"The Silence of The Lambs" (1991)

When the FBI fail to develop any leads as to the identity of a brutal serial killer operating in the mid-west chief Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) assigns trainee agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to interview convicted psychopath, Dr Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). Crawford hopes to wrong-foot the dangerous cannibal by sending an unworthy trainee and Starling must attempt to gain profiling information from Lecter without revealing too much of herself. Directed by Jonathan Demme and based on the novel by Thomas Harris.

It’s been a few years since I’ve seen it and I’ve only seen it the once but I just thought I might as well do a review on it! But oh my, where does one start?

Ok. Technically I didn’t like this film because, I know everyone says that the conversations between Starling and Lecter are the best bits from the film; really tense and frightening or really great, but omg I found them kind of boring. Personally I just could not get into the film. I don’t really know why. I feel like it’s one that should have been really frightening to me because I don’t like this subject matter at all, like I just can’t stomach it really…But I thought ok I’ll give it a go since everyone seems to know about it and I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. But no. I do appreciate the technicalities of it as a horror film and think it is well made and deserves all the praise it got for what it is. It is, after all, completely twisted, sick and horrifying. Certainly not for the faint hearted. There will never be another ‘The Silence of The Lambs’ that is for sure.

Anthony Hopkins plays Hannibal Lecter with a calmness that could make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. He’s so calm it’s intense and you can never be fully certain what he will do or what he will say or what he is really thinking. He is a psycho but insanely intelligent. Anthony Hopkins had the idea of Lecter dressing in white because it would remind people of dentists and doctors – people who made them feel automatically apprehensive. It’s a small thing but it’s clever! Anthony Hopkins invented the fast, slurping-type sound that Hannibal Lecter does. He did it spontaneously during filming on the set, and everyone thought it was great.  But apparently Sean Connery was, the director John Demme’s, first choice to play Lecter. I’m kind of curious to see how that might have gone…But at the same time I can’t really imagine anyone else playing Lecter to the level Anthony Hopkins did. Apparently when his agent rang him up in London to tell him that he was sending him a script called "The Silence of the Lambs", he immediately thought he might be going up for a children's movie. Oh how wrong he was… In any case, he received a much deserved Oscar for the role, as did Jodie Foster for hers. At 24 minutes and 52 seconds, Anthony Hopkins's performance in this movie is the second shortest to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, with David Niven in Separate Tables (1958) beating him by one minute.

Jodie Foster is very good in her role as Clarice Starling. Personally, I wasn’t mad about her in this film and I’ve never been able to figure out why because you couldn’t possibly fault her performance. I think it was just the character she was playing to be honest. Apparently actresses like Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan Geena Davis and Melanie Griffith were all considered for the part prior to choosing Jodie Foster. In the scene where Starling tells Lecter about the lambs if you listen apparently a small crash can be heard part-way through. Apparently a crew member dropped a wrench but Jodie Foster so liked the take, which she hadn't broken despite the noise, she convinced Jonathan Demme to keep it. Apparently, Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster only actually share four scenes throughout the course of the film.

The iconic or signature image of the moth over the mouth is actually quite interesting. At a glance, the moth head looks to be a skull, however if you look closer you’ll realise it is actually a piece by surrealist artist Salvador Dali, named ‘In Voluptas Mors’, depicting the arrangement of seven naked women to look like a skull. The title itself comes from a particular conversation between Starling and Lector. Lector has information about the serial killer Buffalo Bill, but won't give Clarice any clues about his identity until she shares some of her childhood memories. One of which was her memories of living near a slaughter house.

There are some horrible scenes in this film. Twisted, sick, god-awful scenes.  Anyone who has seen the film will recall the line “It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again” – probably one of the most quoted lines in the movie. I remember there was one scene where I think a woman is being attacked in the back of a van. I literally just got up and walked out of the room during that scene. I wasn’t sticking around for that. There was another image that has remained with me ever since of a body splayed out on a wall, guts and gore for all to see. I did not care for that. More scenes too are pretty brutal. It certainly doesn't spare you anyway!! Buffalo Bill’s basement prison is the stuff of nightmares. But even just the whole concept and details within the story itself are…there isn’t even a word. It’s just sick. I find myself wondering how these sordid tales even get made in the first place. Urgh things like this are just everything that is wrong the with the world. Because I mean, if you think about it, it’s kind of appalling. It's almost like encouraging this sadistic behaviour. I know it's only a movie but I feel that surely that is beside the point.

Apparently Buffalo Bill is the combination of three real-life serial killers: Ed Gein, who skinned his victims, Ted Bundy, who used the cast on his hand as bait to convince women to get into his van, and Gary Heidnick, who kept women he kidnapped in a pit in his basement. Charming, right? Like I say this film isn’t for the faint hearted and it is details like this that were probably why I didn’t give it my full attention when I watched it in the first place. But jeez his character was psychotic. Of all the psychos concocted for the purpose of horror cinema, I would nearly say this Buffalo Bill fellow is the worst. He’s just…I don’t even know a word for what he is. I’m quite happy that my memories of this film are as vague as they are. I feel like I was lucky. Apparently the character’s famous dance scene was not included in the original draft of the screenplay, although it appears in the novel. It was added at the insistence of Ted Levine (who plays him), who thought the scene was essential in defining the character. I must be honest and say I found it so weird and I remember thinking to myself ‘what the hell am I watching?’ On a side and vaguely related note, apparently the final day of shooting on the climactic basement scene took something like 22 hours! That is just crazy.

As of 2015, this is the only horror film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. Only four others have been nominated: The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), The Sixth Sense (1999), and Black Swan (2010). I think that’s amazing when you think about it. In fairness, it is quite possibly one of the most disturbing and harrowing horror films to have been made. Would I recommend it?  I’m not quite sure. I guess if you’re a big movie fan, it is one to see, or if you are simply an avid horror fan then it’s one you can’t really not see. My honest conclusion is that I didn’t like the film, but not because it was a bad film, technically it’s a harrowingly good film, my objection is just because of the subject matter.

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