Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs"
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.
Posted
Friday, April 28, 2006 3:45 PM
I see a connection between those cowboys in "The Wild Bunch" and David in "Straw Dogs." All of those men are off the mark when it comes to fitting a masculine stereotype. David is a wimp, the cowboys are old and "soft." But I think Peckinpah is exploring each man's "line." The line is different for everybody. But whatever it is, the test comes when it's time for a man to defend his line.
There's no questioning David got duped by the locals who rape his wife. He later holds his line against the same guys trying to kill the mentally handicapped man. So does David reclaim his masculinity the locals took when they raped his wife? Or is Peckinpah getting at something more disturbing: David's personal line was not crossed when the locals raped his wife? Is David still a man if he won't defend his wife? Like you say, Peckinpah doesn't leave us with any answers. Just that lingering question, "What makes a man a man?"
Posted
Wednesday, April 26, 2006 2:40 PM
That's an insightful description. My own conclusion was that there was a critique of a certain machismo version of manhood at work. David is an emasculated man. As a result, he does a poor job of protecting his "woman" from the advances of the other men. In fact, he invites them to perform his "manly duties" to the house. They just complete the job from their viewpoint.
What David lacks is the will towards violence. That line that may be honor or self-respect or what have you. I think Peckinpah is particularly interested in what makes a man a man. This movie makes a particularly good show. Cross of Iron as well explores this theme on a moral level, but isn't nearly so satisfying. Morality cannot be satisfied with plain brutality.
I think we are often left with a feeling at the end of one of his movies where he has led us to question some essential aspect of our identity. He offers us the return to our comfortable models of believe, but we don't really want to go back to them. He leaves us alone there, without an answer. This is how I imagine Peckinpah felt about the world.
Like with the writings of Cormac McCarthy, there is a sense of a heroic past grown corrupt. The old rules don't work any more, but acceptable new ones have yet to arise.