I treasure a great screenplay above most all other elements, but Silence gets my 2nd Favorite thing about a movie down perfect as well… choices. Once you have the script down, on the set it’s all about finding those great choices that an actor or some other creative collaborator makes with the material.
Throughout the film Jodie Foster offers line readings that come from I don’t know where, like when Dr. Chilton rudely remarks she could have saved him the trouble of walking her down she politely dismisses him with, “Yes, sir, but then I would have missed the pleasure of your company, sir.” Later, as she’s about to enter a storage facility that might have belonged to a murderer she gives the business owner her card and says, “If this door should fall down or – heh heh – anything else…”. That knowing laugh in the center, such a delightful choice.
Jonathan Demme has made some fine films, but only the climax of Something Wild hints at what he’s created here. He places great actors in the key roles then populates the rest of the film with faces. Some – like the police at the autopsy or during Lector’s daring escape – I’ve never seen before or since. (Except for Chris Issack and Charles Napier, of course.) They seem like locals and real police, and for all I know they are, the work is that authentic. Added to that are more of these wonderful little moments: the cop who emphatically signals that a shot has been fired, the older officer who must take a seat he’s in such disbelief.
Throughout Demme is making this whole other film about women in the workplace. The constant come-ons by other guys. This isn’t done to drive home that Clarice is attractive, it’s to show how her youth and backwoods beauty makes men around her react. It ties into a line Hannibal says about men putting their eyes over her. I would want to be on set for the benign shot of people walking through the airport, and one guy glances at her. She doesn’t acknowledge his look, but there’s no way she doesn’t notice it.
There is much more I could talk about, but this is also coming up soon on the After Dark list, so I will save the rest for there.
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