The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – J. Demme

Revisiting this classic thriller after many years, I was somewhat startled to see just how many close-ups director Jonathan Demme used, particularly in the early scenes of the film when FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) first meets imprisoned serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins).  We are treated to a lot of shot-countershots of giant heads in dialogue; I suspect that this was meant to have a psychological effect on viewers, to focus them in on the tete-a-tete (so to speak) underway, the mind games, as it were.  (But these aren’t the only close-ups – we also see Scott Glenn, head of the FBI Behavioural Science squad, up close and probably others too).  You’ll recall that Starling and the FBI want to use Lecter’s knowledge of serial killers (he was a psychiatrist as well as a killer himself) to track down a new serial killer, Buffalo Bill, who is killing young women and skinning them. After the close-ups, I noticed the editing of the film which keeps things moving and toward the end, includes a good use of cross-cutting (between the SWAT team descending on a house near Chicago and Starling entering another house in Ohio all on her own) that pulls the rug out from under viewers. Apart from that, the editing isn’t conspicuous or flashy but it is solid and effective.  The third thing I thought about was the fact that Buffalo Bill is portrayed as someone having gender identity issues – as we so often see in thrillers, it is too easy to choose a villain from a group seen as different or other, one that is already stereotyped or stigmatised (does this make it easier for mainstream crowds to cheer for the hero? Ugh).  This is unfortunate but I guess it is heartening to realise that we have come a long way in understanding and respecting the rights of people from different gender “categories” (transgender, gender fluid, etc.) -- and perhaps the gender dysphoria that Buffalo Bill supposedly has would be lessened if stigma were also lessened.  But that doesn’t excuse the film from linking these issues (or mental health concerns more broadly) to murderous intent.  Nevertheless, if you are willing and able to set aside this flaw, then The Silence of the Lambs is an enjoyable thriller, somewhat gory but not especially scary (although that may be how I feel on this third or fourth viewing), with strong acting from Jodie Foster in particular and a rather over-the-top but chillingly effective performance from Anthony Hopkins.   Nothing deep here but one of the pivotal influences on a host of forensic crime dramas (on big and small screens) for decades to come – and on a thousand psychology students who hope that they can find jobs tracking criminals using crime scene evidence and their wits alone.

Code Inconnu (2000)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Code Inconnu (2000) – M. Haneke

In Paris, a white teenage boy throws some litter into a panhandling older Romanian woman’s lap and is told off by an older black youth and an altercation begins.  The cops arrive and take everyone away (blaming the black man, a first signal that the film is in some ways about racism and failures of multiculturalism).  Director Michael Haneke uses this incident, filmed in one long shot, as a starting place for a series of glimpses into the lives of those involved in or affected by this short moment in time.  For example, the white teen has run away from his rural home where his father (perhaps lonely, perhaps poor) is hoping to pass the farm down to him because his older brother, a photojournalist currently dating Juliette Binoche, has already moved to the city.  We see Binoche (playing actress Anne Laurent) both “in character” in films and plays and also on the Parisian street or metro – because the various episodes that Haneke shows us begin and end mid-stream, bookended with moments of black screen, it is often difficult to know what we are seeing: moments from the past, present, or future (relative to the key incident) and involving which characters (unknown until they appear)? The stories of the black youth (his family has legally immigrated from Mali and one of his sisters is deaf and mute) and the Romanian woman (she is an illegal immigrant who hopes to send money back to her family) are interwoven to paint a picture of the failures of French society (or any society) to come to terms with the needs for greater understanding that globalisation and multiculturalism require.  This description may make Haneke’s film seem straightforward but it is anything but.  Instead, the purpose of the various moments we see can be elusive, perhaps only providing some background to the very different existences of different people in Paris, perhaps showing us clashes between those people, and hinting only sometimes vaguely at motivations and larger themes (for example, about the reasons for immigration from Romania or Afghanistan).  As a starting place for a meditation on this changing world, at the start of the twenty-first century, it is never less than stimulating.

  

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) – R. Mulligan

I’ve never read the book (by Harper Lee) and perhaps I should.  I suspect it captures the nostalgic feeling of childhood memories of “events of significance” even more than the movie does.  And the movie does a very nice job of showing us a grown-up world through a child’s eyes, a grown-up world where things are unfair and people are treated badly because of the colour of their skin.  It is small-town Alabama in the early 1930s and the children are Scout, a six-year-old girl, and Jem, a ten-year-old boy, and they are the children of grown-up lawyer Atticus Finch, played by a dignified Gregory Peck.  He’s a widower with a deep sense of justice who is called upon (and agrees) to defend black Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) who has been accused of raping a white girl.  Of course, the odds are stacked against them and the racism of the town is such that Robinson needs to be protected from lynching from the same sort of men who are later sitting on the jury.  Yet, we believe in Robinson, and in Finch. as wholeheartedly as his children do, and we see the girl’s father, Bob Ewell, as the true villain, almost an embodiment of evil here.  But the movie is not all serious and we also see the children enjoy themselves, daring each other to run up and touch the door of a spooky nearby house where rumour has it that “Boo” Radley, a shut-in young man (who represents a sort of Bogeyman) lives and who may be dangerous (or perhaps not, since he may be leaving small gifts for the kids).  The plot ultimately weaves a number of different strands together into a satisfying whole, even as it avoids any semblance of a happy ending that would claim to have solved the problem of racism.  Off in the future, from the standpoint of the narrator (a grown-up Scout), these events still seem significant – and the effect of the book and the movie on American society, perhaps more significant still.  Yet, more cultural advances would be needed before we would begin to hear black voices telling their own stories rather than having white advocates speak for them (inside and out of the movies). 

Lola (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Lola (1961) – J. Demy

France at the start of the 1960s, not Paris, but Nantes (to the Southwest).  Is director Jacques Demy part of the New Wave? The film, shot by Godard’s DP Raoul Coutard, does have the look, in glorious widescreen black and white.  But Demy dedicated the film to Max Ophuls, master of the longshot in La Ronde (1950), Madame de (1953), and Lola Montes (1955; from which this film gets its name) – did he represent the “tradition of quality” that the New Wave was rebelling against? He was dead before they began (in 1957).  Demy would soon direct the melancholic but glorious The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), which had the actors sing all of the dialogue to the music of Michel Legrand (who also provides the score here in Demy’s first film).  So, Demy followed his own path (as did his wife, Agnes Varda; Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962) and so does this film.  Although the film is titled for Anouk Aimée’s cabaret dancer (very different from her sour wife in Fellini’s 8 ½, 1963), we seem to spend more time with Marc Michel who plays Roland Cassard, a bored and rather aimless young man who meets former childhood friend Lola by accident on the sidewalk and falls in love with her.  However, Lola, a single mum pining for her boyfriend now gone for 7 years, is not interested in Roland nor anyone who might represent a serious commitment (she has a fling with an American sailor instead).  A side-plot or two introduces characters who bear resemblances to the main duo and link with them (or others in the story), a feature that Demy also apparently included _across_ films where these characters may turn up later.  Perhaps the plot goes nowhere – certainly this is the case for Cassard (but not for Lola herself) – but the idling is enjoyable, with a dance number and a potential crime enlivening things.  Apart from the beautiful opening shot, I didn’t register many Ophuls styled long-shots (they may be there), but the film has an ease and grace that reminds one of the master...and simultaneously, the New Wave.

  

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) – S. Spielberg

Forty years later, Spielberg’s examination of the events leading up to our first encounter with aliens (the third kind = actual contact beyond sightings or discovering physical traces) still retains a sense of child-like wonder at new and amazing things.  In fact, the film impacted me so much when I was a child myself that I ended up taking a pilgrimage to Devils Tower, Wyoming, in the early 1990s – the butte is awesome enough on its own but its association with this film adds an extra weirdness factor that makes it even more compelling.  And, yes, compelling is the operant word here, because the film depicts how, after an encounter of the first kind, a number of humans (including chiefly Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon) are drawn to this spot where it appears that the aliens will land.  But the film starts a few weeks earlier and shows us how the obsession with aliens takes over the lives of these ordinary people, interspersed with shots of Professor Francois Truffaut’s academic investigation into alien encounters. Of course, the special effects (coordinated by Douglas Trumbull, who had earlier done 2001: A Space Odyssey) are great (and old-school, not CGI) and the five-tone message that unlocks the ability to communicate with the aliens became seared into our brains (although the rest of John Williams’ score is less memorable).  Overall, the film makes you want to believe in (friendly) aliens, even though Spielberg leaves it for viewers to go deeper into the ideas and outcomes introduced here.