The Sounds of Silence

Interestingly, I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between silence and noise not only for this class and with respect to Cage's work, but also because I have been thinking a lot about the usage of sound, particularly with respect to the use of silence and noise, in Silence of the Lambs after screening it in my film class. In Silence of the Lambs, "sound" practically acts as a character that is central to the plot, much like Clarice or Hannibal Lecter. Most obviously, the concept of sound is introduced right there in the film's title--Silence of the Lambs--which is a reference to Clarice's recurring nightmares about the screaming lambs that were being slaughtered by the farmer she was sent to live with as an adolescent. The movie is, in many ways, about Clarice's quest to "silence" the screaming lambs whose cries she continue to haunt her in the dead of night, even as an adult. She hopes that if she finds Buffalo Bill and saves the girl he is holding hostage, the lambs will, finally, become silent.
Throughout the entire film, the sound of breathing is used as a motif. The sounds of sighing, panting, and other breath-related noises can be heard in many pivotal moments of the film--when the cocoon is extracted from the throat of one of Buffalo Bill's victims, a sigh can be heard. When Clarice is descending down the stairs of Buffalo Bill's home into his basement, heavy panting can be heard. When Hannibal reveals that he is alive and after literally wearing the skin of one of the security guards he killed in order to get out of his jail and into an ambulance, his breathing is heard before he moves. The sound of breathing is interesting because it is not often thought of as "noisy," but in Silence of the Lambs, it is quite a prevalent sound. 
Throughout the film, however, complete silence is incredibly rare. Ambient noise is always lurking in the background, almost constantly layered beneath the dialogue and the score. In the scene where Clarice is on her way to have her first meeting with Hannibal, sounds of wailing voices of humans and animals, heart monitors, and doors opening and slamming and locking shut can all be heard as she walks down the stairs and prepares herself to enter the cell area, and those are just the noises I am able to discern out of all the other ambient noises that are occurring simultaneously. When Clarice arrives at Hannibal Lecter's cell, the score cuts out, and so do most of the ambient noises that were occurring previously--all that the viewer really hears in this scene aside from the dialogue is faint coughing, dripping pipes, or the occasional footstep. While this is not complete silence, the vast reduction in the amount of noise does create an eerie contrast where tension and suspense is built up and built up by all the ambient noises at the beginning of the scene, only to be reduced drastically when Clarice arrives at Hannibal's cell, making the exchange between them incredibly intense and nerve-wracking for the viewer--Clarice is really alone with Hannibal, and this is reflected in the relative lack of background noise activity.