Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Anthony Hopkins
Jodie Foster
Ted Levine
Directed By:
Jonathan Demme
Silence Of The Lambs is one of those "common grounds" movie. So much people saw it that it's used as a comparison with many other serial killer movies that you have to watch it. If you didn't, the referrals are going to bug you so much that you will want to watch it. I saw Silence Of The Lambs many times already, but Josie didn't. Last Sunday, she had her fist crack at one of Anthony Hopkins' master performance.
One of the reasons why the movie works so much is that the plot is everything, but the conventional cat and mouse game between a killer and the police. It's a tale that constantly plays with your expectations of a conventional crime story. The police is in a dead end regarding the investigation on a serial killer named Buffalo Bill (Levine). The FBI has been trying to get another imprisoned killer, psychopath, cannibal (and psychiatrist) Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins) to help them. He's been rebutting attempts so far, until one day, FBI's Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) has the vicious idea to feed him the young and naive Clarice Starling (Foster) in hope to lure him into helping (and having sadistic fun at the same time). Lecter bites. Or does he?
I have not read the Thomas Harris novel, which I expect to be a lot more intellectual and developed than the movie (and ultimately more interesting), but Jonathan Demme does a wicked job at adapting. There's nothing about Silence Of The Lambs that even resembles a cinematographic convention. It's heavily story driven because it's taken from a novel, but other than that, it's going to get under your skin for all the right reasons. The confrontations in between Lecter and Clarice are a psychological drama that uses symbols in Lecter's metaphors and Starling's nightmares. The hunt for Buffalo Bill is a fast pace thriller where police is looking for clues that doesn't exists and the rest of the movie (the Buffalo Bill scenes and Starling's side investigation) operates on an intellectual level, devoid of action. It concentrates on creating pure images. That leaves for the viewer a strange puzzle of gore and psychological tension.
Demme (or is it Harris?) invites his audience to think above the notions of "good and evil" and questions human values as being arbitrary chosen. To save the life of a single character (which he viewer doesn't know), the lives of many people are sent spiraling down and the only person who seems to take pleasure in the whole thing is a dangerous killer other than Buffalo Bill. Demme at the end reaffirms the value of life by saving Catherine (Brooke Smith), but I think the movie would've been a little more powerful if she would have stayed a symbol of sacrifice, rather than a princess in the castle. But that's totally Hollywood for you.
SCORE: 83%
