[9]

Here we have a horror film so well executed, it swept the Academy Awards. Anthony Hopkins (The Lion in Winter) and Jodie Foster (The Accused) each deliver career-defining performances as cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter and neophyte FBI agent Clarice Starling. Based on the popular crime novel by Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs sets young Starling on a series of prison cell meetings with Lecter, hoping he’ll help the agency find ‘Buffalo Bill’, an active killer offing young women and wearing their skin as part of a transsexual transformation.

The writing has a perverse tinge of Beauty and the Beast, as Lecter and Foster develop a strange sort of mutual respect for one another. The screenplay balances their provocative banter with a well-constructed mystery surrounding the identity and whereabouts of Buffalo Bill, played Ted Levine. Levine gives an unnerving performances as Bill, who is keeping a senator’s daughter (Brooke Smith) in a basement pit. It’s from that vantage point where Levine, with a poodle named ‘Precious’ under one arm, utters the film’s infamously campy but terrifying line: “It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again.”

Director Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia, Something Wild) washes the entire film in a palpably foreboding atmosphere, thanks largely to Tak Fujimoto’s muted cinematography and Howard Shore’s brooding score. Demme employs a highly unusual but effective tactic, having actors deliver dialogue directly into the camera lens, that puts the audience smack-dab into the middle of the mystery and suspense. In addition to genre thrills and cinematic excellence, The Silence of the Lambs also succeeds in giving audiences an idea of what it is like for a woman, Starling, to work in a (traditionally) man’s world, with all the doubt, insecurity, double standards, and unwanted attention that endeavor brings.

With Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald, Diane Baker, Charles Napier, Tracey Walter, Chris Isaak, and Roger Corman.

Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director, Leading Actress (Foster), Leading Actor (Hopkins), Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally)

Oscar Nominations: Best Sound, Film Editing