Film
The Silence of the Lambs
- Director
- Jonathan Demme
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 119 mins
Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) is such a ferocious psycho that the authorities have to fit a steel mask to his face during cell-opening time just to stop him eating people. If he takes so much as a nibble out of his warders or fellow inmates, Hannibal is punished by being forced to watch televangelists. But now there’s a new psycho on the block. Nicknamed Buffalo Bill, he plays with his female victims for a while before peeling them and weighting the remains down in riverbeds.
FBI Agent Jack Crawford (Scott Glen) assigns rookie student Claice Starling (Jodie Foster) to visit Lecter in the hop that this grisly gourmet can help with compiling a psychological profile of the serial slashing sicko. But Starling has been suffering from a bad case of flashback to her troubled childhood and finds these exploited by the perceptive, manipulative and devious Lecter, who offers her a ‘quid pro quo’ arrangement: for each intimate confession from her, he will disclose a valuable insight into the killer’s twisted mind. With time and sanity running out, the last thing she needs is a subplot involving a jealous prison governor and a dangerous cross-country transfer of Lecter…
The winner of five Oscars, Jonathan Demme‘s 1991 hit is a genuinely unnerving psychological chiller whose darkest component is its exploration of the serial killer’s mind rather than the usual simple depiction of his actions. Hopkins plays Lecter as a cultured, artistic psychopath who’d be welcome at any civilised dinner party but for his idiosyncratic diet and fondness for gruesome anecdotes. It’s a marginally less effective performance than Brian Cox’s sustained display of malevolence in the ‘prequel’, Manhunter, while still powerful enough to make his baleful influence on the excellent Jodie Foster entirely convincing. In dealing with such pathologically exhibitionist subjects, Demme and novelist Thomas Harris forestall the usual criticisms about the discovery of all-too-convenient clues, the there are several plot holes. The explanation for inexperienced Clarice’s assignment to this important case is never entirely convincing, for example. But this is still the scariest, most intelligent and expertly constructed cinematic peek into the serial killer’s cranium ever made.
is needed now More than ever
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
