Dr. Hannibal is not some mere psychopath. He was a psychiatrist, a very good one indeed and his love for the science to read people's minds is intense but not as intense as his taste for people's livers and kidneys taken raw out of their bodies and dripping with blood. He is primarily a cannibal who is aided with his wonderful ability to manipulate people's minds. The deep and dark areas of human mind are no secret to him. Just by talking to Agent Starling for five minutes, he tells her native place, her insecurities and hence her repressions. He considers himself highly intellectual way above than the people around him. And he is right. While sending Starling to Hannibal, Crawford warns Starling not to reveal anything about her personal life to him. "Trust me, you don't want Hannibal inside your head" he says to her.
"Crawford sent a trainee to me?" Hannibal says. And why would the FBI boss send a trainee when he can send an expert in criminal psychology? Because they are no good to Hannibal, and all the previous attempts by the best of psychiatrists to analyse and hence conquer Hannibal are blown to pieces by Hannibal's mastery in psychiatry and his crude insults. Here is a man, who knows all the tricks. Crawford believes that this new serial killer Buffalo Bill whom they are failing to trace can be unlocked only when they can gain some insight into his psyche, and the best person who can take them into the killer's mind is none other than this veteran cannibal genius.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who has never co operated with investigation so far, and who insults his investigators to the core and remains silent, chooses to talk to Starling. She approaches him, not with the confidence and arrogance of an FBI agent but as a student who regards her master as a man of great understanding. When she initially greets Hannibal, we see in his wide open eyes an amusement. And he is happy to get a subject, with whose mind he can play. He entertains her because he sees no agenda behind her approach but a polite attempt to "dissect" him. Crawford knows that if he tells her the purpose even before she talks to Hannibal, he would not have talked to her. "He would have toyed with you and went to silence". Because what Hannibal wants is a subject, but not a situation where he is being subjected to basic level standard psychological examination. That's why Starling's questionnaire disappoints him. " You think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool?" he asks her, looking at her questionnaire.
When she is desperate to catch Buffalo Bill and seeks Hannibal's help, he doesn't simply offer her a visual of Bill's head charitably, but he asks her to take him to her past. He asks her to tell her about her past in exchange for his diagnosis on Bill's case. He simply asks her to put herself in a position where she doesn't want to be at all, and smiles seeing her helpless from having no other option. But his offer is not sadistic. Here we meet a man who has been locked inside a cell for 8 years and the only way he can get out is through other people's minds. Hannibal knows the limitations to his good behavior, and others' as well. Unlike the Joker in The Dark Knight, he doesn't want to celebrate it. He simply coexists with society to the extent where tolerance fades out of significance and the only question that matters is who is smarter and quicker. He likes Clarice, for reasons best known to him. May be because he smells from her a similar childhood to his. This psychiatrist, for whom the mind is not a puzzle but a text book is disconnected from the morals and ethics of civilized society and hence is free to do whatever he wishes.
We like his character, not because we begin to sympathize with him but because he likes and helps Clarice, with whom we identify. His character design is enchanting, not only because he is a man-eating psychiatrist but because we feel as much thrilled as Clarice when there is only a glass between the prey and the predator and given the glass breaks the predator wont even think for a second to rip her heart out and eat, yet a conversation goes on where both of them keep down their predator-prey roles and shift to master and student roles.
Clarice, on the other hand is a less complex character. She has a painful experience in her childhood when she tried to save a lamb from being slaughtered but failed. From then on wards she was being haunted by nightmares involving the cries of the lambs, and all she seeks is their silence. (Hence the title). However in her present adult mind, the lambs are the victims of crime and she hopes to silence them by saving them from the slaughterers.
"The silence of the lambs" remains a classic to this day and will continue to be. It is not usual for a horror film to derive its strength from character study rather than from genre thrills. Its not easy to forget the performances of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. And the entrance shot of Dr. Lecter, to this day, stands unbeatable.
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