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turned out all lights for appropriate atmosphere. squaring up for a fistfight
this came two years before the x-files and it *had* to be a major influence, right? 'girl running through misty woods' is lifted directly for the x-files opening. except of course demme wants to make it a commentary on audience assumptions
x-files pilot opening, i should say. also *god* the mood is sublime. howard shore knows how to lay terror thick with strings
oh hey carter openly talks about the influence here: 'Silence of the Lambs was an inspiration. It's not a mistake that Dana Scully has red hair like Clarice Starling...'
nothing about mood though. sorry https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/qampa-chris-carter-of-the-x-files-1194526/?no-ist
nothing about mood though. sorry https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/qampa-chris-carter-of-the-x-files-1194526/?no-ist
also the x-files fandom wiki has a great little entry on this movie: 'it was known to involve particularly extreme crimes' https://x-files.fandom.com/wiki/Silence_of_the_Lambs
you know i really love whenever films are *this* bold about Themes
similarly: clarice is SUCH a fish out of water! she's so much shorter! she's a girl! she's travelling in the opposite direction to everyone else! yes i know there's a v famous encapsulation of all this shortly but i'll post it on its own when the time comes
note though that when she first sees ardelia and is Interacted With in Solidarity... there's a very different intensity of purpose to their shared gesture and my heart is breaking into a million different readings
this is kind of turning into one of those seven-hour livetweets huh. oh no. oh well. i might eventually have to finish this tomorrow. or the day after
even with my baby film-interpretation skills in 2010 i could recognise everything this very silly very brash shot was trying to tell me and it wasn't long before i was googling 'silence of the lambs feminist'
i say very silly and very brash lovingly. if i were any good at painting i would absolutely paint jeanne d'arc in a tableau modelled after this shot
funny though that this maybe also means she's not so much a fish-out-of-water—the blue on her jumper matches the walls throughout this whole intro-credits sequence, while of course the boys stand out only to make *her* stand out by comparison...
...but then maybe that can also be interpreted as deliberately cloaking herself in the f.b.i. itself as camouflage, which does fit, little a bit (as a treat), with what we see of what she's done with herself down the line. and i think this absolutely bolsters not-cis clarice
this is too much actually. i am not even five minutes into this movie after 31 minutes of typing and i am full-to-burst with tears. why am i still so attached to this
this is the cloying pop version of many many better movies about [redacted] and [redacted] and *still* *STILL*.
but i think the cloyingness *and* the pop both play into making it so much thornier. and every thorn has its rose
but i think the cloyingness *and* the pop both play into making it so much thornier. and every thorn has its rose
(that is extremely not true but... this is absolutely a rose, in that it is a gorgeous movie i cannot hold too tightly, because it will stab me, but also it's really really good at stabbing me, and anyway it's nice to hold a rose)
okay i'm going to continue for now. the other thing about this movie is jodie foster's eyes. this movie does not have a very good understanding of gaze because it is terribly infested by pop-radfem but also somehow... don't her eyes move over the things she wants
also the name of a fake(?) paper in the simpsons and alf. really just makes me think of the national enquirer, which i am not sure is the connotation they wish
the problem with this shot-reverse shot and the framing thereof is that it's a cliché. unfortunately clichés can also be extremely resonant & so i felt this edit in my sternum
her face............
the earring-adjustment and the bandages and the
'you spook easily, starling?' this *has* to be an x-files inspiration. he sends her down to spooky lecter in a *basement* even
the distinction between the absolute terror (field) i experience when jack's looking me in the eye and how much better i feel when i'm making eye contact with clarice who's doing her best to placate him... that's feminism(? check this —ed.)
but also not quite right: jack is looking directly at us (sorry); clarice just a smidgen off-camera. makes her *feel* much less confrontational, because she is, with jack, and hence also with us the audience. neat. and textbook i know, but curious how this'll link with gaze later
even when jack dials down the intensity clarice can't or won't turn hers off :( everything is performance :(
(to be clear i'm basing that just about entirely on mid vs close-up)
but also the reintroduction of intensity as jack warns her to 'be *very* careful with lecter, starling'... this three-shot sequence and specifically the cut back to close-up again blindsided me. i feel so silly for going so in-depth on such basic stuff but like...
this movie will ABSOLUTELY kill me. lean-esque edit across location used to comment simultaneously on chilton's villainy & on the entire institution he represents? the ECONOMY of CRAFT (okay i'll stop now)
post your personal boos & jeers against chilton in the comments below please
promising myself i'm not going to post basic shot distance analysis again in this thread unless it's Really Really Good
i get to post this because it's about angles not distance
chilton's performance confirms to me the extent to which demme *is* playing large parts of this as comic. as you all know there are no two genres more closely linked than comedy & horror and i think so far this movie's *very* good at knowing how to flirt with both of them
listen to chilton's vowels. i said earlier that clichés were often resonant, and yes his enunciation definitely recalls a Certain Class, but it's *cartoonishly* exaggerated. i think with that in mind there's much less to dislike about the hopkins performance
clarice rebuffs him and he is suddenly very small in-frame with only his name front-and-centre to protect him. power fantasy
god i love* this movie
*hate**
**love***
***porque no los dos
*hate**
**love***
***porque no los dos
i think one big trap people fall into about hannibal especially in this film is that he sucks. he's *not* too-sophisticated, psychiatry is just part of the isa and easily-bewitched by what it considers 'suavity'. look at what a Romantic he is. he let Stories take him over
we'll see this in more direct dialogues with clarice but hopkins portrays this with a studied urbanity that's all shimmer & gleam—some proficiency at cold-reading & 'artsy' references. but as befits a literal cannibal he has no taste. he's a pseud. a phony. he's not even frasier
brian cox's portrayal of hannibal in manhunter gets deserved acclaim for recognising him as someone who *thinks* himself significantly more charismatic than he actually is. but hopkins too isn't making himself charming. he's just impressing the people he needs to.
and you're not one of them, probably. this is why i think the performance is *great*—the academy gave him best actor because they *thought* he was charmingly terrifying & vice versa. because they're all in the class that gets dazzled by this charlatanry
but he sucks! you say. he's not charming at all! and you're absolutely right. and he fooled them irl anyway. i think that's pretty snazzy
okay i think i've replied to everyone now. let us voyage onwards
a) i can't believe chilton's the first person in sotl to give us a pun of this sort b) ahhhhhhh ceiling as backdrop ahhhhhh look at this non-euclidean geometry. it's not from proximity to lecter it's from the whole institution housing him
constant cycles with chilton of flirt-rebuff-shut down. flirt-rebuff-shut down. wonder how this'll change when we get to lecter!
to be clear, 'shut down' as in... chilton is shut down. he doesn't shut down the rebuff
okay i will SCREAM about this. yes bars obstruction entrapping blah blah BUT as soon as he finishes talking the buzzer sounds, the bars move to the left, everything is opened up and free. she gives almost no visible reaction (again a rebuff of his enforced vulnerability?)
in a movie v loud about using its Images for Themes this is the first time i feel that it is being very Direct about a series of aesthetic choices that do not lead to a specific & irrefutable end-point and so i am Fascinated
through tears you can't just point at anything you like and say it's a giallo etc.
argues her way out of the giallo and it's visible in the lighting itself. have i mentioned i love cinema
he's SO upset that even this flirtation has failed and she COUNTER-rebuffs by anti-flirting back. I Love Cinema
i appreciate that the subs even nail her minor flail with double address
amazing how the same language that was used for stressure pressure is now used for someone being relatively comforting to her. Won't Leave the Frame because he has to guard it
shakiness entering her voice and mannerisms now. jodie sells it all really well while keeping it within the pop tone and i'm just super-impressed
okay the walk down the prison corridor scene i don't love because for once the people imprisoned here become the source of clarice's stressure pressure. it tries hard to lean into the second-wave gaze—whether 'hi' or miggs's outburst it's all the same huh?? shore hams it up
but really the second man down the corridor makes me sad. he just sits there. he is very quiet. he is slouched. he is... she looks (we see from her pov) and we expect more Onslaught and he's not. he just... has given up? maybe? i cannot really write more about this it is too much
like i get what demme is doing, kind of, and also it is a moment where the cinematic language intercedes and pushes back and makes us cop to her cop-ness, but i think maybe there is a kind of deck-stacking here that kuleshovs that second man unfairly
but what *i* want to know is *what's up those stairs*???
people make big deals out of lecter watching her from before the moment she steps past the corner and i agree it's v unnerving but it's not that he's super-smart or anything. have you never played cs:go
unfortunately now i am imagining lecter t-posing in his cell which is approximately 500x funnier
you have probably all seen this video by now and therefore also probably seen shortcomings but just in case!!! i do think tony zhou's video on this scene is v good and also it'll keep me from basic shot length analysis throughout
so instead of basic shot analysis i'm going to do something even more boring and point out hannibal's methods: first, cold reading to spook his interlocutor into thinking he's supernaturally smart. second, instructing her to flout the rules, but not seductively. he sounds raspy
there are *so* many ways he could've played that 'closer' with more unsettling ramifications but he plays it as if he's already in control and can mess around. because he's sure he *is* in control. because he's got an inflated sense of self-importance because he's a rich psych
but it works, anyway. for reasons *he* doesn't understand but clarice does (she's just walked past three men—two imprisoned, one imprisoning—who harrassed her)
more cold reading, but again his wink isn't charming. it's Letting Her Know He Knows. which is a decent defence against interrogation that's predicated on its own standards & secrets of manipulation but, again, isn't because he's this galaxy brain
and which is easily disarmed by her Performance of vulnerability
the thing about performance, though, is that just about every performance draws on something real, and in clarice's case she's feeling some extremely real things and turning them fairly-impressively into armour for herself. wow relatable
he picks up on that, though. and presses her on it. the very next thing he presses is with miggs's outburst at her. (was that the very first time i heard that word out loud? probably.) 'i myself cannot', he rejoins—rude! then he manages his one mildly impressive trick w/ perfume
this is our introduction not to some refined, calculating aesthete. this is a bully who knows how to use fancy words and converse with a slightly more impressive reference-pool than average
this is the best pun in the entire franchise and i am SO proud of her for making it
lecter ticks off all the boxes of how she acted in accordance with how her Performance was meant to go and then tells her how she Slipped Up. what i'm trying to say is that she isn't cis
yes i know this affects cis people too but i like this reading better
hi freud
all his insults are these incredibly cheap shots that ultimately circle back around to scent. and from there to early sexual experience. this man has no imagination. he would lose to eminem
her comeback is also not very strong, at all. it is a cheap shot from a place of being Wounded. of *course* lecter points his perception at himself and builds his own mythology with the Stories psychology tells you. it is not a lack of self-awareness that makes him who he is
no matter what she intends with this, though, she has to some extent broken character. being Wounded makes that very easy. and yet she's not very different from the Performance. funny that
the rasp again on 'fava beans and a nice chianti'... not from aesthetic pleasure but from the thrill of the bully. the slurping sounds are funny but they land with terror for clarice because she *knows* she has failed the Performance. and outside of that... what will protect her
after miggs single-handedly turns the scene around lecter gives his own little self-mythologising honour code spiel. he's performing too. but from a very different position. as he has been, really, but at this point it might not be conscious. performance is weird
i cannot read her bursting out post-miggs assault into this frame as anything other than an *incredibly* powerful set of reminders of the ways in which her positions in the world both make her vulnerable and make others intensely vulnerable to her. demme is major
it's been three-and-a-half hours and i've got through twenty minutes of movie. is it okay if i take a break for tonight. or even if i watch the rest without livetweeting. i am just a tiny bit exhausted
thank you extremely much for reading this though. i did this mostly to try to prove to myself that i could still write about movies. and guess what. i still can 
