TOW #13 The Silence of the Lambs Review (Roger Ebert)

This review is written by the late Roger Ebert, one of Hollywood's most renowned film critics. He was the first person to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, and is the only critic to have his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He has written hundreds of reviews, all of which are now compiled on his website. Silence of the Lambs was released in 1991, and details the story of Clarice Starling, an FBI agent who is called to investigate the case of serial killer Buffalo Bill. To do so, she enlists the help of Hannibal Lecter, a man locked in a maximum security prison for brutal cannibalism. Silence of the Lambs was the third film in history to win Academy Awards in all five major categories: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Needless to say, Roger Ebert lists it with the elite title of "Great Movie." His purpose, as a critic, is to give his opinion of a film and to justify his claims. He either supports to dismantles a movie's standing, and he raves for this particular movie. He structures his review with several comparisons. The first comparisons he draws are to other famous horror movies, already reviewed by Ebert as some of the best in the genre, Psycho and Halloween. These establish his credibility and are hyperlinked to their own reviews on his site, to prove that he knows what he is talking about. To truly prove whether the movie is worth seeing, Ebert sets to work closely analyzing it. He does a point by point comparison of Clarice and Hannibal, to prove the ingenious nature of the screenplay and director Jonathan Demme's ability to draw parallels between two unlikely characters. Ebert, in his positive review, brings the movie to life for his reader, describing the camera as an humanlike entity to emphasize the mastery of the film, "When [Clarice] enters dangerous spaces, it is there waiting for her instead of following her in." Ebert describes the sounds of the movie, and uses a particular syntax to bring them to the reader. He strings together the eerie sounds, "There are exhalations and sighs at many points, as when the cocoon of the gypsy moth is taken from the throat of Bill's first victim." Then he leaves on short fragment by itself for emphasis, and to make sure we imagine it, "Much heavy breathing." Ebert also leans on statistics to support his love of the movie, stating that "Silence" won five Academy Awards 13 months after being released, a rare feat. Having seen Silence of the Lambs and having loved it, I am quite biased when I say his analysis is effective. But Roger Ebert has the unique talent of bringing a movie to life with words, without giving to much away, whilst revealing intricacies of design that even movie veterans miss.