Feels like a 90s update of an Alfred Hitchcock film, and it was probably one of the biggest inspirations for David Fincher at the time. I think it’s good, but not amazing by any means. Yes, Hopkins is awesome in it, but Demme gives him a major assist with the lighting and shots where he looks directly into the camera, which help his performance a lot. The other perfomances are fine, I think Foster is a little stiff here and there, but the character works. They definetely push the horror far enough, and I love the practical effects that are being used, but I wish there was a little more of it. The story is alright. It’s a neat idea, but parts of it are way too predictable and little too over the top/theatrical for my liking. For example, right from the start, I question why anyone would send this Clarice character to Hannibal Lecter given how he’s obviously manipulative and she’s not the most experienced or emotionally stable person. You’d assume that a police chief would at least do a background check on that, right? There’s a lot of stuff like that in the movie, you have to take some massive leaps with the logic of this script, and they’re occasionally too big for me. It’d be ok if they didn’t play it as straight, but parts of this ring to me as sensationalist and phony, and it might be the reason why I don’t feel as much tension as the people who love this film. I think it’s also generally lacking in depth. It has the facade of being an analysis of the psyche of a psychopath, but in the end there’s not much going on there, like this isn’t exactly Mindhunter. Besides, movies about understanding the mind of criminals have been done more interestingly by directors like Scorsese and Fincher. However, I do like the idea it gets in there about sexism and the postion of women in society. So, what you’re left with is a pretty decent horror film that includes one amazing performance, a very nice score by Howard Shore and some good quotable dialogue. It should be recognized for that, but I’d never consider putting it on any GOAT list.
6.5/10
Though he’s merely an important supporting player in the plot’s bigger picture, Anthony Hopkins completely dominates The Silence of the Lambs as the complex, cultured mass-murderer with a taste for human flesh, the disgraced Doctor Hannibal Lecter. It’s a genuinely transcendent performance, the likes of which we’re lucky to catch once or twice per decade. Jodie Foster more than pulls her weight in the leading role, a tenacious FBI cadet who endures misogyny and harassment at every stop, but it’s Lecter who brings the real sizzle, and their mutually perplexing psych ward interactions transform a rather pedestrian production into something downright hypnotic.
Himself a trained psychiatrist, Hannibal has made no effort to disguise his contempt when confronted by the bureau’s more highly-accredited shrinks. He’s the smartest, most refined man in the room and they all know it, so why pretend otherwise? Lecter clearly stopped following such social niceties years ago. By contrast, he sees something intriguing in the young, ambitious Clarice Starling. Maybe it’s her open honesty, her bald naïveté or her willingness to brazenly march straight into the lion’s mouth. He senses a not-so-distant trauma in her past and gamely chases it, indulging his professional instincts and savoring the hell it puts her through. For her part, Starling is perfectly willing to play that charade, even if it means plumbing a number of deeply uncomfortable personal depths, to aid the state’s pursuit of a different psychopath. Though it’s faltering and unsettling, the quid pro quo works for both of them. And for us.
I alluded to this earlier, but the nuts and bolts of The Silence of the Lambs really aren’t very good. The editing is hammy, the score’s worthy of a TV movie and the production values are obviously low. Neither Hopkins nor Foster were the studio’s first (or second, or third) choices, but fate, gladly, intervened. With those actors, in those roles, reading from this screenplay, it’s bonafide movie magic. Damn near perfection. I’d gladly watch Hannibal and Clarice match wits and decipher puzzles in that clammy prison basement for hours upon hours, and suspect I may do exactly that over the course of the next few decades.
I'm writing this after having binged the 4 "Hannibal Lecter" movies in a weekend. I had seen the first 3 in the past, and "Red Dragon" had always been my favorite. Reba and D's budding romance is what stole the show there. But after re-watching them I have decided that this first one is by far the very best and such a well done film, period; completely deserving of a full 10 out of 10 rating.
It unfolds at a nearly perfect pace; there's only one scene I found went on a tad too long, and that was the one towards the ending where Clarice was stumbling around in the dark while Buffalo Bill watched her with his infrared goggles on. It was nothing to deduct any points for though.
I'm at a bit of a loss on how to describe just what exactly makes this movie so good, outside saying that the relationship that builds and the banter between Hannibal and Clarice is just so fascinating. They take you on a gradual, but thrilling roller coaster ride that you can't get enough of. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins were perfect for these roles. All the other actors were top notch too.
I read that there was and has been some hullabaloo about the film being transphobic. It's explained in the movie itself that Buffalo Bill wasn't a transsexual, and I think that there are some decent articles out there easily Googled that delve into the subject to help make that fact clear; including commentary from the actor that played the character. Even if his character was explicitly supposed to be, that just doesn't somehow equate to implying that all transsexuals are to be feared for similar reasons. It just doesn't. Only the most ignorant of people are going to watch those scenes and infer or otherwise believe that "being a transvestite" was the guy's problem. He was off his rocker either way. And it's not as if transphobia is something I don't give a single damn about. Go read my thoughts on the first Ace Ventura movie. Now that was transphobic.
Review by whitsbrainVIP 5BlockedParent2022-01-15T17:22:52Z
Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster are incredible here. Whenever the two of them are interrogating each other, the film flies high. There is some pretty uncomfortable stuff here. One thing I noticed is how the characters react to the gore in front of them. This film is nowhere near as grotesque as most of today's TV crime shows are. Yet on those shows, the horrors have little impact because no one has adverse reactions to any of it. Here, the killings and mutilations have real power because the characters react to them.
Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter is positively Dracula-like. He's scary but charming, smooth though stiff. Everything he says is a riddle of some sort and he makes me feel a bit guilty because he actually pays attention to the people he interacts with and the detail around him. Now, he loses me a bit with the cannibalism thing, but it's just a movie, after all.
As I write this, "The Silence of the Lambs" is 25 years old. I guess that is a few years ago, but it really looks dated. I don't remember the early 1990's looking so, well...Seventies. It surprised me how drab the film looked. I know the subject matter isn't exactly "Finding Nemo" but still, it grabbed my attention in the wrong way.
As I watched, I realized that Agent Starling looks and acts a lot like "The X-Files" Agent Scully. I'd bet Chris Carter used Starling as a template.