Film Review : SILENCE OF THE LAMBS * * * *

Silence Of The Lambs (1991)

CAST Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine

DIRECTOR Jonathon Demme

Jonathon Demme's Silence Of The Lambs is a masterpiece of psychological study. It holds elements of horror, drama and mystery.

Jodie Foster plays Clarice Starling. She's an F.B.I. agent in training, who wants to specialize in behavioural science. Starling gets this oppurtunity when she is thrust into the investigation of a serial killer called "Buffalo Bill". In order to find patterns on Buffalo Bill, Jack Crawford (played with style by Scott Glenn), head of the F.B.I. behavioural science branch, calls on Starling to interview an infamous serial killer named Hannibal Lecter. Lecter (Hopkins in an oscar winning role) is a psychiatrist who murdered by eating his victims. He is also the one way the F.B.I. thinks they may get an accurate psychological profile of Buffalo Bill. Crawford sends in Clarice, in an attempt to get Lecter to talk, using Starlings stunning good looks to possible provoke him from being a block of ice. At first, he dodges direct questions, but he warms up to Clarice, bonding with her in an admirable type of way. It is the relationship between Lecter and Starling that the story skates on. Lecter is attracted to her. Not physically, but mentally. He admires her so, that it creates an easy tension between the two.

The cast performs without a hitch, especially Hopkins and Foster, developing a relationship that makes each respect the other. You can sense that Lecter feels somewhat like a protector of Clarice. One of the inmates in the asylum throws sperm on Clarice, and the next day he is found dead. Lecter talked him to death.

The horror is real in this film. The set inside Bill's house is dark and mirky, resonating a sense of dred. Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill is great. He is clearly insane and out of touch with his inner self. This is one of the things that makes the movie so disturbing. A wonderful film which garnished the top five academy awards of 1991. This film leaves a lasting impression of what it might be like in the mind of a serial killer. Not just one serial killer, but two.