Straw Dogs (The Criterion Collection)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alan Sharp, James R. Silke, Katherine Haber, Kris Kristofferson, Sam PeckinpahDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 117 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-03-25
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Straw Dogs (The Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: Sheer, unadulterated genius.
Summary: 5 Stars
Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971)
I sat down to re-watch Straw Dogs, my favorite Sam Peckinpah movie, this weekend, and realized that somehow I'd never managed to review it. I'm rectifying that now, partially because I never did review it, and partially because I realized something new about the film this time-- something that most people who write plot synopses of the movie don't seem to have ever caught. Since I'll be discussing that, and it plays on a critical point in the movie, this review will be laced with spoilers. If you haven't seen the movie (or read Gordon Williams' book The Siege at Trencher's Farm, upon which the movie is based), you might want to skip over the second half of this review until after you have.
The plot, if you've never seen the film: An astrophysicist, David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman), and his wife Amy (Susan George, who, like seemingly every other actor born in Britain, recently did a stint on EastEnders) leave America and buy a house in Amy's old hometown. It needs work, so they hire some local lads to do it, headed up by Charlie Venner (Soldier of Orange's Del Henney), an ex-boyfriend of Amy's. David is a bit of a pushover, and the provincial attitude of the natives gets to work trying to find interesting ways to humiliate him. When he tries to stand up to them, things escalate, and the cycle keeps growing until things have no choice but to end badly.
BEGIN SPOILERS.
Here's the interesting bit (and the big spoiler): most of the plot summaries I've read of the film (the current detailed synopsis on IMDB is an exception, going so far as to point out the exact same thing I'm about to) point to Amy's rape as the crux of the matter. (As a side note, this scene, which almost landed the movie an X rating in 1971, would likely garner it a mild PG-13 today.) This is in no way the case. I somehow managed to not notice, in all the times I've seen this movie in the past, that Amy never tells David she's been raped. It is a crux for the viewer of the film, but it in no way affects any character in the film save Amy and the workers. (And it affects Amy far less, when the crux of the movie does come, than it seems it should; she's still just as willing to side with the natives. The provincial attitude runs deep, it seems.) When the crux of the movie does come, it is, perhaps, the most important moral lesson the movie has to make, and it is one that has been buried over the years: that Henry (played remarkably by a young David Warner) is always a passive element in the events that surround him. Teenaged Janice (Man About the House's Sally Thomsett, whose film career would end in retirement soon after, as she switched over to theatre) is never less than fully, consciously aware of what she's doing when she seduces Henry, which makes the village's reaction to the situation all the more absurd (but, in today's idiotic culture of "teenagers aren't old enough to know what they're doing," distressingly understandable), even more so because there are eyewitnesses to Janice's approaching Henry. It is truly shocking, and depressing, that this film holds up as well as it does today; were the same situation to happen today, the public would likely have the same "off with their heads!" reaction, and they'd be just as wrong. In fact, there was a situation in America a few years back that is almost an exact mirror of the Henry-Janice scenario in Straw Dogs, and it did, in fact, end with the public calling for blood. You have to love people who cling to outmoded and morally unjustifiable social mores, don't you?
Given these two facets of the film, the way they combine in the climax of the movie leads to a bit of confusion, at least on my part. There is a scene where David realizes that Charlie has slept with Amy; however, it's set up in the opening scene that he is apprised of the fact that they're exes, and there's nothing in the scene to lead David to the belief that they slept together recently. I grant you, jealousy may run as deep as provincialism in Goodman and Peckinpah's script, but I get the feeling there's a scene, or even a snippet of a scene, missing somewhere. I also spent a great deal of time wondering (though this is nothing new) why it is that David cares at all about Amy after the events that open the final scene. She has shown beyond any doubt that her provincialism has won out over her marriage, a balance that's been tipping the entire film. She has a complete lack of understanding of the tenets that David has embraced and that cause his transformation (one which, when it's completed, will mean he no longer needs her). While she eventually comes to accept the shifting of the balance of power in the relationship, does it seem realistic to you that either of these people would still see a relationship between them at all? Now, obviously, this question goes unanswered at the end of things, as all we see of the aftermath of the siege is David leaving to drive Henry home, so it's entirely possible that David and Amy do part ways a few frames after the movie ends. We'll never know. But the implication is that they'll stay together, and that the previously assertive Amy is willing to accept that all the sudden David has taken charge. I'm just not buying it.
END SPOILERS
None of that makes Straw Dogs any less my favorite Sam Peckinpah film. The pacing and the tension are pitch-perfect throughout, problems that Peckinpah sometimes struggled with in earlier films, and the casting is phenomenal; I can't imagine anyone other than Dustin Hoffman as David Sumner, and that's a rare thing for me. Peckinpah and excellent action cinematographer Jean Coquillon (who would go on to work with Peckinpah on two more films) fill the screen with unforgettable shot after unforgettable shot, making the film as much a visual feast as it is an obscene morality play. The script is fantastic, even when I end up asking myself questions about it for days afterwards (in fact, isn't that one of the things that makes for a great script?). For some, it will not be an easy film to watch, but Peckinpah has some very interesting things to say, and they should be heard. **** ½
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