Week 3 Day 1 – Silence of the Lambs – What did you learn?

[Judith Resell]

These super dark psychopathic characters are really, really hard. After I posted, I listened to Anthony Hopkins talk about playing Hannibal and realized I was short of the mark. I have a psychopathic character and struggled with him for years! I think that’s necessary if he or she is to be really original and effective. It’s a combination of advanced psychology (Hannibal’s strength) and the presence of a dark monster within.

[C Holmes]

Clarice says does not scare easily, though she is a beautiful young woman, she does not appear to be what she is, which is a very intelligent agent, just not very experienced. This is her main character issue. She is about to get real life experience about what she has been learning so much about in the class room. She is also a kind of bait, as she is supposed to charm Lector and put him off his guard so he can give her insight into Buffalo Bill.

I never really believed this premise when I first saw the film. I remember kind of laughing in the movie when people were so scared. I really like and appreciate both of these actors so it was not them, it was the glamorizing of criminal cannibalism. Making glorified gore and fetishizing the body is not really all that interesting to me, but I think I may see the film again to see if it works better for me now, as I know much more about real criminality. But so long ago when I first saw this I was not impressed.

Lector immediately sees Clarice as his ticket out of prison, and because he is a cannibal she must appear delicious to him. He toys with her, and his insults are cutting close to her vulnerabilities, but the real vulnerable issue in the scene is that she is not really aware of his method of escape and thinks his invasiveness into her mind are the only escapes he has planned. He is subtle, astute, calculating, weighing her every reaction and all his options. She is the key to get him out of this cell. So as she is drawn into his world, he is drawn out into the real world. It is an exchange of position. She is making it into the inner most depths of depravity in the criminal mind. He is making it out into his hunting ground by using her.

Jacob in my film is also doing an exchange with Skunk. Skunk is trying to escape the occult outcome of his own stupidity. Jacob is trying to get Christina out of an occult spell. Both are using the charm of Cairo to do opposite things, which is very interesting.

One person has real occult knowledge and the other is a buffoon pretending to have Occult knowledge. Gilgamesh is the only person in the story who has the real insight to get things moving in the right direction, though he needs Jacob to do the active part of the story. So Christina is under a spell, bound up in black magic.

Jacob acts to free her using the correct method. Gilgamesh sets the entire story back into reality and knows all the layers of reality that he is addressing with consciousness. I think this relates to what I have learned because of the reversal.

[Marti Wheat]

Clarice’s Journey

Clarice Starling is young, inexperienced, and desperate to be taken seriously by, Jack Crawford, her superior at the FBI. Her lack of experience and naivete make her a very attractive prospect to try to get information from Hannibal Lechter. She has no hidden agenda and presents no threat to him. In fact, she is the perfect foil to his manipulative, Machiavellian mind games. She sees it as an opportunity to prove her mettle by getting him to tell her who Buffalo Bill is and solve the case. He sees her as a young, innocent mouse, a rube who couldn’t possibly match wits with him, but someone who will be fun to play with and destroy to teach Jack Crawford a lesson in arrogance for sending her to him.

Hannibal’s Journey

Hannibal Lechter is a mental master craftsman. He lives and breathes to mess with people, to reach deep down inside a person’s psyche and expose and ignite their greatest fears. His sole purpose in life is to best his opponent, whoever that may be at the moment, in the most horrific way possible. He wants out of prison, but his desire for freedom isn’t as strong as his need for revenge on the inferior creatures who are keeping him captive. When he meets Clarice, he sees her as the conduit for him to do both. From that moment on, their journeys are inexorably intertwined and dependent on each other.

What I learned from this is that characters’ journeys are like canoes going downriver in white water, each bouncing off the other in an effort to navigate their journey, but pivotal to each one’s successful trip over the falls.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by  Marti Wheat.

[Neil Werenskjold]

My protagonists tend to learn on the fly, just like Clarice. My antagonists tend to have a fixed goal and only change when my protagonists make adjustments in response to the antagonists, as the stakes grow. At first I thought Hannibal did not change, but his changes are very subtile mind exploit changes. That is interesting and I need to think about this much more.

[Zev Ledman]

Clarice is an ambitious Greenhorn agent that seeks to prove herself. She is given an opportunity to do just that when Jack Crawford lets her participate in one of the biggest cases of their time. But, to figure out this serial killer psychopath, Jack must gather information from another manipulating serial psychopath that’s in prison and uses Clarice to do this. He hopes that her innocence & naivety will let his guard down to get the info he needs.

Hannibal will, in turn, use her to get free of the cage he’s in. As his respect for her grows, he chooses to help her while using her to attain his ultimate goal, freedom. Freedom so he can continue his hunt for victims.

In my story, a self-righteous Judah leads the Zealot rebellion against the cruel King Antiochus, who seeks to end all Jewish beliefs and traditions. Judah must devise tactics to overcome the larger and superior armies sent against him. As his numbers and tactics improve, he eventually defeats the Greeks, while coming to the realization that he has his own faults that make him no better than anyone else.

King Antiochus seeks to end the rebellion by killing Judah in an attempt to unite his kingdom under one set of beliefs to stand up to the challenge of the growing Roman influence. He sends his army and spies to locate him but is outfoxed at every turn. In the final battle, the King has several surprises that initially devastate Judah’s army. In a strange twist, the King is mysteriously killed and his army is defeated.