The Silence of the Lambs (1991)| Total Films Review | Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins

it's a film with the most Sensational entrance scene in modern film history and the person doing the entering is entirely still this is also the least cute meat cute FBI rookie Clarice Starling is sent to interview notorious incarcerated serial killer Dr Hannibal Lector in his glass cell to see if he can be intrigued or persuaded or teased into helping the agency track down another psychotic murderer nicknamed Buffalo Bill who is still at large we come upon Lector along with Clarice as he stands ramrod straight with his impassive black stare and thin Smile as still as a reptile in his tight fitting prison fatigues it's a measure of the fil film's horribly potent entertainment value that we take this Preposterous situation seriously as a toughly realist almost procedural Thriller and genuflect to lector's fantastically Preposterous intellectual attainments making wellworth a style pencil sketches of Clarice cuddling a lamb with her sharp faed intensity jod Foster is outstanding as Clarice the brilliant young operative who once made her Mark as a student questioning the bureau's Civil Rights record in the Hoover era it seems and for her pains got an A minus from her Buzzard likee boss Jack Crawford played by Scott Glenn Crawford is one of the many older men with an ambiguous apparently romantic interest in Clarice these include creepy Dr Frederick chilon played by Anthony healed as hardly less weird than any of the imprisoned Killers under his care and of course Lector himself Anthony Hopkins performance as Lector is an aorus technical Masterpiece all his stage work and accumulated Shakespearean Savvy had been leading to this moment the high impact close-ups on his face that director Jonathan Dem creates are moments of climactic Confrontation intercut with closeups on Clarice and they land like crashes of timony his doctor lecor whimsically declares that he will help Clarice but only in exchange for being allowed to psychoanalyze her listen to her most intimate fears and memories and what exorcise them violate them then it turns out that Buffalo Bill's most recent prisoner victim Catherine brooksmith is the daughter of a US senator Ruth Martin Diane Baker a brilliant narrative contrivance which means that lecter's expertise is now such that he must be treated as a kind of VIP prisoner and transported to Memphis facilitating the use of those extraordinary restraints and masks but how exactly does he reach Chilton's care ly unguarded pen extract the inner nib keep it in his mouth until such time as he can use it to unlock handcuffs which themselves would appear to have a very serious design flaw well these Feats give Lecter an almost Supernatural Edge on his enemies for me the strangest moment is when Senator Martin makes her TV broadcast statement to Buffalo Bill repeat repeatedly using Catherine's name and using old photos of her as a child in an attempt to make him see her as a human being it's a psychologically sophisticated approach that onlookers call Smart and yet the awful unemphasized point is that it doesn't make the slightest difference there are no scenes in which Buffalo Bill is shown ignoring her on the TV or coldly or irritably snapping the TV off he just never sees this broadcast and the utter failure of this smart appeal is never remarked on there is a Grizzly pessimism in this after years The Silence of the Lambs holds up terrifically well what emerged stronger than ever are Clarissa's flashback memories of her cop dad like Spielberg's Jaws this movie evolves the style of Roger Corman who is given a cameo although if this was being made today the writers might be a bit charer of venturing into trans issues with the egregious Buffalo Bill and the misjudged condescension of Clarice saying that trans people are generally very passive the bizarre autopsy scene is still horribly unnerving with the participants putting a powder Menthol smudge under their noses to stop the smell freak taking them out and the roll film camera doing its periodic snap and uncanny Keening wine the movie's soundtrack also carries themes all the way through there are exhalations and size at many points as when the Cocoon of the Gypsy moth is taken from the throat of Bill's first victim much heavy breathing there are Subterranean Rumblings and Far Away cries and Ms almost too low to be heard at critical points there is the sound of a heart monitor Howard Shore's mournful music sets a ferial tone when the soundtrack wants to create Terror as when Clarice is in Bill's basement it mixes her frightened panting with the sound of Bill's heavy breathing and the screams of the captive girl and then adds the dog's frenzy barking which psychologically works at a deeper level than everything else then it adds those green goggles so he can see her in the dark Jody Foster and Anthony Hopkins won Oscars for best actress and actor the movie also won for best picture for dem's direction and Ted Tally's screenplay and was nominated for editing and sound it is remarkable that the academy would remember M let alone single out a film released 13 months before the Oscar cast it usually votes for films that are still in theaters or new on video but silence was so clearly one of a kind that it could not be ignored Hopkins performance has much less screen time than Fosters but made an indelible impression on audiences his entrance is Unforgettable after Clarice descends those stairs and passes through those doors and Gates which all squeak the camera shows her POV as she first sees Lector in his cell he is so still standing erect at relaxed attention in his prison jumpsuit he looks like a waxwork of himself on her next visit he is erect and then very slightly recoils and then opens his mouth and I at least was made to think of a cobra his approach to lector's personality Hopkins says on his commentary track was inspired by HAL 9000 in 2001 he is a dispassionate brilliant machine superb at logic deficient in emotions Foster Clarice is not only an an orphan but a disadvantaged backwoods girl who has worked hard to get where she is and has less self-confidence than she pretends noticing the nail polish on one of Bill's victims she guesses that the girl is from town a word used only by someone who is not her bravest moment may come when she orders the gawking sheriff's deputies out of the room at the funeral home listen here now one key to the film's appeal is that audience is like Hannibal lecor that's partly because he likes Starling and we sense he would not hurt her it's also because he is helping her search for Buffalo Bill and save the imprisoned girl but it may also be because Hopkins in a still Sly way brings such wit and style to the character he made may be a cannibal but as a dinner party guest he would give value for money if he didn't eat you he does not bore he likes to amuse he has his standards and he is the smartest person in the movie he Bears comparison indeed with such other movie Monsters as NIS furu Frankenstein especially in Bride of Frankenstein King Kong and Norman baites they have two things in common they behave according to their natures and they are misunderstood nothing that these monsters do is evil in any conventional moral sense because they lack any moral sense they are hardwired to do what they do they have no choice in the areas where they do have choice they try to do the right thing Nur who is the exception in that he never has a choice Kong wants to rescue F Norman Bates wants to make Pleasant chitchat and do his mother's bidding and Dr Lecter helps Clarice because she does not insult his intelligence and she arouses his affection all of these qualities might not be enough to assure the longevity of Silence if it were not also truly frightening had anbal is not frightening and for all of its box office success it will have a limited shelf life silence is frightening first in the buildup and introduction of Hannibal Lector second in the discovery and extraction of the cocoon in the throat third in the scene where the cops await the arrival of the elevator from the upper floors fourth in the intercutting between the exteriors of the wrong house in calet city and the Interiors of the right one in badier Ohio fifth in the extended sequence inside Buffalo Bill's house where Ted LaVine creates a genuinely loathsome psychopath notice the timing as Starling sizes him up and reads the situation before she shouts freeze we are frightened both because of the film's clever manipulation of story and image and for better reasons we like Clarice identify with her and fear for her just like Lector [Music]