Straw Dogs - Film Review

directed by Sam Peckinpah, 1971

Of all of Peckinpah’s films, this is the one I’m most familiar with, as it was my introduction to him. Indeed, I’d seen it no fewer than three times before I even saw another film by him. So this film also shaped my view of Peckinpah’s later (and earlier) works to great extent, and I’ve always held it in high esteem. Much like The Wild Bunch, Peckinpah’s first and only British made film opens with shots of children playing (over the credits, mostly), and while the shot is of a much less grueling nature (they aren’t exactly tormenting the pooch seen on screen, as they do the insects in The Wild Bunch), its nevertheless a shot laced with menace. That menace; that dread is retained throughout the film.

The initial scenes serve to, like almost any drama, quickly set up the characters (the itinerant mathemmatician David, his wife Amy, and many of the townspeople, including an old boyfriend of hers), a subdued and muddy tone, and the air of the town itself (I don’t believe the Cornish town; which is Amy’s hometown, has been given a name). We quickly learn that David has come here because of a grant to do work, and that a couple of the townspeople he has hired to make the garage are taking their precious time. It’s a perfect introduction to this carnal film; these early scenes already underscored with a sense of violence, and of sexual threat to the sanctity of David and Amy’s marriage; which is already in dire straits. These opening scenes are writhe with all sorts of tensions, which bubble up throughout the film like the aforementioned feeling of dread.

David is the primary focus of the film, though the viewer is always somewhat distanced from him; just enough to know that we aren’t supposed to sympathise with him, rather than observe him...though many have made the mistake of doing otherwise. David (played by Dustin Hoffman; perhaps in his best role) is a frustrated nebbish of a man, intimidated by the aggressive nature of the rural male townsfolk that he hires to work for him, and in numerous scenes he weakly tries to assert himself, or brush them off; a weak act of contrariety, as he is too puny to confront them directly (even when the men hang their cat). We also quickly begin to realize that he begins to identify with the marginalized Henry Niles; a disturbed but mostly docile looking man with a bad history (one can safely assume he’s a known pedophile, as he has his eyes on the niece of a local drunkard and this is a problem)...an identification which takes on disturbing conotations later.

Much of the film takes place inside David and Amy’s rented country house, as does much of the bubbling and brewing of the various tensions of the film. When in public, the two seem to be “going through the motions” of a socially happy marriage, but in private neither is happy with the other and scarce few moments of marital bliss can be seen. David is more interested in pursuing his work than his wife’s affections, even when she makes gestures towards the other men (though she claims to dislike their leering, she nonetheless encourages it, and constantly goads David into ‘manning up’ and standing up for himself). David’s cowardice doesn’t just exist in his own personal vacuum; she suffers from it as well, and David even seems to take a good deal of personal glee in tormenting and contradicting her (and her responses in kind seem to bewilder him); and when it comes to some of the more civilized townspeople, he’s not above bullying the local vicar when confronted with a rather weak insinuation against his occupation as a scientist. David is a very petty man.



With regards to civilization, I think the film obviously makes a treatise against the pretentious veneers we have constructed about human society. The men whom David has hired to fix up his house belong in that peculiar class of rascal antagonists in Peckinpah’s films; repulsively real men whose base desires nonetheless pry a tiny semblance of some kind of twisted sympathy from the audience. And these men; men who would hang a cat for a joke (and far, far worse just because they want to), seem to exist side by side with the rest of the townspeople, laughing at the vicar’s quips at the church gathering alongside the children. Authority in this town, while certainly authoritative, is immasculated (the constable’s arm is in a sling) and treated as being essentially ineffectual; certainly given only a moderate degre of respect by the ruffians, and doing nothing but get killed when they try to stop it. The vicar in question is more worried about nuclear weapons.

Its impossible to discuss this film at all without mentioning its most infamous passage; the rape sequence, between Charlie and Amy. And its rather rightly the most remembered scene; considering Amy’s importance to the story and her reaction during the rape (which Peckinpah intercuts with images of David hunting on the moor; having been left there by the others). Most undeniable and commented on is how Amy, despite her initial struggles, begins to derive a kind of pleasure from the sequence; albeit a pleasure which is interrupted when one of Charlie’s friends forces Charlie out of the way at gun point, in order to join in. It’s one of the film’s pivotal traumas, and one of the most loaded (with regards to the psychology of the characters, and the compounded sexual politics therein) scenes in the film...as harrowing and horrifying a commentary on the baseness of human nature as can be imagined.

A few brief mentions of the political upheavals of the early 70s also mark the film politically in its time, and David as a man who has fled any sense of moral conviction; and thus has a confused moral compass in addition to his frustration. This, and the increasingly tense circumstances, leads to the film’s finale, which is explosive to say the least. David’s decision to stand up for himself comes at the worst possible time, and for the worst possible reasons, which leads to a showdown with all four of the ‘ruffians’, and Tom the local drunk, in an effort to keep them from breaching “his” house. This last sequence; which my brother described as “a grown up Home Alone from Hell”, is a frenzy of violence, intimidation, and fear. Its in this scene that every thread in the film is tied up; not just in a narrative sense but in a blistery, infernal sense. He succeeds in keeping them out; in defending his territory, but in doing so, destroys himself and Amy (who may be the film’s only sympathetic character; and the victim of its antagonists), and the only reward he has is the safe passage of the pedophile killer, a pair of broken glasses, a bevy of corpses in and around his house, and precious few loose ends.



No matter how you look at Straw Dogs, it’s a greatly effective movie. The way the tension builds up; between the characters and the scenes, is faultlessly seething, and there’s hardly an image, a glance, gesture, or shot in the film that exists for no or only one reason. Scenes in the bar, on the road and at the church, briskly hint and reveal the internal strife of the town; tension mounting upon each and every scene, with each and every level of information.. I really am at a pains to explain why the film has such a bad reputation by many. Some have purported that the film is a celebration of American machismo; some have even called it a fascist film, but its final scenes are imbued with such a terrible, unflattering and hopeless aura that its hard to imagine why one would think Peckinpah relishes in this idiotic carnage. If the film can be criticized for anything, it would be for being too bleak; too unnerving and having very little good to say about the human condition. I can’t imagine what that would look like in this film. If Straw Dogs is a tale of David’s rise to manhood, then what is it saying about being a man?

93 / 100

Out of print on DVD now, though a limited edition release from The Criterion Collection in the states is the one I own. Its probably the best Peckinpah DVD produced. Not to insult Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle, but they are absolutely no match for the smooth, thoughtful delivery of Stephen freaking Prince, who gives commentary. There is also a small booklet, and on the second disc, there’s an 82 minute documentary on Peckinpah entitled Man of Iron (essential viewing), some video interviews and on-set stuff, and my favorite of all, an audio recording of Peckinpah responding to his critics. Its an essential purchase. Its not terribly expensive on Amazon.com, but with the MGM disc out of print and Criterion having entered a deal with MGM, I wouldn’t be surprised if a reprint and Blu-ray were announced.