Review: ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ Continues To Terrify
The 1991 classic directed by Jonathan Demme ages gracefully
It’s funny to look back on the colourful career of the great filmmaking Jonathan Demme. Whenever his name is mentioned, I always think of vibrant, celebratory works that are light on their feet and generally quite joyful — his brilliant Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense and his consistent work within comedy through the 1980s (Something Wild, Married to the Mob, Melvin and Howard) all spring to mind long before Demme’s later, much more serious films. There is something both fascinating and revealing about Demme’s sudden switch in interest at the beginning of the 1990s as his career suddenly shifted from comedy to far more serious films. Within just a few years, Demme went from making the very fun romantic crime comedy (some may even consider it a spoof, at times, of mobster movies) Married to the Mob to making what is still regarded as a cornerstone of the horror genre. He didn’t lose that sense of severity for the rest of his career, whether he was adapting Toni Morrison’s Beloved or making the underrated Rachel Getting Married — well, so long as we don’t count his Hitchcock inspired The Truth About Charlie, which is pulpy and fun, a disruption to an otherwise incredibly serious series of films.
