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Break out the chianti
by CarlosC (movies profile)
Jul 8, 2008
18
of
25 people found this review helpful
Jodie Foster is an FBI agent tracking a serial killer, and Anthony Hopkins is the only man who can help her, an eerily cool psychopath held in the highest level of security the government can imagine. Problem is, "You don't want Hannibal Lecter inside your head." That's exactly where he's going to be. With the intelligence of Ted Kaczynski and the dietary habits of Jeffrey Dahmer, Lecter enjoys ensnaring his victims in a psychological web.
Lecter agrees to help Agent Clarice Starling (Foster) if she will bounce with him on his mental spider web. "I tell you things, you tell me things," he proposes. "Not about this case, though. About yourself. Quid pro quo." The horror of this movie is not in a bogeyman who pounces from dark corners, but of a manipulative, calculating genius (a trained psychiatrist) who lurks in the recesses of our own minds. He can smell our fears, and he knows what buttons to push to deceive us. And, there's the possibility that the villain (either Lecter or the killer he helps us hunt) is even more wretched than we are. What he does when we have succumbed to him is almost of secondary importance, but it's hair-raising enough in itself. "A census taker once tried to test me," Lecter quips to Clarice. "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti."
Lizard like, he flicks his tongue. Oscar-winner Hopkins later admitted that the tongue thing was an unscripted improvisation. Such perceptive touches typify Hopkins' performance, throughout -- so much so that the previously little-known actor spend the next five years of his career trying to live it down. Hopkins' portrayal was reminiscent of Boris Karloff in THE BLACK CAT (1934). In that movie, Karloff played a Satanist. But, instead of playing him as a typical heavy, Karloff, who was known for ghoulish portrayals such as FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and THE MUMMY (1932), played the villain as a suave, sophisticated gentleman. The same diabolical duplicity is found in Hopkins' portrayal. Lecter is that much more uncanny in that he is a contradiction. He helps Clarice, but he haunts her as well. His cooperation appeals to our desire for redemption, but it creeps us out all the same.
The movie was released the same year that the grizzly crime spree of cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer gripped the headlines. The Dahmer story contained sinister parallels to the fictional Hannibal tale: of effortlessly evading capture, of luring unwitting victims to a horrible end. It would be convenient to say that SILENCE's mysterious power to pour into our psyches had to do with finding an explanation or a fictional proxy for the real life horror that Dahmer unleashed. Perhaps at some level, the unspeakable depravity and literate script of SILENCE did seep into our brains through needful pores. However, the movie's staying power, and our need to see more -- evidenced in this past weekend's devouring box office debut of HANNIBAL (and DVD sales for LAMBS), are independent proof that long after Dahmer died, Hannibal Lecter lives, on his own.
(Carlos Colorado) |
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