Why Silence Is Still Golden

When my wife impulsively pulled out Silence of the Lambs to watch on DVD last night, I thought that would be a good excuse for me to do something else with my time. I love Silence of the Lambs but it's one of those movies I feel like I know like the back of my hand. But as Clarice Starling ran through her arduous training exercise, accompanied by Howard Shore's melancholy but melodic score, I took a seat on the couch to watch a few minutes - and ended up not leaving until the end credits rolled on Lecter on his way to have an old friend for dinner.

As I said a few weeks back when I listed Silence as my number two pick of the best horror films of the past twenty years, it's an easy movie to take for granted. It's been imitated, emulated and parodied to death. But while I didn't think I had forgotten what a great movie it was, it turns out that I actually had forgotten just a little. To watch Silence of the Lambs is to feel a sense of craft radiating from every aspect of the film. This is a film made by people who cared about the story they were telling, the characters they were portraying, and the history of the genre they were working in. How rare is that today? Does it even still happen? It must, but I'd be hardpressed to give a very recent example. Watching Silence last night made me despondent at the thought that we may never see another horror film like it where everything - script, direction, acting, production design - comes together so well.

What made me love Silence from the start, and which seeing it again brought back in a flood of memory, is the sense of sadness that director Jonathan Demme - abetted by the performances of his stellar cast, by Howard Shore's score, and by screenwriter Ted Tally, who adapted Thomas Harris' novel with near-flawless acuity - instilled this movie with. There is an intractable loneliness to Starling's character that no professional triumph, no act of heroism, can ever wipe away. I don't think any movie character today would be allowed to be seen as vulnerable and unhappy as Starling is here. While her determination drives her and she doesn't back down from a single confrontation or obstacle, her emotions are never too far from the surface. This is not some hard-hearted, ultra-capable super cop or some aloof forensics genius. She is rattled during her first encounter with Lecter (sobbing by herself afterwards in the parking lot of the sanitarium), she has to fight to choke back tears when examining the body of one of Buffalo Bill's mutilated victims ("glitter nail polish...that looks like town to me."), and the ghosts of her unrestored childhood losses are ever-present.

In the years since Silence, portraying strong female protagonists has somehow come to mean portraying women who have no discernible human weaknesses. Women are now hardcore superheroes who eat men for breakfast. You'd never see Angelina Jolie, for instance, playing Starling in the way that Jodie Foster did. She'd have to give it right back to Lecter from the get-go and she'd never in a million years be seen actually quaking with fear as Starling does when feeling her away through Buffalo Bill's pitch-black basement. Instead, like an action hero, she'd instantly turn the tables on Bill as soon as the lights went out (spraying the room with uzi gunfire!). And she'd also probably team up with Lecter at the end to give Dr. Chilton what's coming to him. Women heroes have become all about being tough, sardonic, and able to beat the shit out of the biggest men in the room. And while I'm all for seeing examples of strong women, I think it's more impressive to see a character who isn't utterly invincible overcome their insecurities.

There's a humanity to Starling, and to every character in Silence (even the monstrous Lecter), that gives the movie its strength. As soon as Starling sees the newspaper clippings and crime photos from Buffalo Bill's crimes on the wall of Crawford's office, with their glimpses of lives snuffed out and left lying on cold grounds, we feel the spirit of empathy that drives the movie. This isn't a movie that adores its own violence. Even in the movie's most Grand Guignol moment, when Lecter leaves a victim hung and splayed like a butterfly, it's not a moment to gawk at but to be appalled by. Silence isn't a film that celebrates nihilism with rivers of blood but instead knowingly shines a light on the seldom seen river of tears that flow through the horror genre. While Lecter finally flies free at the end, Starling remains grounded by her own tightly-held burden of sorrow. It's not more adventures that the future holds for her, but more monsters. It hardly seems fair - but that's why Silence is a classic.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane

Advertised as a suspense thriller for its Psycho-esque storyline involving a troubled protagonist resorting to murder to hide the truth about a deceased family member (as the poster read: "What is her unspeakable secret? Everyone who knows is dead."), The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) is a dramatically different genre entry that generates much of its quirky appeal by making its teenaged heroine capable of murder but smart and sympathetic rather than disturbed and ghoulish. With a screenplay by Laird Koenig adapted from his own 1974 novel, The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane remains a sensitive and unusual character study.

As the eponymous 'little girl', thirteen-year-old Rynn Jacobs (Jodie Foster, in her first leading role) lives in a seaside home with her father, a well-known poet and the two zealously guard their privacy. But that privacy is at risk due to their prying landlord, Mrs. Hallet (Alexis Smith), who constantly comes by unannounced. After butting heads with the willful Rynn, Mrs. Hallet insists on speaking to Rynn's father. But what we know from early on is that Rynn's dad is not on a business trip and he's not working in his study - instead he's been deceased for some time, having committed suicide after being diagnosed with cancer.

Prior to his death, he and Rynn planned for her to keep up the pretense that he was alive so she could live independently. That means dealing with her estranged mother should she ever appear and whenever visitors come calling - everyone from Mrs. Hallet to her adult son Frank (played by Martin Sheen), to the local law (Officer Miglioriti, played by Mort Shuman) - Rynn has to hustle to keep up the illusion of her father's presence.

This complicated ruse is too much for one girl to handle, though, and circumstances drive her to confide in a neighborhood boy, named Mario (Scott Jacoby, who starred several years earlier as a disturbed teen who secretly lives in the walls of a family's home in the 1974 TV movie Bad Ronald). Mario not only helps Rynn maintain the appearance of her father's existence, he also tries to protect her from the advances of the landlord's son, a pedophile with designs on Rynn.

The bond between Mario - who bears his own cross as a cripple due to a childhood bout with polio - and the precocious but also vulnerable Rynn makes for a genuinely touching relationship. Director Nicholas Gessner fails to make much of the film's thriller elements (there's several opportunities for suspense that he never works to their best advantage) but he elicits a range of strong performances that illuminate Koenig's subtle screenplay.

One of the most satisfying aspects of Koenig's script is that he lets Rynn be a fallible character and shows that there's limits to her ingenuity. As smart as she is, she's still a kid and Koenig wisely doesn't forget that. Rynn makes mistakes and her attempts to cover up the absence of her father are not always smooth. Koenig always reminds us of Rynn's intelligence but her Achilles Heel is that she is only thirteen and lacks experience. Not just with the adult world but also with her own emotions - we can see how blindsided she is by the way she feels about Mario.

Based on the creepy preview that ran before the film when I first saw this as a kid on The ABC Friday Night Movie, I was expecting two hours of thrills and chills. But the only act of unsettling physical violence involves some vicious harm to a pet hamster. Oh, and there's also a cellar hatch door that comes down pretty hard on one character's head. And that's about it. But yet this movie, and primarily its unsentimentalized tale of first love between Rynn and Mario, riveted me. There's no final twist to turn the movie on its head and the climax is no more than two people drinking tea. Yet Rynn is such a well-rendered heroine that the movie succeeds as a character piece.

To be a kid but to also be independent, Rynn's situation seems to be a case of pure wish-fulfillment (it's appropriate that this movie's biggest following is found among Gen-Xers - the first generation of so-called 'latch-key' kids) and her bravado is attractive. But as The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane comes to an emotionally ambiguous end, the irony is that while Rynn has kept her freedom, her haunted eyes question how much more freedom she can endure.