I have always been vaguely aware of the controversy surrounding Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 movie ‘Straw Dogs’ but until this week I had never seen the whole movie. I wish I hadn’t bothered! It is without doubt one of most profoundly unpleasant films I’ve seen in a good while.
Basically what Peckinpah did was to transpose the loose morals and gun law of Far West America into South West England. A pub takes the place of a saloon , a local magistrate is the ‘Sheriff’ and there’s an obligatory final shoot out (albeit at a country cottage rather than at the coral).
The ineffectual way wimpy mathematician David (Dustin Hoffman) attempts to protect his flirtatious, and frankly dumb, wife Amy (Susan George) shows the impotence of passive pacifism when confronted by pig ignorance and macho aggression. In this sense, you could say it was a study in male violence but the same could be said of most of Martin Scorsese’s movies and this is certainly not in the same league. There is not a single character with any redeeming qualities and it presents a bleakly misanthropic depiction of humankind .
The males in the village are all driven by rampant lust so Amy is an obvious target. She epitomises the male fantasy of a free-spirited young woman who pretends to be aloof and unavailable but secretly craves rough sex. The violent rape by two of the lascivious village louts plays out the old chestnut beloved by high court judges that when a woman says no she actually means yes. This is the scene that got the censors in a huff but the whole movie is rife with mean spirited sexism and cruel mockery of anything that smacks of conventional moral codes.
The brutal and disproportionate violence at the end of the film is like a crude version of a Shakespearean tragedy without the sonnets.
A remake is currently in production although it beggars belief why anyone would want to revisit this squalid tale.
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