Intro
The Silence of the Lambs is a psychological thriller directed by Jonathan Demme, telling a story about a young FBI trainee who seeks a serial killer with the help of another cannibalistic serial killer. This film has an engaging climax that I desire to analyze.
In my opinion, the exciting climax is from 1:37:35 to 1:50:02, followed by a resolution till the very end. Hence, it lasts around 13 minutes, taking 11% of the whole 118-min running length, which is a perfect percentage in this case. During the climax, two plot lines merge with an unexpected outcome - the young female protagonist must risk her life facing the criminal alone.
Sequence 1 – I1 vs Ohio
Starting point – The climax is rising from a house in Calumet City. A combination of external and internal scenes makes the audience think it is Bill’s location. The interior environment is very quiet and dark, and the only sounds are generated by the moths. The antagonist, AKA Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb, picks up one moth stuck in a chrysalis and helps pull its body out, which shows his impatience with his transformation. As it has worked on the moth multiple times, he is confident and desirable to transform himself as fast as possible. The director shows Bill’s complex intentions from his behaviours, juxtaposed to the transition of the moth, which is brilliant and insightful.
The action rises as a professional squad appears outside of the house, and they are ready to attack, which makes the audience wonder what will happen while the protagonist is in Belvedere, Ohio. When watching the film, I didn’t search for the real-world distance between the two cities, but I knew there must be far enough between the two places so that only one group of people would encounter Bill.
After searching, it is about a 7-hour driving (by car) distance in-between, and a flight or helicopter may still make it. However, only the Jake group has this kind of resources, whereas the trainee doesn’t. The suspense of when the two groups will meet up leads to which city might be the correct destination. The choices of locations offer multiple possibilities for the climax, encouraging the audience to think and guess.
Then, a bit of rest with the moth shows again, at which point Bill says, “So powerful. So beautiful.” I believe he is not only speaking to the moth but also speaking to himself. Suddenly, the dog barks, creating a slight tension, which alerts him. Meanwhile, the squad is moving cautiously with guns in their hands outside the house with bright lighting.
Bill starts looking for his Precious – the dog anxiously. The shot is then fast switched to the squad again. Afterwards, Bill finds his dog with Catherine Martin (the daughter of U.S. Senator Ruth Martin), who also is the ultimate quest in the movie. The indoor scene becomes louder because Catherine begins to swear at Bill. Interestingly, here is a comparison between Bill with his dog and Catherine with her mom. For instance, how Catherine kidnaps the dog is similar to how Bill kidnaps her. Consequently, Bill is concerned and frightened, and meanwhile, Jack’s outdoor running is a short-shooting action. The film shows that both outdoor and indoor activities are happening simultaneously, which successfully brings some assertion and expectation to the audience’s minds.
Bill is trying to save his dog from Catherine, and Jack’s squad is still outside trying to save Catherine, which is another comparison. The shots are switched quite frequently between the two environments, keeping building tension among conflicts. The kidnapping of the dog stimulates Bill’s emotions and reactions (rise). At the same time, the outside squad tries some tricks to probe the house where they think Bill lives (rest). Compared to the indoor scene, the outdoor becomes much quieter, and the strong contrast catches the audience’s attention tightly. Angrily, Bill gets his gun and is ready to kill someone (rise). While one disguised delivery person from the squad is pressing the doorbell (rest), an alarming doorbell rings super annoying inside the house (rise). The ring is cleverly used to connect the outside and the inside spaces. The indoor action becomes longer while the outdoor rest becomes shorter.
Eventually, Bill gets out of the basement and opens the door while dressing himself up. Surprisingly or not surprisingly, Starling (the protagonist) appears in front of a dark-coloured door, whose face looks rest assured. She says, “Good afternoon, sorry to bother you.” politely with a smile. On the other hand, the FBI squad breaks into a white door and bright windows. At this moment, the audience knows Jack was wrong about Bill’s place, whereas Starling is right.
Sequence 2 – Trainee Starling vs Buffalo Bill
Here comes the head-on confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist. The former is frankly telling her intention, expecting to get valuable information about the first victim -Fredrica Bimmel. By contrast, Jack is slower to realize his misleading judgement and speaks out the trainee's name, which brings attention back to her situation (rise).
In the conversation between Starling and Bill, when the former asks if the latter knows the victim, he hesitates to give unusual responses with a strange question - “Was she a great, big fat person?” Then Startling tries to inspect the house with her limited vision. Bill notices he might have said something that makes him suspicious and tries to explain how he knows about the victim and finds an excuse to invite in the intelligent FBI trainee. The tension keeps rising.
This time, the director shows the right exterior environment of Bill’s house as a rest with birds’ sounds only, a totally different suburb location where Jack may not make it to save Starling. When the targeted house is demonstrated on the screen, the background music rises up, creating a sense of danger. At this point, Starling is questioning why Bill is living in Mrs. Lippman’s house and looking around cautiously with doubts by asking for clues that Mrs. Lippman might have. The interior design is a mess with suspicious stuff in the room. Once a moth flies onto a bunch of sewing threads, it proves that the man is the serial killer.
Hence, the audience knows that their hero also confirms her doubt, and her face turns into assertiveness, especially with her eye expressions. She is targeting the killer with a serious look and a slightly nervous voice while she calmly prepares her gun. By comparison, Bill’s gun in the kitchen is close to him, with a rising volume of the BGM. Starling’s dialogue becomes more carefully, and frowns appear in between her eyebrows. However, she makes a severe mistake of calling Bill “Mr.,” and Bill doesn’t feel comfortable about it. She also notices it and grabs her gun out from her pocket, a bit rusty, and she is repeating some standard commands like “Put your hands over your head!”, “…hands in the back!”, “Spread your legs!”, “Turn around.” That is how we know she is afraid too, and she lacks the practical experience to chase criminals. “Turn around” allows Bill to run away and grab his gun. She does not check other rooms on the ground and goes directly to the basement. The pacing of the film is accelerating.
When she first enters the basement, the sound we can only hear is her fast-pacing breaths (rest). As she opens another door in the basement, we can catch Bill’s music and Catherin’s shouting (rise). In the room with a well, she remembers to check spaces behind doors and lock them, which is an improvement compared to her past failure during one FBI simulation training.
Finally, the protagonist meets her mission – Catherin, but a more important quest for her is to capture the killer, and she decides to calm down Catherin and hunt down the killer alone. However, Catherin’s curses expose Starling’s position to make her situation even more dangerous, so the young trainee hides in the dark door corner for her safety. But she is not patient and follows the killer to a darker and riskier space – the moth room (the lighting works well). Starling is exploring his space and one disgusting corpse is found in a bathtub (rest), which indicates that a dramatically rising moment is coming.
Unexpectedly, the light is turned off, and all of us are in the dark until Bill wears his night-vision goggles as a payoff of his crime tool. Through Bill’s goggles, the audience can see the young trainee’s slow-moving actions in the dark (or green as Bill can see her) while Bill is slowly approaching her, too. Starling is tripped and falls. When Bill is closer and closer, Staling’s breaths sound louder and louder.
Bill even tries to use his hands to touch her, which means she is totally in his control now. At this moment, the BGM becomes more exciting, and Bill is ready to shoot her.
With the sound of the hammer on Bill’s gun, as a comparison with Starling’s previous behaviour in the living room (turning on the hammer of her gun), our hero turns her back and shoots the killer undoubtedly and decisively. An intense gunfight, namely, a final climactic fight scene, is processed between the two opponents. After the wall falls, the killer is lying on the floor, too. Although the antagonist is killed, our hero breathes heavily, which presents that she is still afraid because she could have died. The intensive climax ends here. This gunfight is a fascinating twist at the peak of the climax.
Overall, I think the sequence is established as “actions in rests” in a unique way. Nonetheless, I have a question, who is the white butterfly or the yellow butterfly.
Resolution – Eventually, from “afternoon” to dusk, it takes a while for Jack to arrive here to comfort our hero. Starling gets one part of what she has desired for such a long time since her father died – being an FBI agent. Jack’s facial expressions say that he used her, and she wears a ring on her ring finger to keep a spiritual distance from him, which is a resolution of their relationship. Then our young agent gets a phone call from the charming cannibal killer – Dr. Lecter, who says, “Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?” which is employed to highlight the film title and the inner motivation of the new FBI agent. The conversation between them resolves the current conflict and remains a cliffhanger and ambiguousness about the future relationship between Clarice M. Startling and Dr. Lecter. One more interesting line from him is “I’m having an old friend for dinner.”, which pays off the conflict between Dr. Lecter and Dr. Chilton. As a result, the film ends during Dr. Lecter’s stalking.
Major effective components
1. A countdown movie with a quest for saving an essential character is applied to increase the tension of the drama. e.g., Catherin’s existence.
2. Action vs calm pacing patterns, integrated with a collateral plot line through the Montage technique, are effective in building audiences’ expectations and surprising audiences and characters synchronously. Detailed rises and rests are tagged in the previous section.
3. A lot of comparisons are adopted to juxtapose people’s behaviours and characteristics, which could be considered a repetition of patterns, such as kidnapping, guns, houses.
4. When the protagonist is confronting the criminal alone, it is her psychological and physical Kryptonite moments. It is how we empathize and engage in her situation.
5. This film has a typical action-adventure climax with a structure of a small fight, a big chase and a big fight.
6. The background music, sound effects, visual transitions (incl. lighting & camera angles), actions, and dialogues are simplified precisely to strengthen the relationships among characters, as Hannibal said before the climax, “Simplicity.” For example, some shot focus on characters’ faces to enhance the tension and let the audience understand their thoughts through eyes and facial expressions.
7. The final resolution explains character relationships well and amplifies a suspenseful situation for future films.
8. The world and character settings are a successful fundamental creation myth for the future storytelling of Hannibal Lecter.
Ineffective components
1. When ordering Bill to do a series of actions, Starling doesn’t shoot at all. In my imagination, she could at least shoot him once within such a close distance.
2. When the trainee follows Bill to the basement, she doesn’t check other rooms on the floor and another room in the basement. It doesn’t match her training in the first place. She needs to make a phone call to ask for assistance, but she doesn’t bother to find it first. Therefore, I think it is feasible to add more shots of her exploration and uncertainties in the house.
3. If the director wants to show that the trainee cares about the hostage, shouldn’t she stay with Catherin to guarantee safety? Or the director’s purpose is to present Starling’s inner quest for silencing the lambs (killing murders) rather than saving other people’s lives? I’m not sure.
Conclusion
The Silence of Lambs has a classical suspensive action film climax to highlight ways of living based on diverse choices. There are meaningful directing patterns applied and excellent performance illustrated within. Every time I rewatch some scenes, I become more paranoid about what the director was thinking and wanted to express. Shakespeare once wrote that "There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes." Fortunately, I am one of them so as to understand story-creating better.
Reference
The Silence of the Lambs - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/
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