Review: The Silence of the Lambs

Directed by: Jonathan Demme

Written by: Ted Tally

Starring: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine, Anthony Heald, Brooke Smith

Rating: [5/5]

Classic lines like “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” certainly has its place as it plays out in life when seeking a new ally or when trying to catch a serial killer with the help of another. Sometimes you just need all of the help you can get despite the source, which becomes the boiling point of one of the most jaw-dropping and poignant films of this genre in The Silence of the Lambs. A feature delving into so much and helping elevate a genre much disregarded for its schlock.

With the disturbing trend of abducted women by a serial killer labeled as Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) gets tasked with interviewing the incarcerated serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to help get ideas on where to catch the aforementioned Buffalo Bill. This initiates a series of interviews where Clarice must help find this serial killer despite a world dominated by men. 

Despite being a tremendous film, it shocks me to this day that something so heavily dipping into genre won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, especially back in the early 90s when it accomplished the rarified air of winning Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, and Director. Almost makes it feel like a miracle it occurred but even with all of the biases voters may have for this genre and the glorification of serial killers, it could not be denied then or now the perfection on display cinematically with this feature. Something so dense yet accessible and shedding light on how this all operates through the perspective of a woman. 

Clarice’s experience as a woman remains paramount to this narrative and how multiple scenes play out. From the human fluid slicked at her by one of the cellmates to the isolation felt during certain aspects of this investigation, her gender significantly impacts everything going on and the film certainly recognizes that and uses it to her advantage. It starkly displays how her style contrasts with the different men in the same arena and honestly why she gets closer to solving this horrendous case much quicker than all of them. She provides a different perspective and approach bearing more fruitful results. 

The collaboration built between Clarice and Hannibal Lecter serves as a back-and-forth between the two where they negotiate how they can best help each other. Lecter operated as a serial killer in his own right while also engaging in some light cannibalism thus keeping him behind a glass window with no one tasked to get near him. The description of Lecter versus what we see when first interacting with him creates such a fascinating contrast highlighted in the build-up. We enter this facility with Clarice and she hears everything about this man and the terror he can cause just about anyone. She gets warned not to get too close to him even when divided by a large glass wall. You’d think Clarice would see this gargantuan monster but when she arrives at the dreaded cell, she sees a sophisticated man, who certainly displays his education in the way he speaks. Something so disorienting at first but displays the true magnetism of Anthony Hopkins’s performance as Lecter. 

Each scene held between Clarice and Lecter allows Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins to absolutely shine in ways propelling this feature towards something incredibly impactful. Their first interaction in the way the camera uses reflections to show their faces give chills to this day in the way depicts the relationship between these two and Hopkins presents this proper man with a strong vocabulary and a vast repository of knowledge. He only lets specific things slip out as necessary to keep an advantage, but when he lets loose in his savagery either physically or verbally through his words, he reminds everyone exactly why the man sits behind a glass wall at all times. 

This relationship between the two thus becomes the crux of the entire feature where Lecter builds a strange protectiveness over Clarice, especially when she has a terrible interaction with one of the other cellmates in Lecter’s wing. He certainly ensures that never happens again without physically doing anything. Their rapport makes everything else take a backseat even if it certainly has its own goods to deliver as well. 

When shifting over to the serial killer afoot, Buffalo Bill certainly remains one of the more iconic not only because of what they do to women but also their motive. Much conversation continues to be held about the depiction of the character and the way they believe themselves a transgender person but were deemed too violent for gender-affirming surgery. This then leads them to disturbingly kidnap women and utilize their skin for the purpose of creating this new body to step into. The performance certainly toes a line where it teeters on demonizing a population receiving more than enough attacks already but this feature draws a distinct line in the sand with what Buffalo Bill represents and how they go about it. 

Every scene involved with Buffalo Bill demonstrates their strength and when Clarice inevitably makes the appropriate discoveries to lead her in the right direction it makes for some impactful scenes, especially when she finds herself in that basement. Nothing causes quite the amount of distress as felt in the night vision scene. A sense of despair and fear utilizing a camera technique that expertly puts us not in the headspace of the protagonist we have followed throughout the feature but rather the serial killer trying to track her down. Exceptionally well done amongst the many things this feature does impeccably well. 

Without a doubt one of the greatest films ever made, The Silence of the Lambs contains so much one can parse through in order to fully dissect what this feature sets to communicate. We get one of the more iconic characters in all of his history in both Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling as they play this game of mental chess in order to help each other find a heinous killer out there. Everything about this feature works from the mental to the wholly visceral in a way that completely holds up years later and even improves when looking at the techniques utilized.