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9
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5 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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The
Manichean worldview —
that everything boils down to moral absolutes
of black and white —
is literally blasted to smithereens in Sam Peckinpah's
Straw Dogs, one of
the most controversial films of the 1970s.
American mathematician David Sumner (Dustin
Hoffman) moves with his sexy British wife Amy
(Susan George) to an isolated farm house in the
Cornish countryside, just outside the small town
where she grew up. Given a grant to study "stellar
interiors and their radiation characteristics",
he hopes the peace and quiet of the rural setting
will help him focus on his work. He couldn't be
more wrong. Amy's return to her hometown kindles
the crude and unbridled lust of the local men,
one of whom, Charlie Venner (Del Henney), she
had a sexual history with before moving away.
On her suggestion David hires Charlie and
his drinking buddies to repair the roof of the
farm's garage. Jealous of the attention her husband
devotes to his work, Amy starts teasing the men
by 'accidentally' flaunting her body at them.
These roughhewn lads respond enthusiastically,
and begin mocking the somewhat awkward and nerdy
American behind his back and then to his face.
Then Amy's cat is found hanged in the couple's
closet. A serious rift is torn in their marriage
as David fails, in Amy's eyes, to confront the
prime suspects —
Charlie and/or one of his mates —
with sufficient alacrity. He even accepts their
invitation to go snipe hunting, during which he's
left stranded on the moor while Amy is roughly
seduced by Charlie but also brutally raped by
one of the other men. Unaware of the assault,
David fires them for making him the butt of their
jokes. That would seem to settle things but his
relationship with Amy continues to unravel. Later,
when returning home one foggy night, David hits
the village idiot, a retarded man named Henry
Niles (an uncredited David Warner), with his car.
Taking the injured Niles to the farm, he calls
the pub looking for the doctor. Meanwhile, back
in the village, the flirty teenage daughter of
town bully Tom Hedden (Peter Vaughan) has gone
missing — she was
last seen in the company of Niles, who was charged
some years earlier with molesting a child. The
enraged Heddon (who's also Charlie's uncle) gathers
the lads to mount a frantic search. Learning that
Niles is at Sumner's place they head there with
vigilante justice in mind. When David summons
Major Scott (T.P. McKenna), the town magistrate,
for help, a confrontation erupts in which Scott
is killed. With the die now cast, the drunken
mob attempts to storm the farmhouse. David has
no choice but to fight back if he and Amy are
to survive.
There is a lot going on here in
the guise of a straightforward dramatic thriller.
Beyond examining how the potential for violence
exists inside every human being, coiled like a
rattlesnake hidden just beneath the veneer of
civilization, Straw Dogs
takes a harsh and uncompromising look at the complex
relationships between men and women. It isn't
long into the film when we realize that the marriage
between these two mismatched people, despite moments
of happiness and genuine affection, is ultimately
doomed. David and Amy think they know each other
but they really don't. Feminists were outraged
by the film when it was first released, incensed
by the disturbing scene depicting Amy surrendering
to sexual assault and reacting to it —
at first, anyway —
with pleasure. But rather than some
sexist Neanderthal view of women, this is merely
Peckinpah refusing to paint things in simplistic
black and white terms. We know that Amy is a mischievous
provocateur, a tease fully aware of the effect
her body has on men's lustful libidos —
even if she isn't quite mature enough to realize
that her actions could (and ultimately do) have
serious consequences. Also, as clearly established
earlier, the would-be rapist, Charlie, was Amy's
boyfriend before she moved away and met David.
As rough as it may initially seem, the former
lovers are really just playing a dominance/submission
game. (Was this the nature of their relationship
'back in the day'? She's brought to orgasm,
after all... But one can understand the ire of
Seventies feminists, given that she initially
resists and gets slapped around.) Amy isn't raped
by Charlie. This is adultery —
until, that is, the other lad enters the room
to sodomize her while Charlie holds her down.
Now it's rape, as is made abundantly clear
from Amy's reaction. Forbidden pleasure suddenly
gives way to horror, pain, anguish and self-disgust.
Contrary to what I've read in a number
of reviews, David's ultimate resort to violence
is not in revenge for the rape of his wife.
Amy never tells him about it; he never learns
that it happened. So David doesn't discover
his 'manhood' in a primeval fight over 'his' woman.
Instead he turns to violence because of principle
— he won't give Niles
to the mob even though he has no way of knowing
that the retarded man didn't harm the missing
girl. (In fact Niles did, although her
death was a tragic accident.) This is an intellectual
stance, a civilized one, to which Hedden
and the boys react with primitive brutality. Once
they begin their assault on the house, David has
no alternative but to fight back if he's to stay
true to his beliefs. He also reasons that, since
the attackers have crossed the Rubicon by killing
the magistrate, the fight must be to the death.
(Even were he to hand Niles over to them, he and
Amy would perforce be killed as witnesses to the
crime.)
And no man, not even a self-professed pacifist,
can stand by and see his home —
his castle — invaded.
"I will not allow violence against this house!"
David sternly proclaims, even as he realizes that
violence is the only recourse left to stop it.
Peckinpah brilliantly uses a simple structure
to tell a multifaceted, psychologically complex
and thought-provoking story. On the surface we're
offered a suspense tale of gradually escalating
tension which explodes into shocking violence
during the final act. Yet its examination of the
Sumner's dysfunctional marriage and the course
attitude of the village men toward the fairer
sex has much to say about gender roles in modern
society, and how little things have really changed,
in some respects, since the days of the cave man.
(It's no coincidence that we see Amy being dragged
around by the hair not once, but twice —
first by macho Charlie and then, after he's altered
by his exposure to violence, her own husband.)
No one is innocent here; both men and women
must accept their fair share of the blame. And
even innocence itself —
as personified by the childlike Henry Niles —
can result in harm if not tempered with judgment
and intellect.
Bleak, moody cinematography, superb editing
and Oscar nominee Jerry Fielding's spare, atmospheric
score provide invaluable contributions to Peckinpah's
grim narrative. The small cast is excellent, with
Susan George's performance in the difficult role
of Amy a particular standout. Remembering her
only from the drive-in B-movie Dirty
Mary, Crazy Larry (1974) and a small role
in Venom (1982), I had
no idea she could be this good.
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| With
the extras-laden Criterion edition of Straw
Dogs going for almost $40, MGM issued a bare-boned
— and much cheaper
— version in October
2004. It contains zero bonus features, not even
a trailer. Happily the transfer, which is 1.85:1
anamorphic widescreen, presents the film totally
uncut and looks terrific. On the other hand the
disc's mono audio track, while adequate, sounds
a tad flat. Hoffman tends to mumble at times and
some of the regional accents are rather thick; I
had to flip on the English subtitles now and again
to understand exactly what was being said.
5/25/05 |
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