Common Sense Note
Parents should know that this Best Picture Oscar winner got condemned by both sides. Family-values advocates like Michael Medved called it too gruesome and disgusting (albeit well made) to deserve the Academy Award. Gay-rights activists said it stereotyped transgendered people as freakish monsters. Still, kids may be curious. The movie concerns extreme psychopaths and the graphic atrocities they commit, including references to twisted sexual urges and perversities. Much of the worst violence is offscreen, in autopsy photos or just discussed -- but that's close enough, and we witness some representative brutality and horror near the climax. The murderous psychologist-serial killer Hannibal Lecter is something of a "gentleman" killer, contrasted with the grotesque "Buffalo Bill," who is shown at one point fully nude. There is an oppressive atmosphere of menace, especially towards women.
Families can talk about the heroine Clarise Starling, whose plight is actually the core of the film's drama and humanity (Hannibal Lecter just steals every scene and subplot he's in). She's an ambitious but vulnerable orphan, a young woman trying to persevere in an often- grisly career fighting the worst kind of crime, in an environment dominated by men -- even the "normal" ones are pretty creepy. Why do you think Clarice fascinates Lecter so much? Does the movie glamorize violence and glorify a villain?
Common Sense Review
Many viewers still don't know that THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was not the first Hannibal Lecter movie shocker. That "honor" belonged to the 1986 chiller Manhunter, based on the Thomas Harris novel that would later be remade as Red Dragon. Manhunter didn't do much business, even though it had much the same premise as Lambs: a brilliant but diabolical therapist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter (played by Brian Cox with Jekyll-Hyde mannerisms), imprisoned for acts of murder and cannibalism, dubiously advises FBI lawmen tracking a serial killer.
But when Anthony Hopkins played Lecter with magisterial authority and aplomb in Silence of the Lambs (based on Harris' sequel to Red Dragon), the result was a box-office smash that won the Best Picture Oscar and made Hannibal Lecter a much-imitated screen icon.
The wildly popular film, particularly Anthony Hopkins' performance in it, had the disquieting result of glamorizing the serial killer as cinematic superstar. No longer were they lurching hackers and drooling slashers of movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre; they were portrayed as intellectual, verbose, and even artistic -- in a sick and demented way, of course. Some critics, notably Michael Medved, thought Silence of the Lambs had no right gobbling up Oscar gold.
What detractors overlook about Silence of the Lambs is that the true central figure is the character played by Jodie Foster. She also won an Oscar for her soulful portrayal of Clarice Starling, a young, idealistic FBI trainee sent in to consult with Lecter on a case. This time the quarry is a mystery slayer tagged with the nickname "Buffalo Bill," because the victims -- all plus-sized women -- turn up partially skinned.
Lecter, caged for eight years, won't cooperate with the veteran FBI agents on using his Sherlock Holmes-like powers (and some insider info) on figuring out Buffalo Bill's whereabouts. But Clarice appeals to the deadly doctor, who feeds the young woman vital clues in trade for personal details about the wounds in her own past.
So, apart from the visceral suspense and grisly police antics, this film's strength is its girl power; a very sympathetic heroine interacts with the serpentine Lecter and then goes out to fight another human monster, in environments heavy with male-oriented threat and authority (indeed, you can say that the horrendous Lecter treats Clarice with more courtesy and respect than the so-called "normal" men around her). Silence of the Lambs thus has a complicated sense of virtue and evil coming to bargain with each other, more profoundly so than Red Dragon, Manhunter, and follow-ups Hannibal and Hannibal Rising.
While the unfortunate consequence glorified a villain in the public mind, the narrative does indeed possess a moral center. Too bad you have to go through the autopsy scenes to reach it.
You might show teens older films that portrayed multiple murderers as sympathetic figures, though never so graphically as this. Try Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, where a small-town girl suspects her favorite uncle is the Merry Widow Murderer, or Charlie Chaplin's once-scandalous Monsieur Verdoux, in which the beloved comedian played a devoted husband and father killing socialites to support his family. For those who demand role-model maniacs in full color and played by Anthony Hopkins, check out the less gruesome Instinct, with Hopkins as a mad, imprisoned anthropologist whose rage has righteous ecological motivations.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentA full-frontal nude scene (sort of) for the gender-confused psycho killer Buffalo Bill. A brief (hardly titillating) look at one of his victims, nude and bloated on an autopsy table. A madman masturbates and throws his bodily fluids at Clarice Starling (it happens quickly and goes without much dialogue explanation). Brief references to kinky sex and sexual acts, sometimes in a criminal-investigative context, sometimes in terms of men hitting on the Jodie Foster's character. |
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ViolenceUsually the worst stuff is offscreen -- but it's just barely offscreen. A woman is beaten unconscious, then kept prisoner in a pit. Characters are shot at close range, two policemen are savagely assaulted, one bitten in the face. A blood-drenched Hannibal Lecter seen exultant after the act of murder. Mutilated corpses and human skins are shown. |
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LanguageCurse words, usually from frothing lunatics or victims under duress. Other characters (like Hannibal or Clarice) swear only when quoting lines. |
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Social BehaviorWhile it likely wasn't the filmmaker's goal, this movie made serial killers look magnetic, brilliant, and like resourceful masterminds, thanks to the compelling Hannibal Lecter character. Meanwhile the rather less suave "Buffalo Bill" has been criticized for perpetuating the stereotype of transvestites and transsexuals as loathsome misfit maniacs. The overshadowed heroine, Clarice Starling, is a youngish female crimefighter of humble origins, with an idealistic streak to save innocent lives, who must approach Lecter's world of evil and madness without being engulfed by it. Starling succeeds in this telling (though in one book sequel she ultimately succumbed). Most characters of color are domestics, with the exception of Clarice's rather underwritten best friend, her female roommate. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSome social drinking. |
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