When a bit of negging and murder actually works
Movie: Silence of the Lambs
Release Year: 1991
Starring: Sir Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Ted Levine, Brooke Smith, Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald, Frankie Faison, Kasi Lemmons, Diane Baker, and Stuart Rudin.
Synopsis: Serial killer and cannibal negs a young FBI agent for shits and giggles, then decides she’s much more interesting alive than on a plate causing her to fall in love.
This is an amazing film. I love it. It stands up to the test of time and captures the thrilling frights of hunting a completely different serial killer named Buffalo Bill, Levine, while allowing a woman to be powerful and come into her own as an up and coming FBI agent.
HOWEVER,
how did we (we being Thomas Harris the writer, and Jonathan Demme the director,) still find a way to squeeze a romance out of this… macabre adventure?
Sure, the energy throughout the film is tense, and you’re always on the edge of your seat wondering if Bill is going to kill little Catherine, Smith.
But also, the looks were GIVING!!!
It was a classic enemies-to-lovers trope under the guise of catching a predator.
Initially, they’re having a calm conversation. She, Clarisse, Foster, has understandable reservations about talking to him, Hannibal, Sir Hopkins, considering his rap sheet, but soon finds herself in a comfortable rapport with him. They literally banter back and forth until he flips the script and tears her down from top to bottom and sends her on her naïve little way.
As if that wasn’t humiliating enough, another suitor… I mean, homicidal maniac, Miggs, Rudin, hits her with a string of pearls across her face, decimating the last bit of self-esteem she has left, causing her to run out crying. Hannibal does NOT like that at all. Sure, he can talk about this young lady, and make her feel inadequate, but no one else is allowed to harm her in ANY sort of way. Hell no.
He decides he’s going to give that guy quite the talking to!
When Clarisse finds this out, well, how could she not be smitten?
I mean, when a man only needs words to murder someone in your honor, how can you not be splooshing in your pants?
Come to think of it, Clarisse had quite a few men giving her attention in this film, didn’t she?
Let’s be honest, even Jodie Foster was out here with so much rizz that someone even attempted to take out a sitting president for her!
But I digress.
There was Crawford, Glenn, who was out here playing the strong silent type and the only actual competition for Hannibal. Then there was Dr. Chilton, Heald, who ran the hospital for the criminally insane. Now he had more of a pathetic direct approach but unfortunately had the energy of a podcast bro because the second she turned him down, he may as well have called her a bitch with the way he went behind her back and started secretly recording her intimate conversations with Hannibal only to turn around and use that info for his own personal gains.
Jealous much?
But it’s all good, cuz Hannibal makes him pay for disrespecting his girl! And he goes well beyond just words.
He gets in that ASS! Literally, he ends up eating ol’ boy and stealing his vacation. chef’s kiss.
Anyway, back to the romance.
Throughout the entire film, he’s learning about her. Learning her quirks, her desires, and even about her childhood. Normally, conversations with him would be one-sided. Hannibal was known to chew people up and spit them out, pun intended. However, this was the first time in a long time he’d been interested in getting to know someone so intimately.
The kicker that really made him fall hard was the fact that she played him in the end. Had him open up about his deepest desire of wanting a room with a view and to be able to breathe in fresh air. She dangled that dream in front of him like a tasty carcass, and he fell for it. When he realized he had been played, he didn’t get upset. He KNEW in that moment he’d found someone on his level. Someone just as clever, just as intelligent, and infinitely more beautiful than his previous interest.
Clarisse was the perfect woman for him.
Also, this was quite the slow burn as all of this was happening through reinforced glass. The glances, the banter, the passing of notes back and forth. It wasn’t until the very end when he grazed her finger with his that we all saw what they been knew.
Their connection was real.
It was like watching a regency film, waiting with bated breath for them to break the rules and finally express their love for one another.
Hot stuff.
In the end, Hannibal did get his view, and then some.
You know, by escaping and finding himself on the FBI’s top ten most wanted list.
He even called her to tell her about it and promised that he wouldn’t come after her, and she KNEW she had nothing to fear, okay?
~SWOON~
It was ingenious on his part, though. It ensured that she would always be thinking about him the way he would always be thinking about her.
A perfect love story. In fact, it even premiered in the states on February 14th!
The day of love!
Sure, he killed and ate people, but he had a moral code, and he stuck to that. Something Clarisse could really connect to. He also did her many favors by getting rid of men who didn’t treat her how she deserved to be treated.
Hannibal stood ten toes down for Clarisse, and though she always hid behind her badge, she loved every minute of it. He was the only one who saw her for who she was. He was her anti-hero.
If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
