•
Rating:
When I first saw "The Silence of the Lambs," it was the period when television networks, gripped by their first (genuine?) pangs of conscience, began to bombard their film programming with red, yellow, and green labels as a warning for children regarding the viewing of these films.
At the time, I was an innocent little boy, all about home, soccer matches, and communion (fortunately, the PlayStation was invented about ten years later; otherwise, my brain would be mush now); I must have been about ten or eleven years old, but I quickly got used to this classification of films. I simplified it this way: green label "Home Alone," yellow label "Ghost," red label "The Silence of the Lambs." But I hadn't seen the latter yet. For me, it was a red label simply because that rather unaesthetic sign stood out in the advertisement (after a few years, they made it smaller), and because from the TV trailer, I sensed it wasn't a very cheerful film.
So, in search of reassuring/authorizing opinions, I asked for clarification from a knowledgeable cinephile and trusted person: my father. "It's a good film, but you are still too young to watch it" he told me. But how young? For goodness sake! I'm 11 years old, I'm a little man now. If it had been up to me, I would have even enrolled in driving school... Nothing doing. For the sake of my young psyche, my wise father dispensed advice, coaxing me away from any daring "masochistic" intent. But the more he tried to explain to me the reason for that red label, the more I felt I had to make my own decision. Done and done. After all, I am Neapolitan; when have you ever seen someone who doesn't respect traffic lights on the street obey them on TV?* So, the fateful evening came when they broadcasted "The Silence of the Lambs"; maybe I really wasn't old enough for that film, maybe I was constantly ready with the remote control for fear of getting a telling-off if my dad walked in, I got a rather sketchy idea of the plot, postponing the understanding of some developments to a few years later. But in a technical sense, my film knowledge remained virtually unchanged: there was a villain, nicknamed Buffalo Bill, who kidnapped and killed women (making sure of their size) to make a sort of human skin suit. Clarice Sterling, a young FBI agent, investigated the case with the help of another villain endowed with an extraordinary intelligence and a cold, impenetrable gaze, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist with questionable culinary preferences who, for some reason, had something to do with Buffalo Bill and "guided" the investigations from inside a bare and grim cell.
There's no need to tell you how superb Anthony Hopkins' performance was, how believable Jodie Foster's portrayal of a brave yet inexperienced agent was, or how unsettling and grotesque Ted Levine was in the role of the mad skinner, if not to conclude that this film sends shivers down my spine just as it did the first time I saw it, even though more than ten years have passed since then. The psychological impact the film had on me was such that even today I believe I've never witnessed an excursus into human madness as brutal as the one depicted in "The Silence of the Lambs." The victims' ordeal did not end with death; the murders did not represent the restoration of a violated order, nor the macabre completion of a distorted design of justice (as would happen in "Se7en" a few years later), but rather a means to achieve an even more gruesome end (cannibalism for Lecter, the "second skin" for Buffalo Bill).
Some scenes are as chilling from a scenic point of view as they are from a psychological perspective; even the most insignificant detail seems designed to disturb the viewer: from Hannibal's gaze when Chilton, the director of the psychiatric hospital, wonders where his pen has gone, to Clarice's walk through the wing of the worst psychopaths (at the time, I didn't quite understand what one of those madmen had thrown at her); from the muffled cries of the unfortunate guard whose nose Hannibal bites off to the notes of Bach, to the harrowing hunt of Clarice in the dark, unaware that the killer is walking right behind her. Speaking of the latter, among his sporadic appearances, one is, in my opinion, particularly suggestive, skillfully structured on a play of contrasts: the one in which the notes of "Goodbye Horses," a very catchy tune, accompany the preparation of a murder in an unusually singular death ritual (Buffalo Bill naked in front of the mirror, in narcissistic attitudes, identifying with what he aspires to become, while his future victim makes a desperate attempt to escape the narrow well in which she lies). Despite the nightmares, and the unconsciousness of that "first time," I was aware that I was encountering a great thriller, perhaps the most (rightly) celebrated of the last 20 years, which I would appreciate more and more over the years, and above all, it taught me the respect of traffic lights...
I better go... I have an old friend for dinner (and this time he's buying...)!
*don't take this too seriously
Loading comments slowly
