The Silence of the Lambs

A dish best served with Chianti

(Spoilers)

Movie characters have a unique relationship with global culture due to the fact that they are much more definitive than characters in any other medium. Everyone will imagine book characters looking different and sounding different in a way unique to their reading of the text. Film characters are unique in that they are more concrete. Their mannerisms, appearance, voice and over-all tone are all there, and thus have wider appeal because people don't have to fill in the gaps. And in the case of adaptations from books, the film versions will usually become how everyone who both read the book and saw the movie pictures them. Daniel Radcliffe will always be Harry Potter, Jennifer Lawrence will always be Katniss Everdeen, and Anthony Hopkins will always be Hannibal Lecter.

The Silence of the Lambs is the 1991 film adaptation of Thomas Harris's book of the same name, and has gone down as one of the best book-to-screen adaptations ever made. Whole sequences of dialogue and scenes are lifted straight from the book and delivered by an excellent and committed cast. The film swept the Academy awards, winning five of the seven awards it was nominated for. Not bad for a movie with a cannibalistic psychiatrist and a director who at that point was famous for making comedies that barely broke even.

This movie was a success thanks to the sheer level of dedication of the people working on it. Jodi Foster was such a fan of the book that she had tried to buy the rights previously and demanded to be cast as Clarice, as well as helped with script re-writes. And the director, Johnathan Demme, managed to rise up from his screwball comedy roots and put together a film that displays an incredible amount of integrity and skill. And Hopkins? Hopkins plays what could very well be called the best movie psychopath (if you'll excuse the listicle-esque hyperbole).

Everything in the movie works. Sets and shots are bound together with a plot that feels disturbingly plausible, and that is thanks to the source material. Harris took years to write the book, and by most accounts he spent most of them researching serial killers and police procedure. He likely sat in on autopsies and forensic exams, read psychological profiles and just surrounded himself in all the dark and disturbing stuff he could find. Apparently, he's actually quite a nice guy, if a bit reclusive. And all that research gave us Buffalo Bill and Hannibal the Cannibal.

And what a pair of antagonists they are. Buffalo Bill is an amalgamation of six different real serial killers, including not but limited to Ed Gein (made furniture out of skin), Ted Bundy (pretended to be crippled, and then killed women who came to help) and the then unidentified Gary Ridgeway (threw bodies into rivers). We see a lot of Bill, some would say too much in one case, and we see how little he cares for his victims. His evil mind is laid bare and we get to pour over it and make some of our own conclusions as to his beliefs and reasons.

Hannibal is on the other end of the spectrum to Bill. He is still a dangerous and evil man, but he's a puzzle box of a human. He is infuriatingly tight lipped to both the audience and Starling. We get to see the wheels in his head turning, and sometimes we see that he just wants to screw around with his captors. And it's all played with the same grin he gives when he first appears on screen behind his cell wall. Out of all the characters in the film, including the guy who keeps women in a well to starve and the FBI's head of Behavioural Science, he is the most calm. You always get the feeling that he is in control of everything and is always the smartest man in the room.

When ever one of these two is on screen, Demme switches gears and makes you feel the exact way he wants you to feel. In fact he know how to do that the whole movie. Every moments is feels as if it was calculated to get you into the right mindset. The descent into the depths of the asylum when Calrice first meets Hannibal, Clarice finding the head in the jar and the FBI raid on the empty house. It's all near perfect. And it all comes together perfectly during the finale. In my opinion, the scene where Buffalo Bill's doorbell keeps ringing is the best use of the Kuleshov Effect since that one piece of film where a man is implied to be looking at a soup bowl. And then, as the credits begin to roll and you watch Hannibal disappear into the crowd, you are left completely satisfied.

The Silence of the Lambs is a perfectly self-contained movie (if you ignore the sequel). It has no weak links, no pointless moments and nothing but excellent performances. There is no such thing as a perfect movie, but I think this one of the few that comes close. And unless you prefer Brian Cox for whatever reason, this is the definitive Hannibal Lecter.