A most righteously popular thriller

Film: The Silence of the Lambs
Rating: 5 out of 5

WOW. Here's a film with values that are mainstream by all means, but add up to something far from expected or ineffective. A masterful concoction of horror, suspense, and crime drama, it is surely one of the most renowned and laudable movies of the 1990s, if not of all time. Director Jonathan Demme implements a visual trick of having actors look straight into the camera, as if it were the person they are speaking to, and it creates an inclusive atmosphere that heightens the already distrubing force of the iniquitous killers it portrays.

The setup is legendary: Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), a modestly ambitious FBI trainee, engages in a chilling game of wits with the incarcerated Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a celebrated pscyhiatrist turned cannlibalistic serial killer. Cunning is an understatement. Lecter is shrewd and intuitive almost to the point of omniscient. He knows the answer to every question before he even asks. And to the same degree, he is terrfyingly creepy, both in his sophistication and his coldblooded homicidal nature. But Clarice persists, visting Lecter in his maximum security cell inbetween investigations to get insight on a case. The Bureau is in hot pursuit of a serial killer (Ted Levine), nicknamed Buffalo Bill for skinning his victims.

The films delivers two loosely fused but equally intense qualities: mystery and fear. There is mystery in Lecter's petrifying conversational ascendancy, and there is fear in how we never know what could be happening just out of frame. The result is stunningly suspenseful and expertly controlled. Such a feat is especially impressive with a movie dependent on every element to be meticulously orchestrated. Despite his deceptively short on-screen time, Anthony Hopkins' marvelously indomitable performance boosts the film to levels of originality and power that would have been otherwise unattainable. He attends to each detail of Lecter, making it a rich and full character. Even his physique is scary.

But no matter how strong Hopkins may be, the film as a whole is held together by Jodie Foster's lead. It is an unfaltering and compelling performance, and a deep and intrepid character. There are themes of sexism permeating every scene. Clarice is patronized by all of the film's males, particularly her colleagues, except Dr. Lecter. It isolates the two and makes their scenes all the more colorful. There seems to be an odd tone of respect between them, although it could be more of Lecter's mind games. His motives are often unexplained, and by the end of the film we learn to question the explanations that are given. Though not the more enigmatic or skillfully played, the character most focused upon is the resilient and heroic Clarice, never accompanied by a reliable partner but ever determined.

Ted Levine, too, deserves a great deal of praise for playing the depraved "Buffalo Bill." Not only for the sheer viscidity he brings but for just daring to take the part. He must have understood that he would be forever remembered as "the weirdo from Silence of the Lambs."

I regret only being able to see this film twenty years after its release, and only after having seen its influence in largely inferior productions. Nearly all of its aspects have been repeated and reused, to decidedly less effect. It is only together that they create something so remarkable.