Why Is Silence Of The Lambs considered a great movie?

Cafe Society
1

I just don’t get it. I saw the previews for ** Hannibal ** which looked somewhat interesting, and starred Julianne Moore, whom I like, so I decided to rent it. However, I had never seen ** Silence of The Lambs** so I rented that too because I can’t watch sequels first for some reason. I hadn’t watched it before was that I was lead to believe it was gory, and I’m not big on blood in the horror movies I watch.

I watched two thirds of it before I gave up on it. It wasn’t gory. It was boring as hell. I thought it was supposed to be a psychological thriller, but…it didn’t do anything for me. It wasn’t scary, it wasn’t particularly suspenseful and I didn’t feel any connection to the characters at all. I ended up returning it, and the unwatched ** Hannibal (which I’d heard wasn’t as good, so god forbid…)with a sense of disappointment. This was suposed to be the movie to get you into the mind of a psychopath, so shouldn’t it have been more absorbing? It didn’t draw me in nearly as much as Skeletons in the Closet, The Cell or even Kalifornia** and ** Love and a .45** did.

What did I miss? This is a movie people love, so I must not have grasped something about it that would have made it a worth-while viewing experience. I fear popular movies alude me frequently, after all I hate ** The Wizard of Oz** too. Will someone who loves ** Silence of the Lambs** enlighten me? Did anyone else dislike it?

2

I’m with you on this one.

I wouldn’t say I disliked it, I just didn’t see what the big deal was. I saw it right when it came on video and was also bored. I never told anyone because I figured it was just me.

My interest only peaked at the end when he escaped.

I didn’t get the whole flashback and the father part.

It wasn’t scary or gory.

I laughed when that patient threw his goo at Jodie Foster’s face.

3

You may have gone in with heightened expectations. I saw it at the theatre when it first came out, before all the following hooplah.

It is called a horror film. I didn’t find it horrifying, so that may have influenced you. You may have been expecting a scare-fest that wasn’t there. Silence of the Lambs should be classified as crime-drama IMHO. I neither found it horrifying nor suspenseful. Don’t go into it though expecting horror, because by modern difinition of horror films, that’s not what it is. It’s a mental game of cat-an-mouse between Starling, Lecter, and Buffalo Bill.

But great googly moogly, it was well-written, brilliantly directed, and the acting was some of the best in recent years.

And the bit about her father - Starling wants to be better than that. She’s trying to make her father proud, his memory is a driving force in her actions.

4

SPOILERS (Just in case I put in a few, It’s good to add a warning.)

I love it because of the urbane, cultured, psychopathic evil of Hannibal Lecter, the personal growth of Agent Starling, and the uncontrolled, animalistic insanity of Jame Gumb (compare Gumb’s pit to a trapdoor spider’s lair). I suppose you have to have a certain viewpoint on the world to find watching someone like Lecter … well, ‘interesting’ isn’t quite the word, but it will have to do with my vocabulary. But looking into those eyes and hearing his voice reminds you that there are members of the species Homo sapiens sapiens that have more in common with cats than they have with people.

But Lecter is most effective in small doses, and the movie understands that. It devoted well under an hour to the character, and while he is the center of every scene he is in, he is on so rarely you don’t have enough time to become inured to his presence. When he speaks, the whole audience listens, and when he delivers a characteristically flat emotion, the whole audience hangs on it. Or at least I always have.

Starling’s character is effective in a different way. She is as human as Lecter is alien, as vulnerable as Lecter is impervious. But she toughens, goes from a grassy-green trainee Lecter can mold like putty to a toughened veteran brave enough to hunt down Jame Gumb herself and smart enough to get useful information out of Lecter. She is a materially different person by the end, more confident, more able.

Then we have Gumb. Gumb is an animal, no two ways about it. He brutally murders innocents and does unspeakable things with the remains. But Gumb, himself, is remains. Gumb is the remains of the abused child he once was. Now a monster is parading around in his body, arrogantly daring someone, anyone, to kill it.

The film itself is interesting. It eschews slick glamor for psychological effect. It has its main character, Lecter, deliver most of his lines from behind thick glass. It has some gore, but it leaves you to imagine plenty, always an effective technique.

I like the movie because it isn’t a standard horror show. It actually lets the characters be themselves, and it has characters interesting enough that you would want them to be themselves. I think it is a very interesting movie with a good replayability factor (I’ve seen it numerous times myself).

And as for you not liking The Wizard of Oz: Heretic! :smiley:

5

I saw Silence of the Lambs in the theater when it first came out, and while it didn’t scare me, it did gross me out. I’ve tried to block the movie from my mind, and rather successfully since I couldn’t even give you a basic plot outline at this point. I couldn’t eat for the rest of the day… it was just icky. I actually wasn’t aware that it was considered a “great movie”…

6

Thought it was very suspenseful…much better than Hannibal which was just gross.

I liked Agent Starling all right, except I thought she made a really bad error in judgment by chasing the bad guy down into the cellar/torture chamber without first getting backup. She nearly succeeded in getting herself AND the kidnapped woman killed. Bad FBI agent!

Personally I thought the kidnapped chick (the congresswoman’s daughter) was kick ass. She was the one who lured Precious (the yippy poodle) into the pit with her just by using her noggin. They should have made the movie about HER.

7

If you missed the end, you missed the best, most suspenseful part.

8

It won the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay. The only other two films to sweep the top 5 catagories like that are It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

As opposed to basing the film on the book? :wink:

9

No kidding. At the end, in the gym, when Lecter…well, you know.
The book (obviously) goes into much more detail about the weird relationship that Starling and Lecter develop. That kind of thing never translates into a movie very well.

10

Because you get to see people being butchered in lots of interesting new ways.