Rupert Goold
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The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
influenced True Story (2015)
Plot Themes Characters Dialogue Visuals
There are a few minor subplots — including the thorny relationship between Finkel and his girlfriend Jill ( Felicity Jones ), and how their home lives parallel Longo’s own domestic issues — but the lackluster jailhouse tête-à-têtes between Hill and Franco crowd out almost everything else, until True Story begins to resemble The Silence of the Lambs if Clarice Starling was played by Jonah Hill, and Hannibal Lecter was a really dull guy imprisoned for taking too many lit classes at Yale.
The jailhouse jousting recalls “Capote” by way of “The Silence of the Lambs.”
First-time director Rupert Goold seems to be trying to capture the same unsettling bond shared by Agent Starling and Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Think, for instance, of the "quid pro quo" sessions between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in 1991's The Silence of the Lambs and how integral these sequences proved to be to the audience's understanding of their complex relationship.
Borrowing mise en scène and psychodynamics from The Silence of the Lambs and other blue-chip thrillers, Goold raises the menace level as momentary darkness creeps into Franco’s winsome crinkly smile—confirming whatever doubts about his innocence Finkel might have formed from nearly every fact he’s been presented with thus far.
And considering the plethora of interview scenes between the interviewer and suspect, it pales considerably to one of the best examples of that, "The Silence of the Lambs" (where viewers were literally on the edge of their seats never knowing what might be said or done in any given moment).
In terms of unsure guilt (and the related payoff at the end), it's not as much fun as what occurred in "Primal Fear" all those years ago.