Guest Blogger; Lauren 2

“It has been a good long while since I have felt the presence of Evil so manifestly demonstrated,” states Roger Ebert as he is referring to the performances in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film, The Silence of the Lambs. We meet Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a man who is not only an incredibly talented psychiatrist, but a murderer who is known as Hannibal the Cannibal, because he eats his victims. FBI agents consult Dr. Lecter in their search for another murderer, Buffalo Bill, who skins his victims, in hopes that he might be able to help them with ideas on how to catch him. Hannibal Lecter being so brilliant, and having Ebert describe, “His speaking voice has the precision of a man so arrogant he can barely be bothered to address the sloppy intelligence of the ordinary person,” often rejects the agents that are sent to work with him or messes with their heads for his own amusement. It is not until a trainee agent, Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster,) is sent to work with him that he finally starts to open up, in exchange for pieces of Clarice’s own painful childhood and background. Anthony Hopkins plays Dr. Lecter amazingly. His acting truly creates what I think of as the epitome of evil but we find that there is some compassion within the man as he helps out Clarice. A theme to be taken from the movie would be not judging people because of their past/present situations; it is possible to find good in everyone. I have found that critics like the movie an Anthony Hopkins performance very much and had very few downfalls to the movie that hardly even important to the movie. All in all, I would highly recommend watching this horror movie, it has been one of my favorites for a long time!