"The Silence of the Lambs" by Jonathan Demme: a review

The Silence of the Lambs is a movie about a cannibalistic psychiatrist and a young trainee from FBI. Anthony Hopkins acted as the psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter, while Jodie Foster excelled as Clarice Starling. Starling was undergoing training in Virginia, to become an FBI agent when a serial killer identified as “Buffalo Bill” kidnaps a Senator’s daughter. Jack Crawford from FBI’s Behavioral Science division asks Starling to get some clues from Lecter who is a brilliant psychiatrist. Each of the victims of Buffalo Bill had some skin removed.

Starling goes to State Hospital in Baltimore where Lecter is in solitary confinement. This hospital is for criminally insane people. Dr. Frederick Chilton is in charge of this prison.

Starling finds Lecter to be sarcastic, dismissive, probing, and ridiculing type of person. He keeps on getting under Starling’s skin. Starling, on the other hand tries to glean the truth from him. On one of her visits, another prisoner throws some semen at her, which annoys Lecter very much. He asks Starling to return and tells her to contact one of his former patients. This hint leads FBI to a storage area in which a man’s head severed from the rest of the body is discovered. On being questioned, Lecter admits that “Buffalo Bill” had some links with the dead man but denies any responsibility for the death of the beheaded man.

Now Starling is certain that Lecter could lead her to the serial killer. Lecter takes advantage of Starling’s predicament and bargains for a transfer. Starling conveys this to Crawford, who allows her to make false promises to the insane psychiatrist. Lecter continues to torment Starling, and gets some personal information about Starling in exchange for profiling the serial killer. Starling does it. Lecter gives her encrypted information about the serial killer.

In the meanwhile, Chilton strikes a deal with Lecter, and reveals that Starling has no intention of keeping her end of the bargain like horse riding equipment. Lecter accepts the new deal, and travels to Memphis, where he tells some personal details about the suspect to the agents from FBI. Starling also comes to Tennessee and asks Lecter to unravel the mystery. But Lecter does not comply with her wishes. As usual, the psychiatrist has the upper hand, and Starling ends up revealing more about her unhappy past, in which she was once left with some relatives, and there she saw an abbatoir. She also describes her guilt in failing to prevent a lamb from being taken there. After learning this, Lecter gives her a few files in which there is some information about the serial killer. Chilton arrives and sends Starling out. That same night, Lecter escapes.

Starling studies the notes given to her by Lecter, and notices that the first person killed by “Buffalo Bill” knew him personally. She starts investigating from there, and zeroes on a tailor named Jame Gumb. It occurs to her that this man may be trying to make clothing out of women’s skin for that womanly look. She uses Lecter’s notes for confirmation. In the notes, Lecter did mention that the patient wanted to undergo sex change. She calls up Crawford. But by that time Crawford had already learnt about this person from Chilton. So FBI agents were sent to Jame Gumb’s residence. They don’t succeed in finding their man there. Starling resumes her investigations, and talks to other friends and acquaintances. Finally, she reaches the house of Jack Gordon, who is none other than Jame Gumb. Here in the basement of his house, there is a well that is dry. And senator’s daughter is trapped in it. Gumb tries to kill Starling as well, but fails as she manages to kill him before he kills her. She is now free to complete her training. While she is celebrating, Lecter calls her, and tells her that he would not be chasing her but she too should leave him alone. Starling says she could not do that. Lecter then tells her that he was “having an old friend for dinner". The movie ends with Lecter following Chilton who was unaware of being followed. Ever since the mad psychiatrist had escaped, Chilton had been trying to avoid him.

The Silence Of The Lambs was the most influential films in the past and created a new type of "bad" or psychopath, the really scary if you see on the screen and not expect to ever be spotted alone. Recently we have seen another example of criminal psychopath like Anton who embroidered Chigurgh Javier Bardem in "No Country for Old Men".