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Silence of the Lambs (1991)
The source material by Thomas Harris could have been adapted in different ways, as is evident by later, cheaper thrills like 'Red Dragon' and 'Hannibal', but Demme chose not to make a horror movie in favor of a human drama which just so happens to be a bit creepy. A wise decision indeed, especially as the film so knowingly toys with what we expect out of horror movies with far-less sinister monsters, or at least less real. But what is a monster? Is an intelligent murderer more sympathetic than a delirious one? It's hard to think otherwise as we simultaneously fall for the cunning charm of Dr. Lecter (played exquisitely by Hopkins, of course) and are repulsed by Buffalo Bill (Levine). At first glance this opposition may be inaccurately attributed solely to the two character roles and performances themselves; it is Demme's careful eye, however, which guides us. When Demme shoots scenes with Lecter, we become him as an audience; we are strange to Starling as she sits outside the cell and asks Lecter/us to help her, as is made clear by the terrified gaze she points directly into the camera. But we see her with a calm deliberancy as Lecter does, we calmly read her thoughts, and dissecting her becomes increasingly more interesting even though it is irrelevant to the story. But looking at Bill is a horrendous thing to do. He is defined by individual parts- a nipple piercing, a quivering nostril, genitals tucked between legs- and we see him as he sees the world and wants the world to see him: not as an organic whole but by detailed pieces, each organic and its own entity. I admire Demme's adaptation because he is quite a different visionary than Thomas Harris. The first time I saw the film I disliked it because of its lack of depth behind Bill as a person and detail behind the crime investigation, both of which were heavily covered in the novel; while I have found the first more symbolically oriented around Demme's camera, the second would simply not belong here. Like Kubrick's 'The Shining', this is a different piece of art than its source, and cold technical detail is less important than the witnessing of the warm flicker of an eyelash, a movement which says much more to Demme about human nature than any case file ever could.
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