedly dissects the most immoral and stomach-churning elements of American society- a far cry from the more hopeful, enlightening sentiments of the previous year’s winner, Dances With Wolves. Every character in this movie has some kind of darker aspect, ulterior motive or deep secret that is not immediately obvious. Doctor Chiltern, who keeps Lector incarcerated, is so disrespectful and self-serving that his eventual comeuppance gains no sympathy whatsoever; the Senator whose daughter has been kidnapped by Buffalo Bill is hugely uncooperative with the one person who can help her (Lector); and even Starling’s boss, who promises to further her career, uses her as a puppet in order to extract information from Lector. Even Starling has some suppressed childhood memories (the titular lambs and their eery silence), but what makes her heroic is that she uses that sadness to battle the darkness of the world. And Lector…well, Lector is Lector. But at least he makes no secret of his uncontrollable monstrousness. 

In this pessimistic film, the lines between good and evil are blurred. Characters in positions of power who would traditionally be “good” people turn out not to be the saints they think they are. Images of dirtied or fallen American flags pop up like Easter eggs throughout the film- emphasising this image of a broken America full of immorality. The image of the butterfly, representing rebirth, is also used profusely, but the irony is that it is the primary villain, Buffalo Bill, who is obsessed with this image. Countries such as America may complacently convince themselves that they are “reborn” as butterflies- but the reality is far less attractive. 

But there is one ray of hope: Clarice Starling. She is ogled at by her colleagues, hit on by interviewees, put down by uncooperative cops, and psychologically shaken by Lector. But she relentlessly and calmly navigates this gauntlet of masculine oppression to save the day at the terrifying climax single-handedly. This is, under heavy disguise, a very feminist movie about a woman triumphing in the traditionally male-driven world of crime. And Jodie Foster is an absolute revelation. Coupled with Anthony Hopkins’ pant-stainingly scary performance as Lector, what you will see in this movie is an example of the best acting that Hollywood can offer.

The Silence of the Lambs is a pessimistic depiction of a disintegrating society, something that would become fashionable in the crime thrillers of the 90s (see Along Came A Spider and Se7en for further examples of this). But, for those of us who like more simple entertainment, it is one of the most gripping crime movies and most frightening thrillers ever made. A blood-curdling delight.

Highlight

The two-way scene in which Starling reveals her childhood memories of the lambs’ screaming to Lector. It’s dialogue-heavy, but intensely directed and acted. It should be used as a case study for phenomenal acting.

Lowlight

Absolutely nothing. This is a perfectly crafted movie that never relents or rests on its laurels.

Mark

10/10

Doug says...

You know a film’s good when it’s been lampooned mercilessly. In fact French & Saunders’ spoof is so well observed that it’s impossible not to think about it when watching the original. But Silence is so good that it still rises above this, continuing to be truly frightening and dark by turns. 

As Paul says, it’s a triumph of acting. And actually the feminism of Silence has been disputed, with valid attacks by feminist campaigners pointing to how women are degraded and cut apart. However I’d argue it is feminist, purely because it makes such a point of clearly showing Clarice fighting institutionalised sexism adeptly to eventually save the day. The moment when the prison guard tries to chat her up is a really good example of this; with Clarice knowing she has to keep him on side, but not wanting to cave and go out with him. Her subtle, quick dismissal is brilliant, keeping it professional and cool in an environment which seems tense with danger. 

Interestingly, Hannibal has been described by various people in the making of Silence as a ‘good man with psychotic tendencies’. And Hopkins plays this. He is unfailingly polite, and his previous work as a therapist shows his ability to understand and emote with others. It’s just a shame his murderous cannibal tendencies obscure this. Ah well. 

It’s genuinely very tense, with classic horror ‘jump out of your skin’ moments including when Clarice investigates an old lock up, the terrifying final scene (mostly in the dark), and of course the iconic moment when she walks down the corridor of gibbering madmen to find Hannibal standing, silently, waiting for her. 

And it’s a marvellous scene, the best in the film. Both Foster and Hopkins are at their best here, with Hopkins’ intrigue mingling with his desire to frighten and Foster determined not to run away screaming. 

As for Buffalo Bill - he’s just bizarre and nasty. And who even has a well in their house? 

Highlight

That scene when Clarice walks down to meet Hannibal is just so enigmatic, and somehow made even better by the memory of the French & Saunders spoof complete with yelling Krankies. 

Lowlight

It does lose a little pace for me towards the end, and then it picks up again. I think I mostly enjoy this film for the Clarice/Hannibal scenes. 

Mark

9/10 

63. Dances With Wolves (1990)

Plot Intro

Tennessee, 1863. Lieutenant John J. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) is fighting on the side of the northern states during the American Civil War. Dunbar is posted to a distant post on the American frontier, but he finds himself alone there after the previous soldiers abandoned it due to the threat of nearby Native American tribes. Whilst staying at his little fort, Dunbar comes across a nearby Lakota tribe, and ends up befriending them. Over time, he discovers that they are not the bloodthirsty savages he thought they were- and they learn that even the white man can have redeeming features (who knew?!)

Doug says...

‘Oh no,’ I said as we sat down to watch what I didn’t realise was a three-and-a-half hour film about what seemed to be fixing on the American Civil War. ‘Here we go again.’ 

Regular readers of this blog will know how much I hate war films and the opening scenes of this prepare you for yet another tedious slog with hyper-masculinity being worshipped and generally some ‘Oscar-winning’ performances. This film opens with Kevin Costner nearly losing his leg, running into battle and riding his horse against the opposing side in a suicide mission that just doesn’t work.

Reader, I was wrong. This is in no way a war film. It also joins How Green Was My Valley, The Best  Days of Our Lives, Marty, and Gandhi as one of the unexpected delights uncovered by this project. It was, in a word, tremendous. 

Because what this film is actually about, is the Native American tribes at the frontier of the American plains. Kevin Costner as Lieutenant Dunbar goes off to live in the frontier by himself, and becomes acclimatised, eventually meeting the Native Americans, warming to them and slowly becoming one of them. It’s remarkable because when do you ever have a film with the ‘Indians’ as the good ones and the ‘Cowboys’ as the baddies?! 

And it’s done oh so well. Because (for once) the running time is used well. We slowly see his journey with him, so his eventual integration into the tribes is believable and lovely. We see the ‘savage’ nature of the Native Americans actually be revealed as a false impression, with their kindness, humour and love taking priority in their lives. Costner (who also directed) is our movable marker, his fear becoming love, especially with characters such as Wind In His Hair, who originally hates Dunbar, but then becomes a close friend. 

Round about the two hour point, you do wonder what’s going to happen now - but then when it happens it’s devastating. Because we see - unflinchingly - how awful the white people are. They trash the Native American’s sacred land, shooting their animals and wasting their crops. The soldiers who capture Dunbar are disgusting, and in one scene they use Dunbar’s beautifully drawn diary pages as toilet paper, as they squat in the field. The visual metaphor of them using art and culture to wipe their arses is oh so obvious. And that’s saying nothing of what happens with the wolf…

It’s notable too for using actors actually from Native American and Canadian tribes. The Chief Ten Birds is particularly impressive, carrying wisdom and sage wit in his toothless presence. I particularly liked how Costner carefully shows the tribes with their actual beliefs and practices. At one point the wise man Kicking Bird says no man can tell another what to do, and we see this with Chief Ten Birds, who does not tell anyone what to do, but eases them towards it, encouraging them to come to the right decision on their own. 

I haven’t even got into anything of what I wanted to discuss. Suffice to say that this is a three and a half hour film that uses every minute of its screen time. It’s an extraordinary directorial debut and scenes like the buffalo stampede and the tribes fighting pair beautifully with the desolate imagery of the empty hills and the fireside storytelling of the Chief and his wife. Exceptional film-making.

Highlight 

Stands With A Fist (a white tribe-adopted woman) is falling for Dunbar. While by the fire with her friend Black Shawl she mistakes her friend’s questioning about Dunbar for nosiness and gets flustered. Black Shawl then looks confused, says ‘what did you think I meant?’ and then delivers the biggest smirk I’ve ever seen on the silver screen. It’s an award-winning moment. 

Lowlight

 I actually can’t think of one. Everyone - the actors, the cameramen, the writers - are pulling their weight. Even the tiny cameo of mad Major Fambrough at the beginning is suitably chilling and superbly performed. So none. 

Mark 

10/10

Paul says...

This was an astonishingly difficult DVD to track down. Not on Netflix. Not on Amazon Prime (not even available to buy). The only physical DVD (I know, how old skool!) available that was brand new was a ridiculous £17, so I had to settle for the 3.5 hour uncut Special Edition from Ebay. I thought I was buying a '90s Western, not the Ark of the Covenant. 

Nonetheless, Dances With Wolves kicks the '90s off very well. But at first I thought this was not the case. As Doug says, the first impressions were not positive- 10 minutes in we were starting to call it Yet Another War Film. My first impressions seem to have lasted a little longer than Doug’s, and I would go so far as to say that the whole first hour was a bit bland and a bit slow. Most of it is carried by Costner on his own, either narrating or staring impassively into the middle distance and being the sort of lone ranger every straight man dreams of being (and his late-'80s mullet set him apart from mid-19th century America far too obviously). I began to despair that the Curse of the '80s, with its emphasis on lengthy shots of landscapes and platitudinous speeches, was over-flowing into the early '90s.

But Dances With Wolves saves itself when Costner finally meets the Lakota tribe, because it then injects what pretty much no '80s Best Picture winner had: humour. Most of the laughs derive from the Native Americans’ looks of bewilderment at some of Costner’s behaviour and routines, which is a clever little twist in which we now see white people through another race’s eyes. Immediately, all of these characters become lovable and engaging because they are just as clumsy, confused and curious as the rest of us. This means that when the threats of a more jingoistic Pawnee tribe and bloodthirsty white soldiers arrive, we feel genuine concern for these characters’ lives, and the subsequent two and a half hours shot by much quicker. I suspect that the original cut of the film ensured that the opening exposition was kept to a minimum.

The idea that Native Americans are not as savage as they are often made out to be is nothing massively new to modern eyes, especially for people like me who spent many a lonely childhood hour belting out Colours of the Wind during Disney’s Pocahontas. But what does make Dances With Wolves original is that both Dunbar and the Native Americans discover each other’s virtues and vices in equal measure. One of the most poignant moments is when the Lakota tribe finds some buffalo slaughtered for their skin by the white men, and react by tracking down the white men and slaughtering them in turn, an act that shows Dunbar’s conflict between his respect and fear for these people. No one is perfect here, but they grow and prove their worth through their acts of solidarity and acceptance.

Dances With Wolves was not expected to be the hit that it was. It was Costner’s directorial debut, and many die-hard Oscar fans have sometimes lambasted it for beating Goodfellas to the crown. It also beat The Godfather Part III (thank God) and Ghost. Did early-'90s audiences identify with the film’s lessons of unity, integration and togetherness so soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Or did Kevin Costner just look bloody good in a Union Army uniform? All I know is, it’s an entertaining way to kick off a decade that I have high hopes for. But I’d recommend buying the original, shorter edit unless you want to traipse your way through that slow first hour.

Highlight

The first scenes between Costner and the Native Americans provide excellent laughs, and charmingly humane insights into these characters. A sense of humour has been a long time coming.

Lowlight

The first hour could have been sped up a bit. Does this make me a philistine? Oh well…

Mark

7/10

Foreign Language Film 6: The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (Germany; 1920)

Plot Intro

A young man named Francis (Friedrich Feher) recounts a strange encounter he had at a travelling fair. A sideshow at the fair, a man named Dr Caligari (Werner Krauss) claims to possess inside his cabinet a fortune-telling somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt). Francis and his friend Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski) visit this show, where Cesare predicts Alan’s death. Sure enough, Alan is mysteriously murdered in the night- but that is only the first murder…

Paul says...

This is a difficult film to critique. It’s nearly 100 years old, it’s silent, it’s only about an hour long, it’s of poor visual quality, and it’s part of a wave known as “German Expressionism”- a popular but short-lived phase in cinema. In other words, it bears little to no resemblance to the movies that we know now. 

But it’s a cornerstone in world cinema, in the horror genre, in German art, and in technical film making. And this is why we’ve chosen to watch it.

German Expressionism wasn’t just in films. It covered architecture, art, theatre, music and other art forms. It’s presence in film was, as I said, short-lived- but far from insignificant. It is recognisable due to its elaborate and crooked sets- unusual shapes for windows and doors, pointy fairy-tale-like buildings and creepy Babadook-looking villains. In an age when the technical quality of the film was blurry and patchwork, this ensured a striking visual to wow and unsettle the audience. It’s unsubtle use of light and shadow to create atmosphere, disjointed sets and over-the-top costumes would heavily influence the Hammer Horror productions of the 30s, 40s and 50s, the suspense work of Alfred Hitchcock, and the visual inventiveness of Tim Burton. 

To see the causal point of modern techniques at such an early stage in film history was quite exciting for me. It’s a bit like seeing your grandparents’ childhood photos for the first time- you can see the resemblance and the change both so vividly.

Though on one level a tale of suspense about a murderous sleep-walker and his master, Dr Caligari has deep themes that has film critics orgasming incessantly. Germany in 1920 was understandably disenchanted with figures of authority- most of whom had pompously and irresponsibly led thousands of young men to their deaths in the trenches. The tale of a sleep-walker blindly following the orders of his maniacal owner has unsettling parallels with the relationship between the soldiers and their superiors during the recent war. 

The film also touches on the blurred lines between reality and fiction, sanity and madness. The beginning of the war saw young men marching off to what they thought was a certain future of glory, but turned out to be a nightmare that would usually be found in fiction. The promise of glory turned out to be the fiction- the unthinkable Hell turned out to be reality. The final twist in the tale of Dr Caligari, which is hugely similar to Shutter Island, leaves the audience questioning what elements of the tale were true and what was delusion. Couple this with the increase in mental health disorders and research post-war, then you’ve got yourself a film about insanity, hysteria and terror that resonates well with the Western world of the early 20s.

After this historical meandering, I’m going to conclude with the decision that I am not going to give this film a mark. It is so different to even the sort of the movie-making we find 10, 20 or 100 years later, that it’s impossible to see this with an objective eye. I’d either mark it highly just because it’s influential, or I’d mark it low just because it’s a style of film-making that died out eons ago. Either way, it would be an unfair mark. Regardless, for anyone interested in film history, watch and research this film- it’s fascinating stuff. 

Highlight

The scene in which Cesare walks into the bedroom of “the Girl” does have an element of creepiness to it. His gaunt, shadowy figure at the window evokes images of ghosts and vampires beautifully.

Lowlight

This label goes to the actor who plays Dr Caligari himself- Werner Krauss. Krauss was the Lon Cheney/Charles Laughton of his day- a celebrated and versatile character actor. Unfortunately, he was a horrendous antisemite and supporter of the Nazi party, taking part in Jewish propaganda films to help them. Post-war he was forced to leave his homeland of Austria and any productions he was involved in were met with protest. He died in relative obscurity, but probably could have done with a far worse outcome.

Mark

Abstainted

Doug says...

When we first watched Wings which won in 1927, I thought it couldn’t get more weird than this. An old silent black and white film, with lots of over-acting and a real requirement on your attention span. But I was proved wrong. The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari is far more rudimentary, with shuddering jump-cuts, at times completely obscured film shots, and a strange reliance on a ‘vignette’ style of opening and closing scenes. It is, as Paul points out, fascinating. 

The plot itself is thin and not that easy to follow - partly because the poor quality of the film means you often don’t really get who characters are - but a quick Wikipedia afterwards cleared up the questions and I found the similarity to the excellent thriller Shutter Island to be so obvious that one can only assume it was the main inspiration. 

It’s a piece of film history more than anything - and reading up about how they created it is also interesting. They actually painted streaks of light on to the set, so that the lighting always seems jarring and odd. The characters are caricatures but the visual quality is so poor that they have to be in order for you to recognise them. 

It’s not dull in the way The Seventh Seal was, despite its obtusity, perhaps because part of the fun of old films like these is imagining an audience watching this for the first time. It’s fifty minutes long but thinking of rows of people all squinting at the dark shadowy frames and considering it ground-breaking is a reminder of how far film comes. I mean, it’s only thirty years later that you have the polished excellence of All About Eve. And those two films (even just in quality of film-making and characterisation) are worlds apart. 

I don’t really have much to say, except that like Paul I’m going to have to abstain from a mark. This isn’t a film in the way any other thing we’ve seen is. It’s more a historical document, an exhibit from a cinematography museum. Marking it for how it entertained seems wrong as it wasn’t entertaining but it was fascinating. And even seven years later, with Wings, the art has progressed so far as to centralise plot, characters and cinematography. This is a caveman painting on the wall, scrappy and full of raw innovation. Why compare it to Botticelli? 

Highlight

I don’t really have anything other than the piece as a historical artefact, but to misquote Waldorf and Statler in Muppets Christmas Carol: it was short! I loved it! 

Lowlight

Again, it seems weird to point out lowlights. Perhaps the twist at the end could have been clearer, but it’s probably one of the first examples of a twist in cinema! So it gets a pass - and it inspired Shutter Island which was great. 

Mark

Abstained.