Officially, the version of The Silence of the Lambs back in cinemas is a new 4K remaster, a tie-in with the BFI’s annual, genre-specific touring programme. There are other reasons to revisit the 1991 film though: to reconsider it after director Jonathan Demme’s death in April of this year (for my money, it’s his best and most confident film), or as context for David Fincher’s recent Netflix show Mindhunter, which also explores the idea of psychological profiling as a way to catch criminals. Not that one should need a special reason to watch a blockbuster horror-thriller as breath-quickening and elegantly crafted as this one. Jodie Foster is FBI trainee Clarice Starling; smart, tenacious, and trapped within a fragile female body that is mocked and degraded at every opportunity.
Anthony Hopkins is Dr Hannibal Lecter; a seductive, eloquent cannibal in a maximum-security prison, with highfalutin tastes and a gift for reading people. Based on Thomas Harris’s 1988 bestselling novel of the same name, it sees the odd couple working together to track down serial killer Buffalo Bill. One of Demme’s great skills is his sense of balance; set pieces are alternately propelled by ratcheting tension and slow, mounting dread, while his exquisite match cuts between parallel storylines keep the pace nimble.
