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Straw Dogs (1971)
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| John Cougar Lunchbucket Apr 07 2013 08:26 PM |
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Violent hijinx await a young couple in the English countryside.
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| Mets – Willets Point Apr 07 2013 08:46 PM Re: Straw Dogs (1971) |
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I liked Sam Peckinpah's follow-up film Salad Days better:
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| Vic Sage Apr 08 2013 09:22 AM Re: Straw Dogs (1971) |
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That's your review? "not that it sucks, it's just...wow"? ok. Look, it's a brutal film about our brutal nature. It's not easy sledding; i never suggested it was. ----------------------------------------------------------- SYNOPSIS (SPOILERS): A cowardly academic (David), with a nubile English wife (Amy) flees America to escape the anti-war fervor by moving to his wife's hometown in the English countryside. He seeks to avoid conflict and lives inside his head (he's a mathematician), but the locals, including his wife's ex-boyfriend (Charlie), who he's hired to repair their cottage (he can't repair things himself) smell his weakness and continue to torment him. They also take Amy's habit of staring at them, topless, from her window as they work as an indication she has no respect for David either. And she doesn't. He's not a "real man". So when Charlie rapes her in her home, she responds to him sexually, still desiring him, particularly in contrast to her milquetoast husband who is more interested in his blackboard than her sexual appetites. But when Charlie's buddy joins in uninvited, she is brutalized and there is no undercurrent of pleasure anymore. While she never tells David about it, she is haunted by memories... not of the brutality of the second rape, but of her guilt in enjoying the first. The couple accidentally runs over the over-sized town idiot (Henry) as they head home from a community event, and take him to their home to help him. But it seems the fellow had accidentally killed a sexually precocious teen at the party, and now the men in town (including Charlie) are drunk and out for blood. They arrive at the cottage, demanding Henry be given over to their vigilante justice, but David has been pushed too far. He will not turn Henry over, and if they try to enter his home he will kill them. The town sheriff arrives to try and calm things down but the men kill him. There is no going back now. David has calmly created booby traps and gathered weapons to defend his home. And he does, in a ballet of blood that ends with him slamming a bear trap down on Charlie's head. He leaves Amy in that abattoir and drives Henry back to town, through the thick fog. "I don't know my way home, " Henry says. "That's all right, neither do I," responds David. -------------------------------------------------------------- You can run from a war but you will find one anyway, Peckinpah says, because Man is a brutal creature that cannot escape from himself. And even as David changes from the intellectual to the physical, from pacifist to killer, from coward to man, he also loses himself in the process. He loses his notion of himself, he loses his wife, he even loses the concept of "home", which is the very definition of lost. He has more in common with an idiot now than he does with his prior self. There is nothing easy here. It's a dark tale, with a disturbing point of view, shot in greys and muted colors, with slow deliberate pacing exploding in bursts of grotesque violence and brutality. It is an oppressive psychological thriller without relief from its tension. It was highly controversial in its day, particularly the "misogyny" of Amy seeming to enjoy the first rape, and the "none shall pass" protection of his castle indulged in by David struck Pauline Kael as "fascistic". But Amy's reaction to the first rape needs to be understood in contrast to the 2nd one (so Peckinpah is clearly not saying that this woman (or any woman) likes to be raped... he's saying Amy had an unsatisfying marriage and still desired her ex-boyfriend on some level. So when Charlie forces himself on her, she was conflicted about it, and later guilty about the pleasure she took in it. As for the fascistic nature of the work, Peckinpah isn't celebrating or glamorizing violence, or the territorialism (nationalism) justifying it, he's simply saying its essential to our nature and we cannot run from it and pretend we are above such uncivilized notions. There are lines that even the most humane of us will not allow others to cross. And the price for that violence is our place in the world. So its not like the self-awareness comes cheap, or is easy to obtain, or ends happily. Is it Hoffman's best performance? Well, it seems to me the one with the highest degree of difficulty. It is an unsympathetic role, yet is the lead that carries the piece. He's flawed but, unlike many of his other roles, the character lacks the awareness of his flaws that would allow him to dismiss them with a bemused smirk and smart-ass remark. There is no accent, or physical disfigurement, or bigness of character to hide behind. He has to be as plausible ignoring a hot woman's sexuality as slamming a bear trap on a guy's head. He is walking the high wire without a net in this movie and i think he makes it across with distinction. Your mileage may vary.
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| John Cougar Lunchbucket Apr 08 2013 09:47 AM Re: Straw Dogs (1971) |
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No I tend not to give too much away in these polls until we got a discussion gong. I think Hoffman was good for the resason you said, I just didn't buy the movie. I didn't think the case was made very convincingly that the couple "fleed" to the countryside so as to avoid violence in the US -- at least we didn't get a real sense of what they fleed. And certainly the rape(s), theft, animal torture, murder and property destruction they encounter (from neighbors and employees?!?) is many times worse than what's referred to. I get that David is a fish whose lack of action leads to some of the issues they encounter in their marriage and the overarching theme that you cannot run from or ignore problems and hope they will go away but regardless in the end he was brave, facing the same kinda decision Rick does when asked to give Michonne over to the Governor. His rape-enjoying wife is the one who would give up Michonne. They need to get a divorce. I also had trouble believing the townspeople were willing to fight to their own death so gleefully. Riding tricycles one minute, beaten to death with a fire poker the next. It's all good, I just didn't buy it all.
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| Edgy MD Apr 08 2013 11:36 AM Re: Straw Dogs (1971) |
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This was remade a few years back with Alexander Skarsgård as an American Charlie.
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| RealityChuck Apr 08 2013 12:21 PM Re: Straw Dogs (1971) |
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Not all that impressive; everyone involved has done better.
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| cooby Apr 10 2013 01:08 PM Re: Straw Dogs (1971) |
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I didn't see this version, but I saw the latest one, and the bear trap scene almost made the rest of it worthwhile, except the cat torture.
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