the silence of the lambs (1991)

for whatever reason i hadnt previously seen jonathan demme's seminal nineties horror classic, personally i blame the fact that the film has been spoofed to death in the years since its release.

upon release "the silence of the lambs" was considered to be a step away from the usual detective based crime drama, and its easy to see why it was given such a status. for a start it featured a woman in the usual male driven lead role. there are scenes wherein the viewer is led to believe, be it through their own expectations or those subtly suggested to them through various filmmaking techniques, that clarice, the stereotypical female of the piece will react to a specific event with a stereotypically "female" reaction, when in fact she will act in the opposite manner, pulling the proverbial rug from beneath our feet. its interesting to compare this to the previous alfred hitchcock films that i have looked at this week, in fact a very interesting comparison between the portrayal of women in "the silence of the lambs" and hitchcock's "shadow of a doubt" definately exists. obviously strong female characters existed way before clarice starling (the femme fetale of the 1940's en route to ellen ripley brought with it many an equal oppurtunity), but the emotional standpoint is definately a borderline unique one. whilst watching the film i noted that the way in which our emotions as a viewer are manipulated are very similiar to the way in which the character of hannibal lector manipulates clarice.

it goes without saying that anthony hopkins mesmerises as hannibal lector, and its a testiment to his creation that he is not only the one remembered for the film, but also that he won the best actor oscar for the role, strange considering that hopkins' role (timewise) amounts to little more than a cameo.

the technique on display in the film is much stronger than i expected, with the film displaying some genuinely innovative camerawork, well innovative in terms of commercial cinema, and while the film is fairly basic in terms of narrative structure demme wastes no opportunity for artistic flair when it comes to the aforementioned emotional connotation-interpretation provided through subjective editing.

the ending proves that the pastiche level sequels are pretty much the most pointless ever commited to celluloid, doing nothing but further the spoof-like portrayal of hannibal lector, once a truly terrifying character here in the silence of the lambs. as a sidenote, i found the film useful when applying the concepts set out in the work of alfred hitchcock to a modern day film. "the silence of the lambs" feels like a genuine (and very rare) extention to the work of alfred hitchcock, in that it is an intelligent horror film (not a thriller!!) that utilises pacing above cheap shocks.