TS: "Silence of the Lambs" vs. "Seven"

John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper?

Hahahahahahahaha

'silence..' is the better *movie* (i mean it's demme what else is it going to be?) but 'seven' scared the sh-t out of me. by a lo-o-o-ng way the most actually frightening/unsettling mainstream release of that decade.

the bit in the desert just before the box arrives (in those pre-internet pre-spoiler days) and they're all just...standing there wondering what will happen next, *phewsh* i thought i might have cardiac arrest live in odeon screen one.

Also, Savage Republic's "Real Men" appears in one basement scene.

(xp: yeah, i thought it was the autopsy scene but it was a while since i saw it)

has anyone ever verified the ImDb mention that Michael Stipe was considered to play Spacey's 7 role?

yeah definitely Zodiac no question, i concur!
i must see Devil In A Blue Dress.

we've abandoned the original topic in favor of fanboy fluff, I see

Nostalgia: when Freeman informs Pitt of the FBI "flagging" library records of potentially dangerous book borrowers, Pitt asks "How is this legal?"

pitt obv wasn't around for the 50s

these movies are both bad, morally repulsive

anyway, now i'm going to watch con air

it is in fact obv that Pitt wasnt around for the 50s.

whoa Silence is like Demme's homage to 70s B-movie legends! I didn't realize that was Roger Corman as FBI Director Hayden Burke, obv. Charles Napier's in it, etc.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, August 27, 2004 1:53 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just noticed this (demme co-wrote the story for black mama white mama):

http://i1354.photobucket.com/albums/q686/tinyservants/Screenshot2012-09-27at74630PM_zpsbbffbd1a.png
http://i1354.photobucket.com/albums/q686/tinyservants/ttilesilenceofthelambs_zps7f755b6d.jpg

I wouldn't feel spooked living there, not at all.

http://triblive.com/news/fayette/8936263-74/film-bill-buffalo#axzz3jI8iGagS

there was a time I'd have preferred Seven but it seems so uninteresting now aside from its visual look at nasty kills. It's completely fine, I like it! It's still my favorite of the "serial killer with a message for humanity" films. But it doesn't really reward repeat viewing vs SOTL, that is a film on another level.

the atmosphere Demme conjures up without putting on much of a show is really something, it's pretty unsettling from the start, before anything's even happened. The framing and the editing are both very unflashy but he is doing so much work with both before Hopkins even shows up. It's very quietly doing the same thing that Roger Ebert described Aliens as doing, kind of making you feel ill at ease and wrung out and unhappy (in both films, these are compliments!), and unlike Aliens it never really relaxes to let you breathe much at the end.

Hannibal and Red Dragon were major zeroes across the board in those departments. The TV series was great but even that didn't quite nail it like Demme did.

This actually relates back to my post one above: the house was bought, and it'll open as a bed-and-breakfast in March.

i have a hard time picking one over the other - both films v much My Bag (tm)

Silence for cinematography & superiority of adaptation since Demme makes the movie much less pervy abt Clarice, Harris does not gaf abt women the way Demme does. All of that closeup work w Foster & Hopkins, so incredible.

i still appreciate Seven for effects & production design, though. Still enjoy rewatching. the tableaus for the murders & Doe’s apartment etc just so detailed & meticulous & GROSS AF. The journals? The lightboxes for his trophies? Wild.
Rob Bottin special effects king absolutely delivers, Sloth “cough” scene alone STILL nightmare-fuel.
Great ending too.
My only ding is the story is a bit hokey.

think omars post just above on rewatch and *vibe* gets to the heart of it for me

i think se7en is a very good watch, a very good rewatch, not sure have orwould i ever go back to it now. the puzzle is the charm and while performances are good to fine there's no pleasure in watching it again now

but silence builds and flows like a symphony, theres something to focus on endlessly even outside of the big performances

I'm not big on Seven, but I'm glad the last three posts all say good things about Silence of the Lambs. I understand the backlash (even then, hence Philadelphia), but I can still get caught up in it: it's as grim and as intense as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Foster and Hopkins (who crossed some invisible line into camp in the two sequels) are great.

i saw se7en for the first time recently. gasped during that scene where the light shines behind brad pitt’s head. this fincher guy’s got potential

i think conceptually what helps my enjoyment of Seven is that it’s not grounded in a real city ie NY, it’s like a nameless Gotham that (to me) allows for a more heightened reality. It doesn’t jar me the way it would if it was trying to be more realistic

but yeah, if I’ looking for something to rewatch especially if i’m in a “comfort movie” zone I will always put on Silence of the Lambs. so many great moments, great performances & even beautifully composed shots

I liked that level of disorientation re: Seven, that it primarily takes place in a gritty, rainswept NYC kind of place, which is also apparently proximate to a dry, arid desert.

its dante lads cmon this is canon

I've no strong criticism of The Silence of the Lambs other than the sexual politics -- yet! Clarice Starling being ogled and hit on in a movie six months before the Clarence Thomas hearings gives it a lift (it's quite well-shot).

iirc there's nothing overt about how she's being regarded by her male colleagues, at least in that respect. But it's seamlessly blended, in the cinematic style, with the horror film aspects of the movie. The manner in which she moves thru the halls of law enforcement is depicted as intimidatingly (on a subtler scale) as her moving thru a crime scene.

The final shots get me too, but not the Hannibal dressed as jimmy Buffett stalking Chilton in Kokomo or wherever. There's something about how Clarice is watching Jack Crawford while on the phone with Hannibal, how he's leaving the room after he bids her adieu and she's trapped by the phone, it's so simple but so eerie, at a level of skill akin to Lynch incorporating unnerving shots of trees in the forest and stoplights at empty intersections swaying in the breeze throughout twin peaks. Demme was a phenomenal filmmaker.

silence of the lambs doesn't have Spacey in it so it wins

I can smell the stuffy, fetid air of those FBI offices as Clarice goes to Crawford's office.

iirc there's nothing overt about how she's being regarded by her male colleagues, at least in that respect.

Remember the elevator scene? Or when she as politely as she can orders the local cops to go home? There's a reaction shot of a moron cop giving her the once-over.

it's admittedly been awhile since i saw it! due for a rescreen. i recall the atmosphere so well, though. everything in this film is claustrophobic. even the most rudimentary outdoor scenes have a sense of suffocation somehow.

And there's no too many outdoor scenes in the film, are there? Just by memory I'm recalling jogging around Quantico, the final stalking scene, some exterior shots of Buffalo Bill's house, the girl getting kidnapped, probably more but that's all I got.

those are the ones i remember most, i remember the framing around the quantico exteriors making it feel like she could be kidnapped at any moment. idk there's just a very sinister air about the entire film from the start.

the scenes of Clarice being regarded, or the elevator scene are shot in ways that emphasize the imbalance but still subtly center HER in these situations, keeping the camera at her eyeline

Demme is from the off making it clear that Clarice is always proving herself, even just walking around, whether she wants to or not

when she’s having to prove herself to Lecter, it’s one of the rare times in her profession that she is listened to and weirdly, accepted, even if it’s by a psychopath

Yeah, I agree that Seven does not seem to take place in the real world, and its hyper stylization only adds to that. It's almost surreal in its bleakness. The creepiness of Silence is its more recognizable, realistic, almost mundane grit.

its dante lads cmon this is canon

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac)

seven 2: the new batch

I've no strong criticism of The Silence of the Lambs other than the sexual politics -- yet! Clarice Starling being ogled and hit on in a movie six months before the Clarence Thomas hearings gives it a lift (it's quite well-shot).

― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

i'm just coming to accept that the movie is going to be remembered as a timeless classic just because it's a great film with great acting and characters and nobody even _remembers_ the horrible transphobic stereotype, which... i mean, i'll say that for it, everybody who remembers _dressed to kill_ remembers that there's some trans stereotypes in there, same with _psycho_, but with _silence_? nope, it just doesn't register.

I don't think that's true, though. The backlash was so immediate that Demme made Philadelphia almost as an apology/mea culpa. I realize that a film about AIDS doesn't really address what you're talking about, but I mention this as evidence that there was a backlash (and protests, if I remember correctly), and I think in general the film is viewed far less positively today than when it swept all those awards.

i think it is a great movie
AND its portrayal of the killer is transphobic

not bringing it up in this conversation is not the same thing as us somehow saying that the transphobia is not there

I don't think that's true, though. The backlash was so immediate that Demme made Philadelphia almost as an apology/mea culpa. I realize that a film about AIDS doesn't really address what you're talking about, but I mention this as evidence that there was a backlash (and protests, if I remember correctly), and I think in general the film is viewed far less positively today than when it swept all those awards.

― clemenza

if you're looking at it from a historical perspective, there _was_ a debate going on at the time, there _was_ some criticism, but it centered on the question of whether buffalo bill was a gay man. hence why philadelphia was seen as an "apology" - the entirety of the discourse was centered around cis gay men. cis gay men were the only people whose voice was heard. the whole thing around philadelphia is fascinating, the whole "prestige movie" aspect... i watched the film _the celluloid closet_ a few years back and the whole last quarter is an extended self-congratulatory exercise in which everyone talks about how _philadelphia_ is the ultimate vindication of queer filmmaking, and, uh, i certainly recall it being _marketed_ that way at the time.

the idea that gay men are fine as long as they act exactly like straight men at all times is perhaps not an idea that has held up terribly well over the years. are there people who are interested in watching _philadelphia_ today? if so, _why_?

i'm not looking at it from a historical perspective... i'm looking at it from a contemporary lens, where lots of people in the younger generation _are_ big into _silence of the lambs_. as far as i can tell it's the lecter/starling dynamic, which is, i mean, it's an extremely powerful screen pairing. it's not a film that's going to go away just because of the transphobia.

my experience is that i hear people talking frequently about how great a film silence of the lambs is and when i bring up buffalo bill the people in question have genuinely forgotten that buffalo bill is in the film. again, understandably, because the character, while representing a long-standing transphobic stereotype, just isn't particularly interesting.

i mean, look, if _breakfast at tiffany's_ is considered a timeless classic, i don't really feel like i'm going to get anywhere by complaining about _silence of the lambs_.

I found this piece, which addresses some of the history.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/04/director-jonathan-demme-faced-down-silence-of-the-lambs-gay-backlash.html

I'm really just disagreeing with one narrow point in your post, that nobody even _remembers_ the horrible transphobic stereotype. The reading of that may have been different in 1991, just because it was a different world, but the pushback against the film was always there from the start, and today it's sometimes the only thing people remember about the film. Which is in part why some of us, I think, are saying there's also a great movie there.

According to that piece--or at least according to Demme--I'm wrong that there was a link to Philadelphia, which he says was conceived beforehand.

Among the reasons I like reading Robin Wood as a critic is his talent for interrogating films he loves for their failures in portraying complex masculinity.

I remember anti-"Silence" protests, or for sure articles about same. I also remember anti-"Basic Instinct" protests.

Y'all can keep Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I've hated both these movies for years even if I can now begrudgingly admit they are well made hollywood flicks.

Silence: I've never been a fan of the supervillain serial killer trope. It just seems so at odds with their reality. That scene where Hopkins escapes the cell leaving the guard in a crucifixion homage - c'mon. Also one of those movies where everyone is super smart until the plot calls for them to be dumb. I hate that. Buffalo Bill having a gun and night vision goggles and being behind Starling in a pitch black basement, but no, Sheriff Starling is too quick a shot for ol' Bill. Foster is great and Hopkins is memorable, the movie is creepy, so I get why people like it.

Seven: Like I said, I've never been a fan of the supervillain serial killer trope. I started hating Spacey when American Beauty came out and didn't see Seven until after that. Just more one-note Spacey mugging. I will admit the ending is hilarious, made moreso because it reminds of this great parody:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVMLivHTXac

I think Zodiac and Mindhunter (admittedly different shows with different interests) do the serial killer thing much better without the superhero stuff. Silence and Seven might as well be Marvel movies.

usually when people say they like "breakfast at tiffany's" they just mean they like Audrey Hepburn in a black dress, and maybe the cat. At least, that's what I mean when I say I like it.

Yeah idk that I buy that "nobody remembers the trans stereotype" in Silence of the Lambs.

Vox, on the 30th anniversary of the film in 2021

"A huge amount of discourse has occurred over the past three decades surrounding Silence of the Lambs’ transphobia."

"The film profoundly — if unintentionally — impacted transgender people for the worse."

Around the same time, critic Emily St. James wrote (also in Vox):

"I am a trans woman, and I love The Silence of the Lambs.

I know, I know, I know. I shouldn’t. The serial killer that FBI trainee Clarice Starling attempts to capture kills women so he can cut off their skin and wear it as a suit. He puts on dresses and makeup and dances around to “Goodbye Horses.” Despite the film’s attempts to insist that Buffalo Bill isn’t trans, all anyone remembers of the character is the scenes in which he seems to be making a cruel mockery of trans womanhood (to say nothing of queerness more generally)."

Yvonne Tasker, in her BFI mongraph abt Silence of the Lambs, floats the idea that both the serial killer and Starling are "cross-dressers", as she puts it (the book was first published in 2002):

Gumb's perverse attempt to construct a female body can be compared with Starling's cross-class aspirations and the investment she makes in masculinity (to the extent that agency and authority are coded masculine). Thus the two are an apt pairing: Buffalo Bill is a man with an investment in femininity (something of a perverse ambition, the film seems to suggest), while Starling is a woman whose actions are framed by masculine terms.

The repetition of 'perverse' seems clumsy, but I think this is a largely accurate reading, if only because the film sits well within the horror genre, where doubles, others, mirrors, are a constant.

Look. I don't want the discussion of Silence of the Lambs to be _about_ transphobia. It is a legitimately great movie, it is clearly going to be remembered as an all-time classic, and there's lots to discuss about it _besides_ the transphobia.

The transphobia needs to be part of the discussion, though. I think it's easy to underestimate just how big a role _The Silence of the Lambs_ and _The Crying Game_ played in perpetuating transphobic stereotypes. In neither case was this _intentional_. Demme wasn't setting out to make a transphobic film. Demme's film, in fact, like Harris' book, reflects the cultural norms of the time regarding transgender people - which is why it _is_ so important to talk about the transphobia, because it's _not uniquely transphobic_, it reflects a point of view that was _normative_ at the time of its release _regarding trans people_.

I found this piece, which addresses some of the history.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/04/director-jonathan-demme-faced-down-silence-of-the-lambs-gay-backlash.html

I'm really just disagreeing with one narrow point in your post, that nobody even _remembers_ the horrible transphobic stereotype. The reading of that may have been different in 1991, just because it was a different world, but the pushback against the film was always there from the start, and today it's sometimes the only thing people remember about the film. Which is in part why some of us, I think, are saying there's also a great movie there.

According to that piece--or at least according to Demme--I'm wrong that there was a link to Philadelphia, which he says was conceived beforehand.

― clemenza

It's an interesting article. Interesting to see the way the issues were represented in 2017, which in trans terms was a million years ago.

I do have some... disagreements with the way Bloomer represents the film, but I'm not really inclined to get into them unless people take it as being, like, a definitive statement. Which it's not. I don't want to spend a lot of time arguing about one narrow point when there's a broader picture to be considered.

Anyway, yes, it's not true that "nobody remembers the transphobia". _I_ certainly remember the transphobia. Because while Silence of the Lambs' take on transness _isn't_ unique, the important thing about the film to me is that it gave _widespread voice_ to that transphobic narrative. It was probably the most important film of that entire generation in terms of how it portrayed trans people. And, well, that just happened to be my generation. I was 14 when the film came out. I don't _blame_ Demme or the film, I don't think anything they were doing was _malicious_, but in terms of its impact? Yeah, I do think that the film had a profound, even life-changing, negative impact on my life.

Yes, _Silence_ is a great film, a genuinely great film. I'm working pretty hard here to not take offense at people in this thread trying to explain that to me, a trans woman, because I know nobody _means_ to be offensive here. It's a great film, but it's not a film I personally enjoy, pretty much solely because of the transphobia. That's not to say that other people can't or shouldn't enjoy the film. I'm just talking about my personal experience with the film. I'm not going to judge anybody, including other trans people, for liking the film. When it comes to the film, I do think Emily Van Der Werff has a really good take on the way we should treat it. I'm inclined to agree with her suggestions.

What I would say rather than that "nobody remembers the transphobia" is that the impact of the film's transphobia is underrated by cis people, and the transphobia itself is seldom discussed by cis people. I mean, I'm not saying this to pick on anybody in particular, but I'm not sure that the question of whether Kevin Spacey is in the film is more important than its broad-reaching societal impact in promoting transphobia. I'm not even sure... Alfred, when you talked about the "sexual politics", was that with reference to its promotion of transphobia, or is it more of a broader statement?

I don't like talking about the transphobia. I don't want to bring it up. A lot of cis people get defensive, they think I'm being a moralist wagging my finger at them, and I have no desire to put myself in that position.

People keep _talking_ about the film, though, and if people are going to keep _talking_ about it, again, I think the transphobia needs to be part of what they talk about. I also, I don't want to always be the one who's fucking talking about it. I'm tired of talking about it. There's a whole lot of shit that's more important to me.

Yvonne Tasker, in her BFI mongraph abt Silence of the Lambs, floats the idea that both the serial killer and Starling are "cross-dressers", as she puts it (the book was first published in 2002):

Gumb's perverse attempt to construct a female body can be compared with Starling's cross-class aspirations and the investment she makes in masculinity (to the extent that agency and authority are coded masculine). Thus the two are an apt pairing: Buffalo Bill is a man with an investment in femininity (something of a perverse ambition, the film seems to suggest), while Starling is a woman whose actions are framed by masculine terms.

The repetition of 'perverse' seems clumsy, but I think this is a largely accurate reading, if only because the film sits well within the horror genre, where doubles, others, mirrors, are a constant.

― Ward Fowler

I could talk very in-depth about this topic, the way Tasker has framed it, the way you have framed it, and the problems and challenges it faces for trans people. I don't really want to right now.

... Alfred, when you talked about the "sexual politics", was that with reference to its promotion of transphobia, or is it more of a broader statement?

I wasn't out when Demme released the film (I was a high school junior), but, as a guy who already suspected he was at least not straight, I was aware of my conflict watching those Buffalo Bill scenes: the dancing, the goddamn poodle. I suppose I meant the phrase as a broader statement. I didn't intend, though, to handwave those cavils, i.e. "other than the sexual politics."

the goddamn poodle

She was a Bichon Frise.

sounds like it's served with bib lettuce and a light vinaigrette.

it is, and it's delicious!

something something fava beans

I wasn't out when Demme released the film (I was a high school junior), but, as a guy who already suspected he was at least not straight, I was aware of my conflict watching those Buffalo Bill scenes: the dancing, the goddamn poodle. I suppose I meant the phrase as a broader statement. I didn't intend, though, to handwave those cavils, i.e. "other than the sexual politics."

― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

i don't see you as handwaving! i was just wondering how much the particular effect of that film on trans people is known or understood, haha

oh, and if anybody happens to be interested in a deeper dive into _The Silence of the Lambs_ as it relates to transphobia, i think Lindsay Ellis' video on the pop culture roots of transphobia is excellent and breaks it down probably better than i could:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHTMidTLO60

i don't see you as handwaving! i was just wondering how much the particular effect of that film on trans people is known or understood, haha

― Kate (rushomancy),

Thanks :)