Fear and Pity in "Silence of the Lambs"

Rating: 10/10 (23 July 2013)

This movie has special meaning for me. It was the first scary movie that I ever saw -- and I wasn't supposed to see it. I was ten years old and performing the role of Patrick Dennis with Shani Wallis in "Mame" at The Candlewood Playhouse, when one night in the dorm where all the actors were staying, I convinced some of the older actors to let me watch it with them.
I've never been so scared in my life (a close second would be when, at the end of Sarah Connor's quiet and somber monologue that opens Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a cyborg's foot is seen and heard crushing a human skull).
Anthony Hopkins' acting throughout the movie is a master class in how to choose one, specific action to punctuate your lines. He does not do much standing there in his cell -- and in fact, at Jodie Foster's best moments, she is as still and specific as he is. It's almost that crisp commitment from both actors more than anything else (the plot in general) that induces both the fear and the pity we experience watching the movie. At the beginning, we fear Dr. Lecter, and we pity Clarice on her task to track down the current criminal Buffalo Bill from interviewing the evasive and experienced psychopath in his cell...but because of the specific and simple acting and a great script, that dynamic certainly shifts, and by the end, our original assumptions are perhaps tossed aside.