Music has the ability of searing into your brain as memories. We all have songs that immediately take us to a particular place and time whenever we hear them. Movies can do that but to a lesser extent. I remember movies for their plots, or their direction, or some other thing, but rarely do they bring me back to the time in which I watched them.

I don’t actually remember watching The Silence of the Lambs for the first time in the theater, but I remember why I watched it. My brother is four years older than me. He was dating a girl named Jennifer at the time. He had just graduated high school but she was still a junior. Unsurprisingly, I was not a popular kid in school, but she was. She liked me. Her popularity rubbed off on me a little bit, by proxy. I wanted to impress her.

They watched The Silence of the Lambs on a date and came back raving about it. Somehow, I talked my mother into letting me see it. I was 15 at the time, and usually not allowed to watch rated R movies.

I did like the movie, but I didn’t love it. But wanting to make Jennifer think I was cool I pretended like it was my new favorite. I faked it so well that my mother bought me the novel by Thomas Harris for Christmas.

I wasn’t much of a reader at the time, but I devoured that book. I read it three times over the Christmas break. The novel is more of a procedural than the movie. It digs pretty heavily into the behavioral science and forensics of catching a serial killer. I loved that stuff. I’ve always been fascinated by serial killers and the book was like catnip to me.

I watched the movie again when it came out on home video and for the first time, I realized how a book can enhance a film. So many little details were filled in by the book that the movie somehow seemed better by knowing them.

It has remained a favorite of mine. The DVD was the first one I’d ever purchased that was put out by the Criterion Collection.

Every time I watch it my appreciation deepens.

I’m not the only one who thinks it is a masterpiece. It made Anthony Hopkins a star. It swept the Oscars that year winning Best Picture, Best Actor and Actress, Screenplay, and Director.

Hopkins’s performance is a thing of legend. He’s only in it for a small amount of the film’s runtime, but he made Hannibal Lecter an icon of the horror genre. He’s terrifying. He’s also immensely quotable. I found myself saying his dialog along with him in every scene.

Real quick, the plot, for the few of you who may not know it. Jodie Foster plays Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee. She’s tasked by Behavioral Science director Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) to interview Hannibal Lecter, a notorious serial killer and cannibal, currently behind bars at a hospital for the criminally insane. He calls it an interesting errand, but really he’s hoping Lecter might shed some light on catching Buffalo Bill a man who is currently killing women and skinning them.

Clarice and Hannibal form a kinship of sorts – she tells him personal stories about her life and he gives her some insight into Buffalo Bill. Then Clarice investigates and eventually captures the killer.

It was hugely influential, nearly every serial killer movie and TV show that follows owes a debt. But what I love is that director Jonathan Demme isn’t all that interested in the genre. He’s telling a much more human story. The film often uses character POV shots to let us see what others (mostly Clarice) are looking at. It gets you inside their skin. Jason Bailey over at Flavorwire has an excellent essay on the use of POV in the movie.

Multiple times Demme shows how men ogle Clarice when she passes by. There is a famous scene at the beginning of the movie where she gets on an elevator surrounded by taller men who stare down at her. Or another one where a group of men jog past her and then turn around to look at her ass.

At a funeral home, about to perform an autopsy on one of Buffalo Bill’s victims, Crawford says something to a cop about not wanting to discuss such a heinous crime around…then he glances over at Clarice. It is a tactic meant to allow the two men to move away from the crowd of cops, but the camera lingers on Clarice’s face showing her disappointment and anger. Later she calls Crawford out on it, noting that while he may not be sexist himself, moments like that indicate to the men present that sexist behavior is okay.

Over and over Demme shows us how difficult it is for a woman to get any respect at the F.B.I. And how Clarice has to be tough and smart just to stay afloat. Call it a feminist serial killer movie.

But it is also thrilling. The scenes with Buffalo Bill are terrifying. He’s wild and camp while Lecter is subdued and intellectual. Both are nightmares come alive.

I could go on and on. I love this movie fully. It is so smart and entertaining, thrilling and scary – bolstered by terrific performances, a great script and subtle direction. One of my absolute favorites.