As I near the end of seeing all the movies on the American Film Institute’s (AFI) 100 Greatest American Films of All Time list, I am beginning to feel I have gone about it the wrong way.  For starters, I did not do it in any order, such as one to 100 or the other way around.  Instead, I chose them at random.  Sometimes I specifically picked the shortest one I could find.  Others choices were whatever whim struck me at the time.  What I am now realizing is that I saved the worst ones for last.  That is not how I like to approach anything.  In a sense, I feel it is immature to go about life in this manner.  Little kids pick whatever is best, easiest, or sweetest first because they do not understand the reward that comes with waiting.  While God calls us to be children before Him, it is with a mind to Heaven.  That takes a more adult approach to spirituality, at least in certain areas.  This is all a long way of saying that I cannot wait to be done with AFI, particularly after number sixty-seven, The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

The Silence of the Lambs obliquely refers to a cadet at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) training center in Quantico, Virginia, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster).  Conversely, she is neither silent or a lamb, though there is a great deal of sub-text around her to suggest that this is how a woman should behave.  While she continues her training, there is a serial killer on the loose.  He has been dubbed by the press as “Buffalo Bill” for the grizzly way he removes the skins of his victims.  I might as well tell you right now that his real name is Jame Gumb (Ted Levine) as his identity is not hidden from the viewer.  The FBI is having a hard time figuring him out, so they decide to ask other murderers in custody to fill out a questionnaire in order to build a profile on Buffalo Bill.  It just so happens that in Federal custody at the moment is the infamous cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins).  The problem is that he will only talk to certain people, and Clarice fits the description of what he wants.  Thus, she is pulled out of her regimen and sent by Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), the head of the department for which she hopes to work, to interview Dr. Lecter.  Yet, he is not the only one who will give her issues.  The head of the maximum-security psychiatric ward where he is held is Dr. Frederick Chilton (Anthony Heald).  He claims Dr. Lecter as his patient and sees Clarice as meddling.  Nonetheless, she is able to get in for a one-on-one interview.  It does not produce much results because Dr. Lecter can see through her ruse. Instead, he is more interested in her personal life, which she finds unsettling.  Still, the chat amuses him, and he is thus angered when another inmate flicks semen at her, whom Dr. Lecter later arranges to be killed.  This is after he gives Clarice a clue.  This takes her to a storage facility where she discovers the severed head of a victim linked to Buffalo Bill.  There is more that ties Buffalo Bill with Dr. Lecter, who knows the identity of the killer on the loose but prefers to toy with the authorities.  It becomes more pressing that they uncover Buffalo Bill’s identity when he kidnaps another woman.  This time it is Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith), whose father is a United States Senator from Tennessee.  It is through her eyes that we are taken into the sick and twisted world of Jame Gumb.  He keeps the women that he snatches for a few days, getting them skinnier so that he can more easily sew their flesh, which he plans to make into a full-bodied suit.  This is because he had been turned down for a sex reassignment surgery and is desperate to complete the process himself.  As for the FBI, they get some more leads.  A few come when they locate the body of one of Buffalo Bill’s victims.  During the autopsy, Clarice discovers a moth chrysalis lodged in the throat.  It suggests that the killer raises foreign insects because it is a variety only found in Asia.  There is of course the symbolism of what Jame is trying to do to himself, but the less said about this the better.  Still, they are no closer to finding him.  Thus Clarice turns back to Dr. Lecter, which again angers Dr. Chilton.  She goes to him with a bogus promise of being moved to a better facility signed by the senator, as well as permission to look over Buffalo Bill’s dossier.  Everything comes with a price with Dr. Lecter, though, and Clarice must reveal more about her past.  This is where we get the title, referring to why she ran away from her foster parents.  Dr. Chilton, who had been eavesdropping on their conversation, realizes that Clarice’s deal is false.  He exposes it to get back at her, and Dr. Lecter is taken to Tennessee where he gives a false name for Buffalo Bill’s identity.  Clarice deciphers the hidden message behind the name, and once more confronts Dr. Lecter.  Before she can get anything solid, he reminds her that the answer is in the dossier.  When she returns to Quantico, she sees some notes he made on the papers and determines that Buffalo Bill knew his first victim.  Meanwhile, Dr. Lecter escapes his confinement and disappears.  As for Clarice, she goes to the small town in Ohio where the initial murder took place.  However, Jack tells her that she need not worry too much as they have figured out Buffalo Bill’s true identity.  This proves to be false.  Instead, Clarice’s questioning lead her to Jame Gumb’s house.  She enters on the pretense of wanting to see more information about his ownership of the premises.  Upon spotting a moth loose in the house, she realizes that she has her man.  Unfortunately, he takes off into his murder basement before she can react.  She follows him, finding Catherine still alive.  Clarice also luckily shoots and kills Jame.  I say “luckily” because he shuts off all the lights and is stalking her with night vision goggles, only giving away his location when he cocks his own gun.  His mistake makes a hero out of Clarice and she graduates with honors from Quantico.  We close with her getting a phone call from Dr. Lecter, who we see is stalking Dr. Chilton.

For this Catholic reviewer, the ending of The Silence of the Lambs is not the greatest.  It almost makes Dr. Lecter out to be a hero in his own right.  After all, Dr. Chilton is no angel.  Still, that does not square the fact that Dr. Lecter brutally murdered two police officers guarding him, not to mention his previous crimes.  The use of the word “brutally” is not mere artistic license.  How else do you describe biting off a chunk of a face of one, and leaving the other to found disemboweled?  Oh, yeah, and there is the fact that he is a cannibal.  People like him and Jame are true psychopaths.  Such people are divorced from human feelings.  This is underscored when Catherine’s mother takes to the television to beg for her daughter’s safe return.  A key aspect of her appeal is by reminding Buffalo Bill of his capacity for compassion and love.  Unfortunately, this does not work because people like him are, again, psychopaths.  You have to pray for such people, and leave the redemption between them and God.  Until then, it brings up an important theological idea.  Christian doctrine will tell you that God creates all of us with the kind of feelings Catherine’s mother discusses.  He also gives us free will.  Part of the reason for this, as far as we have been able to tell over the centuries, is because Faith is a choice.  While it is not as stark as being either a serial killer or an angel, one thing can be said with certainty: people like the killers you see in this movie are not following God.  I do not feel like this is too crazy of a statement.  I mean, there are the Ten Commandments.

There was a point while watching The Silence of the Lambs that I thought, well, this is not as bad as everyone said.  I was wrong.  It is a grotesque film and should not be viewed.  It is not just the gore, which is hard enough to watch.  It is also the vulgar language.  Like I said in the introduction, I will be glad when I done with AFI’s list and I can get back to avoiding movies like this one.