Have you ever liked a villain more than the hero? Who and why?
I found The Silence of the Lambs fascinating. Fascinating, and frightening.
I’m not normally drawn to psychological thrillers, but Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are brilliant in it. There is something about Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter that is difficult to look away from. It would be too strong to say that I like Lecter. I don’t. But I am drawn to him as a character, even while knowing that he is dangerous.
Part of that comes from the strange role he plays in the story He is both monster and mentor. Clarice Starling goes to him because she needs his insight. He understands people. He sees things other people miss. But he does not simply threaten Clarice. He reads her. He watches. He listens. He notices. She is trying to understand him, while all the time he is understanding her. That is what makes him so frightening.
Lecter does not rant or bluster. He is calm, controlled and observant. He does not need to make a lot of noise to dominate a scene. His attention itself feels dangerous. And that is unsettling because many of the qualities he possesses are qualities we usually admire. But charm is not character. Intelligence is not goodness. Sophistication is not virtue. Self-control is not necessarily moral.
Perhaps evil would be easier to recognise if it were always crude, chaotic and obviously threatening. Lecter is none of those things. He is intelligent, attentive, disciplined, sophisticated and composed.
Perhaps that is what makes Hannibal Lecter so unsettling. He possesses many qualities we normally admire, but none of them makes him good. In his case, they make him more dangerous.
The Afterword 
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