The synopsis for this film says that Dustin Hoffman's character, David—a pacfist, "finally resorts to the gruesome violence that he abhors."As if Peckinpah would make something so simple. A pacifist moves to the British countryside where his wife is attacked and when his home is under seige, he resorts to violence. In fact, in
Straw Dogs David is not defending his house in the climactic scene when the men who raped his wife earlier in the day try to break in. He's protecting a mentally handicapped man inside they're trying to kill. But it's an ideal David is really protecting. He will use whatever means necessary to prevent violence from entering his house.
Straw Dogs is a film riddled in emotional complexity. It has probably the most disturbing and complex rape scene I've ever seen. Where as most directors might focus on the crime itself followed up with simple justice, Peckinpah goes deep into the ambivalence David's wife feels afterward as she lashes out angrily at David for not being there to protect her. Simultaneously, she tries to let her attackers back into her home to kidnap the mentally handicapped man. Under extreme circumstances, her disgust for her idealistic husband leads her to identify more with her attackers than with him, a kind of Darwinian decision she makes as violence encroaches and everybody seems to regress to a primal state of being. It's an ugly picture of a wife who's trying to protect herself after having her dignity stripped. It's ugly but probably more accurate than the classic scenario where she stays home while the husband goes out and defends her honor by gunning down the bad guys in the middle of town.
David is the only character who does not dive down into animalistic behavior, but uses his ideals to stabilize him. When he finally chooses violence in the end to save the mentally handicapped man, he uses it with cold calculation like a surgeon cutting out a hemmorraging appendix. There can be no happy ending to this film. Whether justice is delivered or not, everybody has to deal with the brutality they participated in that night. For such a violent film, there is not a shred of glorification in any of the violence. The audience is not allowed to relish any vengeance.
Peckinpah makes brutal films, there's no questioning that. But I find myself returning to them because, although I hate watching violence, Peckipah captures human nakedness when the curtain of civilized behavior is ripped down and hiding behind it is no longer an option.