Saturday, December 5, 2009

Straw Dogs (1971)



Directed by Sam Peckinpah.
Starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George.
In a Nutshell: A newlywed couple face the harassment of a rural England town.

Sam Peckinpah, despite his well-earned reputation as “Bloody Sam,” is an incredibly underrated director in his depiction of humanity versus life’s cruelty. Though with Straw Dogs, it’s questionable whether his nihilism got the better of him. Straw Dogs involves two young newlyweds, meek mathematician David (Dustin Hoffman) and childish flirt Amy (Susan George). They move to Amy’s hometown where David’s American ways immediately irks the townspeople. David also hires one of Amy’s old beaus as a handyman, and Amy does not miss an opportunity to flaunt herself before the workers. Amy defines herself as a woman who can control others with her sexuality, though her teasing finds herself raped by her ex. That she ends up succumbing to the rape, evokes an adolescent confusion between both men and whatever uncontrolled feelings that follow. But when David takes in a man wanted for murder, he summons up enough muscle to defend his home from the mobbing townspeople in a lengthy, unrestrained bloodbath. And this was where the film lost me.


That is not to say the scene of David defending his home is what undermines the movie (though its excessiveness is borderline pornography). But it compromises what the movie could have been about. Throughout the movie, David is a wimp; a portrait of man pushed and kicked around by the crude townspeople. His marital conflicts with Amy never come to closure and the tension she creates just ends up being more fuel for David’s fire. If everything about this film is presented exactly as Peckinpah intended, I can only infer that he intended to show the animalistic capacity of civilized men within placed in the most barbaric of settings (That sounds offensive to small-town British folk, but given Peckinpah’s portrayal, I have no apologies). There is the meditation on violence. David is left unsure of his own murderous tendencies, but the film’s events can only apply to David. As a commentary on our own capacity for violence, its presentation is too extreme to resonate. It seems like Peckinpah had the seeds of a good idea, but too much broad characterization and plot elements leave it a blood-soaked mess.

For the basic gist of Straw Dogs at only a fraction of the running time, I advise watching this. Believe me, it is no less ridiculous.

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