So here it is, the film that I’ve been dreading for, well, years. Yes, I’m back from my grand adventure (thanks for your patience!) and ready to jump back into our BPs. The Silence of the Lambs (1991; Strong Heart/Demme Production, Orion) beat out a couple of worthy contenders to grab Best Picture, namely Disney’s masterpiece Beauty and the Beast, the first completely animated, full-length film to nab a BP nod. The Silence of the Lambs is a landmark film as well, though. To date, it is the only horror film to have won the Academy’s highest honor–unless Alfred Hitchcock’s spooky Rebecca (1940) can be considered a horror movie. Just a handful of horror flicks have even been nominated for BP, so The Silence of the Lambs‘ win is a pretty big deal.
It also still stands as the most recent winner of the “Big Five” Academy Awards (Actor, Actress, Directing, Writing, and Best Picture), the only five Oscars The Silence of the Lambs won for its seven nominations (it lost in the Film Editing and Sound categories). Clocking in with a mere 16 minutes of screen time (some people claim it’s only 12 minutes!), Anthony Hopkins won Actor in a Leading Role for playing Dr. Hannibal Lecter in a performance that would end up defining his career. Jodie Foster won her second Oscar in three years when she took on the role of Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee who develops a freaky trust with Lecter while tracking another serial killer. Best Directing went to Jonathan Demme, and Writing (Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published) went to Ted Tally for his adaptation of Thomas Harris’s very successful 1988 novel of the same name.
Granted, The Silence of the Lambs, along with its precursor Red Dragon (novel, 1981), its sequel Hannibal (novel, 1999), and the series prequel Hannibal Rising (novel, 2006) are not for the faint of heart (or weak of stomach). They are gruesome, psychologically disturbing, and downright disgusting. Still, I must admit that the storyline is engrossing, and it was difficult to look away from the screen (except during the bloody parts when I hid under a blanket…). But I won’t be watching the rest of the series. I’ve had enough violence.
Speaking of violence…Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs, did his research prior to beginning his famous works. In the late 1970s, he visited the FBI Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, where he sat in on classes and interviewed agents about serial killers and the FBI’s role in pursuing them. Harris and the FBI would have had a lot of “material” to work with at that time in U.S. history. Some of the most notorious serial killers had their heyday in the 1970s: the Manson family, the Zodiac Killer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), the Hillside Strangler, and Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple cult, to name a few.
1991, the year the film version of Harris’s novel was released, saw its own share of violence. The new year wasn’t even a full month old when serial killer Aileen Wuornos was arrested. Wuornos, whose childhood was its own horror story, had murdered several men in Florida (Ironically, Charlize Theron won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Wuornos in 2003’s Monster). Dr. Jack Kevorkian was also a frequent player in the news in the early ’90s. “Dr. Death,” a proponent of euthanasia, claimed to have assisted in the suicides of at least 130 patients–until the State of Michigan barred him from using his suicide machine in 1991. So perhaps what is most freaky about The Silence of the Lambs is that, with all the violence prevalent in our culture, the film’s premise is not really too far-fetched after all. Disturbing thought.
For more on The Silence of the Lambs and its significance, please check out this weekend’s post!