Like Duel, I have meant to watch this movie so many times it’s ridiculous. I stand there with the disc in my hand – I go online and read reviews which never really contain any info that makes me desperate to watch it – finally this time I just found myself saying to myself, “What the f*ck are you doing? It’s Spielberg, you’re a film nerd, and you’ve not seen it yet!” LOL. Well, that worked – and putting it in a double bill with Duel didn’t hurt either, it’s certainly recommended.

And Spielberg it really is. On the technical side of things, this film is nothing short of flawless. Though Billy Goldenberg did a fine job with the score for Duel, it’s here finally that the John Williams relationship began, and boy, it’s there if anywhere, when those strings come in over the main title, that you hear an artist who started as brilliant as he has continued. The film is also lovingly, beautifully shot by Vilmos Zsigmond.

But while I really wanted to love this movie, in the end I felt it dragged far too much. It’s very scattered in what it’s trying to say – the public adulation of the couple, Hawn in particular, resembling Bonnie and Clyde among many others, the fleeting digs at the media done better in Natural Born Killers (public adulation of the criminals there too of course), the baby storyline and other things resembling the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona. In other words, it’s all very much been done better elsewhere before and since. You can’t deny the perfect blending of skill and fun though, and it is a large enough part of any understanding of Spielberg to again make me ashamed I didn’t see it sooner.

The classic. I think. This is one of those movies I’ve watched so many times both for fun and for study that I can’t help but quote vast chunks of it out loud as it plays. There are just so many things about this movie that, to my surprise every time, lift it far above the quality genre pieces the other installments in the series are.

It’s a perfect screenplay, to start with. Syd Field talked a lot of nonsense (I realised, eventually) about screenwriting and his “paradigm” is broken down with every recent passing week, but one of his books I’d still recommend is “Four Screenplays” which simply broke down four screenplays – this one, Thelma and Louise, Terminator 2, and Dances with Wolves – and showed why his system worked, owing a lot of course to Joseph Campbell, whose thoughts on mythology are overwhelmingly present here too – I think Jodie Foster in particular is fond of talking about the mythical aspects of this movie whenever she’s asked about it.

It’s interesting to me to notice that all those four screenplays, all produced between 91-92, have some seriously powerful women in them – Clarice Starling, Thelma and Louise of course, Sarah Connor, Stands with a Fist – and one of the most stand-out things about Silence is that it was made at a time when doing the whole feminist thing still actually meant something, before people started to see such things with an eye for cynicism and post-modernism.

I like the lightness here too, though, and it’s something I noticed while watching Hannibal is yet another thing I think they got right (in comparison to the very straightlaced Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising) there; “If this door should fall down or – heh-heh – anything else …”, “No … no, you ate yours,” – I think part of the reason I for one really didn’t object to Thomas Harris thinking a romance was spawned here is because of how the sharp minds of Clarice and Hannibal right from the off even resembled one another in the humour department.

It’s really just one of those perfect movies you can’t say much of for or against, being as it’s there in front of you as it is and it couldn’t be any other way. Even though I practically know it by heart, I still love it, could even watch it over again right now just a few days after watching it before. It’s classic Jodie, definitive Hopkins, perfect in genre; basically, more deserving of the Oscars it received than just about anything since. What else is there to say?

Just when you think the well’s dry, another great director comes out with another great Vietnam movie. It’s amazing how different this one is from what’s come before. There are elements here and there of The Deer Hunter; of The Thin Red Line (not Vietnam, I know, but close enough – Klaus Bedelt’s wonderful score very like Hans Zimmer’s there, too); but this thing’s far more raw and animal, even beastly. Just when I began to think, “oh, that’s it? I kinda expected him to go through worse,” ... boy, did it give me worse.

Christian Bale’s performance is perfect – it begins so innocently that you almost start to wonder what everyone’s been getting so excited about, but boy does it build and by the end you truly feel he’s gone through it all. Steve Zahn, too, who I was looking forward to seeing almost more than I was to seeing Bale, starts out much as he has been in other movies, but it becomes something much more. The ending’s uber-corny, it can’t be overstated, but apart from that, it’s definitely well worth the watch.