Anthony Hopkins Silence
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
Hannibal Lecter had appeared in a movie before Silence of the Lambs, but it took Anthony Hopkins playing the psychopathic cannibal in the 1991 movie to truly bring him into the public domain.
The Silence of the Lambs is the story of Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster), an FBI agent who’s forced to go to the jailed Lecter for help with catching a serial killer called Buffalo Bill. After some word play Lecter agrees to help, albeit cryptically: he offers hints and riddles for Starling to work out which, after several more murders, leads Starling to Bill. In the process she learns much about the man, as Lecter was originally his psychiatrist; but their conversations are cut short, as Lecter manages to escape from incarceration.
In the end Starling discovers that Bill is a psychopath who is intensely depressed that he cannot have a sex change operation to become a woman. He captured women in order to skin them and fashion the skin into a ‘woman suit’ for him to wear. They have a short encounter, and Starling shoots him to death.
The film ends with one final conversation between Starling and Lecter over the phone before he heads off to have a reunion with “an old friend”, his former jailer.
Hopkins managed to snag an academy award for his portrayal of Lecter, also snagging the record for awar winner with the least amount of screen time (a little over 16 minutes, despite his importance to the plot).