He has no ethical qualms about killing or consuming his victims. His mind is acute. His decisions are not as much immoral as they are amoral; Lecter does not believe in right vs. wrong in terms of his own behavior. He is far more concerned with his own personal victories in outsmarting a system he is familiar with, of proving himself to be a superior human being with greater intelligence than the mass of humanity he belittles by his cannibalistic behavior. He mocks humanity, he self-aggrandizes, and he makes no excuse for his actions except as a form of self-indulgence. Neither Lector nor Starling change dramatically during the course of the movie, but Starling does become wiser after her encounters with Lecter. Her innocence is all but absent toward the end of the film, but she is nevertheless as optimistic and as professionally driven as she was when she first became a federal agent. Hannibal Lecter changes not one bit; he is a complex character but a static...
Suspense is the keynote of the film. The audience does not know what will become of Agent Starling: whether she will survive the investigation let alone gather enough information to apprehend Bill. What makes Silence of the Lamb remarkable and an enduring work of film, however, is how deeply disturbing subject matter like cannibalism is woven into a real-world setting. Cannibalism is rarely hinted at in film and even more rarely addressed in a film that is not purely slasher-driven. Silence of the Lambs not only includes cannibalism as a subject matter but also warped notions of gender and sexuality such h as Bill's attempted sex change and his conflicted, closeted homosexuality. Its subject matter is dark and disturbing, adding a dimension of horror that is absent from many if not most other films in its genre.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge The cliched image of the Romantic poet is of a solitary tortured genius; it is ironic that the work of the poets collectively regarded as the 'Romantic School' is marked by collective and co-operative effort as much as by individual creativity. For none of the great figures of Romantic poetry is this so true as it is for Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The first-rate poetic output of this extraordinary,
After all, when Marcellus is raped, the audience has witnessed the murder of two college students by Marcellus' hit men, and knows that Marcellus had a former ally thrown off of a roof for an unknown reason. In addition, it is because of Marcellus' orders that Vincent, whom the audience has grown to like, is killed at Butch's house. Marcellus is clearly not a good man, and yet, nothing
(In his master's voice) But, since this is totally a novel regarding memory and return, the narrative keeps recoiling, as if going after James's thought processes, into the vital episodes of his bygone life. In this astute manner we are able to inch into James's strange family life which gives an account of his father's horrendous pursuit of spiritual perfection, his mother's shielding care of her writer son, the ailment
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