 Silence
of the Lambs
Our rating: 2 out of 5
Rated: R
reviewed by Charity Bishop
Anthony Hopkins was handed the script for this film and assumed by the
title that it was a fairy tale. Then he read it and agreed to play one
of the most memorable sadistic villains in the history of cinema. Even
if you have never seen the film, chances are you have at least heard of
the notorious Hannibal Lector...
When a murderous streak of killings transpire on the east coast, linked
to increasingly psychotic behavior (namely, that the victims are all
recovered missing patches of skin), it seems the only thing the FBI can
do is turn to Dr. Hannibal Lector (Hopkins) for assistance. There's just
one catch: he has been assigned to life imprisonment for his own series
of deeply disturbing crimes, which include acts of cannibalism and
assault. A man of intense psychological powers and insights, he is
extremely dangerous and highly intelligent. In order to fool him into
being open on his opinion of the case file, they assign Clarice Starling
(Jodie Foster) to his interrogation. Still struggling through her
training to become a proper agent and eager to prove herself, Clarice is
given a very specific set of guidelines to follow in order to avoid her
own endangerment: don't get too close to the glass, do not give him any
personal information, and if he offers you anything, refuse to take it.
Fascinated by, but also frightened of, this chillingly charming
man, Clarice struggles to learn the identity of the
killer, whom she learns is a former patient of Lector's
psychology practice. Matters are only further
complicated when the daughter of a local senator goes
missing. The killer has a pattern of starving his
victims for a short time before their death, so they
have only a brief window in which to discern his
identity and save the young woman, something Lector uses
to his advantage. One by one, Clarice forgets the rules,
luring herself and everyone around her ever closer to
danger. The Silence of the Lambs
is a cult classic and the film by which all other
psychological thrillers are measured, merely because it
broke such tremendous ground in cinematic criminal
profiling. For years, viewers have been enthralled with
its twisted conclusions and sinister protagonist, who
has about seventeen minutes total of the running time
but is pretty much the one thing you remember walking
out.
Even after the details of the crimes are obscured in your memory, you will
never forget the cold chill that creeps up your spine whenever you think of
Hannibal smiling at you from behind that seemingly insignificant pane of
glass. It's fairly obvious from the summary alone that this is not a film
for those who are easily disturbed, because the subject matter is extremely
unsavory and created a lot of controversy when it first came out, due to its
villain being a transvestite. (Running the risk of a major spoiler, he has
been abducting and skinning women in order to make him a suit out of their
skin, because he was denied a sex change due to his psychological problems.)
Along with the unnerving focus of the film and numerous references to
cannibalism is an excess of foul language (the f-word is used a lot in the
second half), violence (Hannibal tears into a man's face with his death, and
beats another man to death with a police stick; we see a man whose stomach
has been ripped out hanging from the bars of a cell; we see photographs and
a couple of quick glimpses of skinned victims; and a severe head in a jar),
and nudity (frontal on the villain, and female nudity on a corpse in the
morgue, and various photographs). What grossed me out the most was one of
Hannibal's fellow prisoners flinging a bodily function onto Clarice.
(Hannibal disliked that, and we're told he scares the man into swallowing
his own tongue later as punishment.)
I cannot stress enough how emotionally disturbing this film is. I was
not as affected by it this time because I fast-forwarded all the scenes
with the transvestite, as well when Hannibal gets free of his handcuffs
and slaughters the guards, but a few years ago I happened to see a
truncated version of this on cable television and sitting through those
scenes even in an edited format was psychologically impacting. It's hard
to even explain what an impression this will leave on you if you watch
it straight through, because you'll be too fascinated to turn it off,
but also understandably freaked out by it. I guess the bottom line is
that it's not for the faint of heart, or anyone with a twitchy stomach.
And in case you are wondering, the title does have a bearing on the
plot, as it is one of the things that Hannibal uses to get inside
Clarice's head...
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