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Silence Of The Lambs Compare And Contrast Essay

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“The last thing you want is Hannibal Lecter inside your head.” It is a daunting task to effectively transfer textual tonality from page to screen. Balancing proper visual interpretations of the text with original insights is not an easy procedure, and not every filmmaker is equipped with the artistic skills necessary to complete such an undertaking. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s wildly unsuccessful attempt at adapting Frank Herbert’s Dune, for example, ended in bankruptcy for the studio and premature cancellation of the project due to the extensive runtime the film was to have in accordance with the length of the book. Many filmic adaptations fail in their inability to recapture and translate what originally gave a text literary merit. Jonathan Demme’s adaptation of the quintessential Thomas Harris novel Silence of the Lambs is so well …show more content…

Each creative, Demme and Harris, utilize the conventions of their respective platform not for the creation of an identical character, but an identical feeling. In both texts, Lecter executes his visions of control, and both artists prove themselves capable of demonstrating these ideas to an audience. Roger Ebert describes the character of Lecter as having a “speaking voice with the precision of a man so arrogant he can barely be bothered to address the sloppy intelligence of the ordinary person.” He is intelligent and knows it, craving control for apparently no other reason than because it is there. There are, however, major discrepancies between Harris’s one-eyed, eleven-fingered Dr. Lecter Demme’s subdued criminal mastermind. The intimately paternal relationship between Lecter and Starling that guides the narrative remains constant between iterations even as Lecter changes. Between literature and film, he acts different, looks different, but is essential same character, evoking the same response from the audience of both book and

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