 The Best Picture Our Columnists Reflect on Oscar's Best Films |
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the Lambs (1991) |
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Littlefield |
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Dr. Lecter's sophisticated stew--
of suspense, irony and horror
By
KINNEY LITTLEFIELD
of TheColumnists.com
It
was love to the last morsel.
And still is.
I remember floating out of the theater euphorically after seeing "The Silence of the Lambs"--that monstrously perfect movie--on its opening weekend in 1991.
Granted, on that mindblowing Friday I never imagined "Lambs" would win all five major Oscars in 1991. As indeed it did--for best picture, best actor (Anthony Hopkins), best actress (Jodie Foster), best direction (Jonathan Demme) and best adapted screenplay (Ted Tally, from Thomas Harris' chilling novel of the same name).
I do know that when I first saw "Lambs" I was stunned by the film's sophisticated stew of suspense, soul-sickening horror and sensibility-savaging irony. Getting in my car and driving home straightaway was not an option. I stood for many minutes on the sidewalk outside the theater, transported, reliving the film's psyche-shredding story all over again.
And what a head-spinner it is:
FBI manhunter Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) is stymied in solving the serial murders and mutilations of several young women in the Midwest. He cunningly decides to send his ambitious, attractive and somewhat naïve trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to enlist the help of vicious psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in tracking the unknown killer called "Buffalo Bill."
Hannibal is stowed behind bars in a facility for the criminally insane in Baltimore, serving time for murder and cannibalism. He more or less eats Clarice for lunch, mentally speaking. For every clue to Buffalo Bill's identity that he gives her, he demands she serve him a tasty, traumatic true tale from her past in return.
Quickly Hannibal digs himself a comfy place inside Clarice's cranium. Soon she is reopening her childhood wounds in front of him--her father's death, her terrifying stay on a ranch where helpless lambs were slaughtered.
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Soon she is in Hannibal's sway, parroting his advice on catching Bill to her FBI pal Ardelia Mapp. As Hannibal suggests, she tries to picture what the killer sees around him, what he covets most.
Turns out serial murderer Jame Gumb (Ted Levine) covets female bodies. He wants to wear one. He's been kidnapping plump young females, starving them to loosen their skins, killing them and peeling their hides to sew himself a "woman suit," as Clarice finally figures near the film's end.
But grotesque as Gumb is--in a great turn by Levine--he's merely a palate-shocker between the movie's main course and dessert. And the crucial ingredient of the main course is the bizarro bonding between Hannibal and Clarice in that cold and stony maximum security dungeon.
Hopkins and Foster are transcendent together.
Hopkins just stands there, a single actor almost motionless in a small jail cell, speaking in a near-monotone.
But he's oh so wickedly sly.
Those classic lines: "A census taker once tried to test me….I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."
Those depthless, all-knowing eyes….That raspy, spooky, snotty, condescending, chillingly invasive voice….
Hopkins simply devours us.
As Hannibal, he clearly outclassed his competition for best actor honors--mawkish Nick Nolte in "The Prince of Tides," cutesy Robin Williams in "The Fisher King," tough guy Warren Beatty in "Bugsy" and maniacal Robert De Niro in "Cape Fear."
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Not even A-list actor De Niro could match Hopkins' monster mash.
Magnificent. Just a purse of Hannibal's hungry lips. Understated and refined as the sautéed human sweetbreads that he relishes.
And Foster--her intelligence, cunning, bravery, pain and vulnerability glint through her skin in her prison tete-a-tete, as she recalls running away from the slaughter of the lambs. The slightest crinkle of her cheek says everything.
Of course while Hannibal is biting into Clarice's brain, so to speak, she is using him to find Buffalo Bill.
The whole film is one well-nuanced, intellectually complex head game. Crawford is also playing Clarice, using her to get information while he races ahead to snare Bill himself--until a twist in the investigation sends Clarice right into Bill's lair.
Clever stuff this. There's a whole feast of cleverness in "Lambs."
Early on Clarice asks Hannibal about a drawing he's made while incarcerated. He describes it as a scene of the Duomo in Florence, Italy "seen from the Belvedere."
Turns out Gumb lives--and has killed--in Belvedere, Ohio. The clue goes right over Clarice's head.
Later, in transit to new prison digs in Tennessee, Hannibal shares a monster moment with Senator Martin--a female senator whose daughter has been kidnapped and is being held by Buffalo Bill.
"Love your dress," Hannibal tells the distraught senator cattily, after heartlessly asking if she breast-fed her daughter. The casual, campy remark cuts her to the bone. It is also a clue to the dress Bill is tailoring.
Word games aside, "Lambs" also scores high for taut honesty.
From its first scene, as Clarice runs hard through the woods of the FBI campus at Quantico, straining to finish a tough physical training course, you know "Lambs" has integrity.
Deftly directed by Demme, this movie knows how to move. It wastes no words or action as it cuts between imprisoned Hannibal, the basement where Gumb keeps Martin's terrified daughter and scenes of FBI investigation and pursuit.
Its edits are sharp and clean, its soundtrack to the point. It has a gruesome story to tell and does so in commendably no-nonsense fashion.
Plus it is a disarmingly polite film. Hopkins' Hannibal is always elegantly articulate and well-mannered with Clarice--a righteous adherence to the letter and spirit of Harris' novel.
But then "Lambs," after all, is a film about taste. Hannibal has it in spades and he tries to impart some to Clarice who he immediately recognizes as a hustling rube with cheap shoes.
No accident that Gumb is also a fashion victim.
And if Hannibal has a taste for flesh--well, isn't that what fine dining is all about?
True, some film critics accused Hopkins of hogging the camera by turning Hannibal to caricature.
But Hannibal--for good or evil--is fantastical, superhuman, beyond belief--at least as Harris conceived him in print and Tally penned him for the screen. Read Harris' best-selling sequel "Hannibal" to see.
To see how over-the-top "Lambs" could have been, check its baroque sequel "Hannibal," directed by Ridley Scott. Sleek and shallow, this expensive clunker veers from the growing closeness between Clarice and Hannibal that Harris describes so magically in the novel.
And
Julianne Moore is no Jodie Foster. She plays Clarice almost as
if she were hypnotized--which might have been appropriate if
the movie followed the book.
At least Hopkins does a fine job of reprising the role of Lecter.
But there are precious few memorable bon mots in "Hannibal."
And the brazen sequel lacks "Lambs' " humanity. Only the greedy and vengeful--and Clarice herself--are endangered.
In
"Lambs" there are innocent victims. Foster's Clarice
rushes to find Gumb, to stop him, to save more lambs from slaughter.
That "Lambs" grabbed best picture honors is a bit of
a miracle. It is a straight-ahead thriller. And the thriller
genre has a low-brow tinge, even when it's Hitchcock.
And "Lambs" stomped the competition without a trace of the sweeping big-budget sentiment or social do-goodism that Academy voters love.
Then again the other best picture nominees were hardly rare or luminous. They were: animated Disney fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," stylized crime chronicle "Bugsy," Barbra Streisand's sentimental, self-serving directorial effort "The Prince of Tides" and Oliver Stone's controversial, conspiracy-besotted "JFK."
For sheer craft "Lambs" towered above that field.
But let's not forget the dessert course. That would be the final scene in which Hannibal places a long distance call to Clarice from a tropical isle, having escaped his Tennessee captors.
"I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner" he says calmly as he spies his sleazy Baltimore keeper Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald) stepping off an airplane.
The
easy irony is sublime.
I mean, Hannibal, you animal!
But then - as Hannibal the cannibal understands so well--aren't we all?
© 2001 by Kinney Littlefield.
OTHER NOMINEES THAT YEAR: "Beauty and the Beast," "Bugsy," "JKF," "The Prince of Tides."
OSCAR TRIVIA: The character of Jack Crawford is based on real-life FBI manhunter John Douglas, who helped found the FBI's Behavioral Sciences unit...Anthony Hopkins didn't originate the role of Hannibal Lecter on screen. Brian Cox first played Lecter in "Manhunter," the 1986 film based on Thomas Harris' book "Red Dragon," which introduced the character...Though Lecter was written as a white character, Louis Gossett, Jr., originally was set to play Dr. Lecter in "Lambs." The producers finally decided it might not be such a bright idea to cast a black man as a cannibal...Michelle Pfeiffer was set to play Clarice, but backed out when the studio wouldn't pay her $2 million fee...Even Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme wasn't the first choice. Actor Gene Hackman was supposed to make his directing debut on "Lambs," but backed out.
You can comment on this column or contact Kinney Littlefield with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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