A Sophisticated Thriller

Rating: 10/10 (25 October 2016)

Silence of the Lambs is a crime thriller brought from page to the big screen by director Jonathan Demme and Is, in my opinion, his greatest film. It is by far the best film of the Hannibal Lectre series and picked itself up a total of five Oscars including best picture.
Jodie Foster's portrayal of Clarice Starling is definitely for me one of the greatest female performances of all time. Clarice Starling had very intriguing character development from a sensitive police student to a proud detective who solved the case of the murderous Buffalo Bill, however we are still left to wonder whether the lambs are still screaming. Anthony Hopkins also knocked the ball out of the park with a very disturbing portrayal of one of the most infamous movie characters of all time: Hannibal Lectre. His soft cunning voice in contrast to his cruel vindictive words sent chills down my spine and injected a dose of anxiety into my veins. This film, for me, defines the careers of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins with both of them picking up Oscars for best actor and best actress.
One thing for me that stood out about this film was the fact that it did not rely on gore to progress the narrative which in hands of some directors would have been the case. The Silence of the Lambs contains great dialogue, specifically between Clarice and Hannibal to which really drove the narrative without it been boring. Not knowing whether Hammbial is speaking the truth or in anagrams was extremely gripping and seeing Clarice trying to maintain her professionalism was at times painful to watch ( in a good way! ). Antagonist Buffalo Bill, portrayed by the great Ted Levine, really stroke fear into my system and was an intriguing character to learn about. The pinnacle scene in which he follows Clarice in the the dark almost caused me to have a stroke, literally! I genuinely was unsure Clarice was going to survive and also the experience of seeing this play out in the POV of Bill was quite hard to maintain however a very effective decision from Demme.
There are hardly any negative criticism I can give towards this film except from the fact that I wish that it explained Hannibals motives in a bit more detail. Although he allowed the plot to excel and fulfilled his purpose of leaving chills in the spines of the characters and the audience, I wish that we could of had a little bit more context on him. Sure this is nit picking but I've got to find some sort of criticism.
The Silence of the Lambs is a classic example of pages to the big screen done right and will always remain a classic in film history.