The movie's soundtrack also carries themes all the way through. 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. Much heavy breathing. There are subterranean rumblings and faraway cries and laments, almost too low to be heard, at critical points. There is the sound of a heart monitor. Howard Shore's mournful music sets a funereal tone. When the soundtrack wants to create terror, as when Clarice is in Bill's basement, it mixes her frightened panting with the sound of Bill's heavy breathing and the screams of the captive girl--and then adds the dog's frenzied barking, which psychologically works at a deeper level than everything else. Then it adds those green goggles so he can see her in the dark.
Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins won Oscars for best actress and actor (the movie also won for best picture, for Demme's direction and Ted Talley's screenplay, and was nominated for editing and sound). It is remarkable that the Academy would remember, let alone single out, a film released 13 months before the Oscarcast; it usually votes for films that are still in theaters, or new on video. But “Silence” was so clearly one of a kind that it could not be ignored.
Hopkins' performance has much less screen time than Foster's, but made an indelible impression on audiences. His “entrance” is unforgettable. After Clarice descends those stairs and passes through those doors and gates (which all squeak), the camera shows her POV as she first sees Lecter in his cell. He is so . . . still. Standing erect, at relaxed attention, in his prison jump suit, he looks like a waxwork of himself. On her next visit, he is erect, and then very slightly recoils, and then opens his mouth, and I at least was made to think of a cobra. His approach to Lecter's personality (Hopkins says on his commentary track) was inspired by HAL 9000 in “2001”: He is a dispassionate, brilliant machine, superb at logic, deficient in emotions.
Foster's Clarice is not only an orphan but a disadvantaged backwoods girl who has worked hard to get where she is, and has less self-confidence than she pretends. Noticing the nail polish on one of Bills' victims, she guesses that the girl is from “town,” a word used only by someone who is not. Her bravest moment may come when she orders the gawking sheriff's deputies out of the room at the funeral home (“Listen here now!”).
One key to the film's appeal is that audiences like Hannibal Lecter. That's partly because he likes Starling, and we sense he would not hurt her. It's also because he is helping her search for Buffalo Bill, and save the imprisoned girl. But it may also be because Hopkins, in a still, sly way, brings such wit and style to the character. He may be a cannibal, but as a dinner party guest he would give value for money (if he didn't eat you). He does not bore, he likes to amuse, he has his standards, and he is the smartest person in the movie.
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