The key to great cinematography is in the balancing of lights and darks - if the contrast is minimal, the audience knows they are in for a relatively realistic film. If the contrast is sharp, however, the audience is trained to expect a stylish edge to the film they are going to see. Ridley Scott's filmography is littered with films like this; decent ideas with a bad script and a gorgeous visual style. If there was a way to visualize Thomas Harris' ludicrously over the top thriller, this is it. Using deep shadows and sharp light sources, John Mathieson jumps miles away from the toned down realism of The Silence of the Lambs to create an almost film-noir visual style, as fiendish as the psychopaths that thrive within it. Best Shot: The opening shot of the film - the frame starts as a tiny speck on a black screen as it grows to take up the whole frame. This shot is a perfect introduction to the elegant visual style of this pseudo-psychological thriller, and a fitting reintroduction to Hannibal Lecter.
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
