Alejandro's Reviews > The Silence of the Lambs

One of my favorite books and film too!


This is the second novel in the "Hannibal Lecter" book series.


GAME CHANGER

Back then, in 1991, I didn't know that Silence of the Lambs had been first a book, and even less that it was actually the second book in the literary series, but...

...I knew that the film adaptation became, in an instant, one of my all-time favorite films. A game changer indeed that swept away with the 5 most respected awards by the Academy (best film, best script, best director, best actor and best actress) that you can't diminish since this particular combination of these 5 Oscars, had been only accomplished three times in the history of the Oscars, It Happened One Night (1934) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), along with the said film.

A curious thing is that while Dr. Hannibal Lecter became the lead character of the book series generating adaptations of each book along with a TV series inspired in the said character...

...for me, my attachment to Silence of the Lambs was the young FBI trainee Clarice Starling, since she was a formidable character facing overwhelming challenges: dealing with disturbing interviews with the insidious Dr. Hannibal Lecter, an unwilling pawn of FBI Special Agent Jack Crawford, and having to face the insanely dangerous "Buffalo Bill".

Clarice Starling is a beacon of light in the middle of a hopeless world of darkness. She is smart, intuitive, resourceful and brave.


THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS...

Hardly, anyone thinks himself as the villain, each character (real or fiction) thinks that they are doing the right thing and that the end justifies the means...

...and young FBI trainee Clarice Starling is "the means" for Special Agent Jack Crawford to get the insight of Dr. Hannibal Lecter about the case of the criminally insane one known as "Buffalo Bill", so exposing an unexperienced Starling to the wicked cunning Dr. Hannibal Lecter, is justified if that can accomplish the arrest of the wanted serial killer.

This kind of "justified manipulation" isn't strange to Crawford since he has done it before with Special Investigator Will Graham, that not matter his natural talent to get to know how the serial killers think, Graham was already a fragile character looking for peace of mind when he was "persuaded" to become involved once again in a serial killer case and getting inside the world of Dr. Hannibal Lecter again with disastrous outcome.

Now, it's turn for young Clarice to become a "pawn" of Jack Crawford that while his intentions are "good" in the angle that he genuinely wants to arrest criminals, he's leaving collateral damage in the path of those manhunting crusades.

Clarice may not fall now...

...but she's already in the watch of Dr. Hannibal Lecter and it was Crawford who put her there.


SERIAL KILLERS' WORLD IS SO SMALL

It seems that the serial killers world, at least in the literary universe created by Thomas Harris, is so small that a character like Dr. Hannibal Lecter, where you have to take in mind that he was a renown psychiatrist too, well, it isn't that hard to notice the particular M.O.s of each criminally insane murderers, and soon enough knowing who in the middle of that twisted club is the designer on each killing spree.

And Dr. Lecter knows that.

He knows that he is a necessary evil for being able by the forces of the law to catch other menaces of this same kind of wicked breed,

And of course, Dr. Lecter has a plan.

He is patient. There is not hurry.

He already got his payback to his accidental captor.

Now, it could be good to get his freedom back.

Since after all, the world is just too boring without him there.

And that fool Jack Crawford keeps sending him the tools to get what he wants.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter is ready to eat the whole world once again.

Be afraid.

Be very afraid...

...and turn to look if somebody is following you, ready to take you for dinner.