The Silence of the Lambs

1991 was a pretty diverse year for Best Picture nominees.  A thriller, an animated film, a conspiracy film, a gangster movie, and a romantic drama.  The five nominees were The Silence of the Lambs, Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, and The Prince of Tides.  It honestly doesn't get more different than those five movies.  Beauty and the Beast became the first animated movie to be nominated for best picture.  The ultimate winner was Silence of the Lambs which many people consider to be the only horror movie to win Best Picture. I consider it more of a psychological thriller more than a horror movie, but the point is movies like this do not usually even get nominated let alone win.  The only other psychological thriller to win was in 1940 when Hitchcock's Rebecca won.   Also, going against Silence of the Lambs was the fact that it came out in January (most movies nominated for Best Picture usually come out in the latter half of the year) and it is the first movie to win that was already available to watch at home on tape. Despite all of this it still won best picture and became one of only 3 movies to win the Top 5 Academy Awards(Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress).

The Silence of the Lambs is about  an FBI trainee Clarice Starling(Jodie Foster) who is sent to interview Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter(Anthony Hopkins).  The FBI is trying to use knowledge gained from other serial killers to help create a psychological profile  for a current serial killer called "Buffalo Bill".  They send Clarice to develop the profile of Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is an ex-psychiatrist who would also would kill and eat his victims.  Lecter uses his ability to analyze people to prey on the weak minded.  When he first meets Clarice he tries to intimidate her but she barely flinches.  Having met someone who he feels is almost equal to him he starts to play a little cat and mouse game with her.  There are many back and forth between the two of them and Clarice is able to decipher the cryptic clues he gives about "Buffalo Bill".  After "Buffalo Bill" kidnaps a senators daughter the warden of the jail tries to use Lector for his own gain.  Of course Lecter is aware of this and uses the warden's over confidence to plan what is one of the most gruesome escape in movies.  But before he escapes he has one last meeting with Clarice and hands her his psychological review of "Buffalo Bill".  But can she catch "Bill" in time before he kills the senators daughter? I won't ruin the end.

This is such a great movie.  Some many things I love about this movie.  First off it gets right into the story.  You meet Clarice as she is summoned to the head of the FBI and then she is meeting with Lecter shortly after.  And once Anthony Hopkins come on screen you see the menace in his eyes and the movie never backs down.  At just under 2 hours in someone else's hands this could have been a 3 hour movie.  But Jonathon Demme keeps it compact and quick.  Also, the scenes with both Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster are amazing.  It is great to see two great actors inhabit the same screen and go head to head.  Even though we see that Clarice is still learning and does not equal Lecter she stands her ground and he comes to respect her.  The conversations are not only well acted but well written and directed.  The tension you get just from their interaction is better than any of the actually "horror" scenes in the movie, and Lecter is more scarier when he is toying with people psychologically then when actually killing them.  Of course when we do get to the killing part it gets pretty gruesome and we begin to see the real craziness of Lecter.  And the movie has one of the best last lines of any movie "I'm having an old friend for dinner".  The movie deserved all of the wins it got.

Two of the best picture nominated films Beauty and the Beast and The Prince of Tides were not nominated for Best Director.  This created a bit of a controversy since Barbara Streisand directed The Prince of Tides and it was the third time in five years that a women directed a movie that was nominated for Best Picture but was not nominated for Best Director.  Randa Haines for Children of a Lesser God and Penny Marshall for Awakenings were the other two women who directed a Best Picture nominee but did not get a Best Director nomination.  The only female director to be nominated up to this point was Lina Wermuller for the foreign  film Seven Beauties in 1976.  The Academy was perceived as being prejudicial to women directors.  The two directors that replaced them was Ridley Scott for Thelma and Louise and Jon Singleton for Boyz N the Hood.  Jon Singleton became the first African-American director to be nominated for Best Director and also at 24 the youngest director to be nominated.

Other Notable Oscar Trivia
Terminator 2: Judgment Day won four technical awards
After winning Best Supporting Actor for City Slickers Jack Palance did push-ups on the stage to prove he wasn't old.
Anthony Hopkins win for Best Acting is considered the shortest time on screen for a leading actor win. He had less time on screen then Jack Palance did in City Slickers.
Laura Dern was nominated for Best Actress for Rambling Rose and her mother Diane Ladd was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for the same movie.  The only real life mother and daughter to be nominated for the same film.
And personally I think Val Kilmer should have been nominated for playing Jim Morrison in The Doors.  Great performance.