Good Cutting Makes For Great Slasher

Rating: 9/10 (19 July 2014)

"The Silence Of The Lambs" is famous for being Hollywood's finest slasher film, a masterpiece of unblinking psychological gamesmanship, but its best cuts were made in the editing room.
Time is running out for psychopath Buffalo Bill's latest kidnappee. Trying anything, the FBI sends a young trainee, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), to chat up an especially diabolical serial killer now in custody, Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). The hope is the two will hit it off well enough so that Lecter will help with nailing down Bill's persona. But what starts out unsettling enough for Starling soon becomes a real journey into fear.
"Silence Of The Lambs" has a great story, diabolical atmospherics, and a stark visual template that pulls you in. But two things work for it beyond these elements.
The first, which is widely commented upon, is how everyone in this film is working outside their comfort zones, all the way through to the audience. Director Jonathan Demme did quirky, humanistic comedies centered around redemptive themes. Foster didn't play cops. Hopkins didn't play psychos or big-screen villains, unless it was a historical figure like Hitler. Handing such creative people different hats and making them work allowed for fresher, vital impressions.
Second, and more critical, was the way "Silence" was cut. Looking at the "Collector's Edition" DVD reveals scenes trimmed or edited out entirely, employing plot elements from Thomas Harris' source novel. A couple of dropped scenes between Starling and FBI lead investigator Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) are particularly involving, but the overall subplot they work to establish, about Crawford's dispute with a nasty superior and Starling's own line-crossing of FBI strictures, only obscure what the audience cares most about, which is the relationship between Hannibal and Starling and also the ongoing case of Buffalo Bill.
The first of these is really where "Silence" best delivers. So much of the movie's cultural legacy rests in the exchanges between Starling and Lecter as written by Ted Tally and delivered by Foster and Hopkins.
It's a tense cat-and-mouse situation, not devoid of humor or pathos but focused relentlessly on the core issue of stopping Buffalo Bill. What motivates Lecter is not sympathy but his interest in Starling, both as someone he rather likes and as a worthy opponent. "People will say we're in love," he jokes at one point, and it's funny because it's kind of true in a twisted way the movie is not afraid to develop, even if the idea of an actual relationship between the two seems absurd, at least in this iteration.
While known as a slasher film, violence is handled very well. We see as many murders actually take place here as we did in "Psycho," which is not that many. More is done by showing less. Hitchcock would have approved.
Some aspects of the film keep me from declaring it perfect. The way Hannibal makes his big play in Tennessee is too much of the Hollywood- magic-villain variety, while Demme emphasizes Starling's discomfort as a woman in a man's world in a way that comes off dated and pedantic today. Howard Shore's music adds to the atmosphere but never gels as anything with a character of its own.
But when you watch the movie, all you care about is what happens to Starling and what Lecter could do to her. And that is exactly what should happen. The end result is a very involving, one-of-a-kind experience.