Review of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) by Kirollos_Noah — 26 Jul 2020

The Silence of the Lambs was directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Ted Tally. Starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, and Ted Levine.

Based on the famous novel by Thomas Harris, and it's about a young FBI cadet who receives the help of Hannibal Lecter, an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims.

There won't be any kind of spoilers in this review, but I'll discuss some of its scenes deeply, without going into spoilers, just wanted to warn y'all. All set? Let's go then!

The Silence of the Lambs starts with our protagonist, Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) training with the opening credits. It's a very effective scene, some viewers won't pay much attention to it, but it's really important, it shows us that our protagonist, Clarice, is nothing but a trainee! Of course, that was mentioned later on in the movie, but seeing her training with your own eyes without the characters telling you at first, is such a powerful scene. We get to see that at the climax of the movie too, not just there, we get to see that in almost every scene that genuinely requires her to do a hard decision. And of course, that goes to the stellar performance by Jodie Foster!

What makes this character so good to watch, is that she is not a professional FBI agent or whatever, she's a trainee, and she's trying to prove herself, sometimes in doing some really hard stuff, and later on, in the movie that was kinda hinted that she's doing it not to impress the others, but to impress herself and do to face the thing that she's most afraid of. And that does make her character very easy to relate to and to sympathize with her character even more!

The movie doesn't take time showing us her backstory at the beginning or giving us all the information about all the characters at first, it takes time, and it gives us the information we need about most of the characters, not in the form of a flashback, but mostly in the form of a dialogue, which is even better because if it was in the form of flashbacks we wouldn't have gotten this amazing scene between Lecter and Starling in the prison, where Starling is telling Lecter about the lambs, which is not just my favorite scene in the movie, but one of my favorite scenes of all-time!

We get quickly to meet Lecter, we get to brief info about him, and how he used to kill and eat his victims, and then we get to meet and see him, and he's not the cannibal we thought he would be, he's very settled, calm, civilized and kinda respectful. And that's another thing this movie nailed, we thought he would be loud and wild, like how he was described, or at least how you imagined he would be, but he's different, even when we get to see him killing and eating a man's lips, he listened to music afterward, which makes him unique and very intriguing.

Anthony Hopkins' performance as Lecter is one of my favorite performances in a horror movie, he nailed this character, every scene he was in it, the tension was there, even though he might be just speaking with someone, or being normal, the way he just talks is very scary!

Ted Levine doesn't get many praises for his role in this movie, maybe because he wasn't in this movie a lot, but still, whenever he was on screen he was pretty good. Everyone in this movie is great, everyone did a great job!

The plot was very intense, the movie doesn't take time, every scene matters, every line builds something, every character is there for a reason, even if it's very minor, but still, it matters, and that's how perfect this movie is, you can watch it and just be mesmerized of how careful the crew was while making this movie.

I didn't read the novel, so I don't know how faithful it was to the source material, but I heard that it was, based on other people's opinions, people who have read the novel and watched the movie.

Demme did a great job with the tension and the thriller, it never got out of its psychological thriller to a supernatural movie, it was always real, and that what makes it scary, with no modern jump scares, it's just pure horror. He did a great job with the psychological study aspects too, he was simply able to build tension and make you on the edge of your seat, even if it's a normal conversation between two characters! His job behind the camera was great, and this movie benefits a lot from his work.

In the end, The Silence of the Lambs is such a perfect movie, with an amazing guy behind the camera who knows how to make real horror, and two stellar main performances in front of the camera, who simply knew how to deliver this horror.