"Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice?"

Rating: 10/10 (4 October 2006)

'The Silence of the Lambs (1991)' isn't even about Hannibal Lecter. We're so distracted by cold, probing voice of the suave psychiatrist- turned-serial-killer (played with chilling calculation by Anthony Hopkins) that it's easy to forget that the film is ultimately about Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), a rookie FBI agent with a dark past.
Clarice spent her adolescence trying to escape death – the shooting of her father, the slaughter of spring lambs on her neighbour's ranch – and sought to banish these memories by joining the FBI. She's a young woman in what is traditionally a man's world, forced to endure the degradation of constantly having "eyes all over her body" (and this disquieting metaphor is reinforced later on as we witness Clarice ogled through the lens of night-vision goggles). The motives of her boss and mentor Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) are somewhat dubious, and their final handshake quivers with sexual awkwardness.
Hannibal Lecter perceives Clarice's dark past and recognises her strengths. He falls in love with her in a platonic sort of way (not dissimilar to how Sherlock Holmes fell in love with Irene Adler, one of the few people to have outwitted him, in "A Scandal in Bohemia"). The moment that their fingers touch through the bars of Lecter's cell is a chilling sharing of intimacy.
Thomas Harris subsequently elaborated on this relationship in "Hannibal," but that novel (and, to a lesser extent, Ridley Scott's 2001 film adaptation) goes completely off the rails in its final act. Clarice Starling would've been best left alone. (Tellingly, the best parts of 'Hannibal (2001)' were those set in Florence, Italy with Giancarlo Giannini).
Finally, nobody ever mentions Ted Levine's perfect performance as Jame Gumb (a.k.a. Buffalo Bill), probably because he's such an repellent character. Lecter is frequently framed in close-up, emphasising Hopkins' mesmerising, unblinking stare, and he speaks eloquently and intelligently. Jame Gumb, conversely, is kept at a distance, often swathed in poor or garish lighting, or framed in such an extreme close- up that his features appear grotesque.