Customer Recommmendations #1: Straw Dogs

A series that sees Kim place her viewing choices in the hands of some of the more-eccentric customers at the Video Store in which she works. Sometimes against her better judgement.

When someone recommends you a movie that revolves around a violent rape scene, should you start looking at them any differently?

I can’t quite remember the conversational context in which Straw Dogs was suggested to me, but it was by a man who often spouts conspiracy theories and has a lot of late fines. At the time I didn’t know much about the film, yet as I did a little research, my brow began to furrow in response to the repeated mentions of “violent rape”, “misogynistic representations”, “a movie that despises everyone...” So what did I decide to do? Pop it in the DVD player on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

 Dustin Hoffman plays American mathematician, David Sumner, newly arrived in a town in the countryside England, with his British wife, Amy (Susan George). The couple have strained interactions with a gang of larrikin, panty-stealing, cat-strangling neighbours, who are employed to fix the roof of their garage. An overcast English sky presses down upon the characters, a brittle sexual tension established from the very beginning. Director, Sam Peckinpah, siphons anxiety from every scene, managing to make even the sounds of children playing and seagulls squawking seem somehow deeply foreboding.
 
 Upon its release in 1971 (a year noted for it’s overtly violent crop of films, including A Clockwork Orange and The French Connection) Straw Dogs was controversial to say the least, and still makes for cringe-inducing viewing. Peckinpah’s largely realistic brand of non-sensationalised violence is particularly chilling; even if it does sometimes involve hot oil and bear traps, which may sound like something lifted from Home Alone. The film’s morally ambiguous depiction of rape in particular earned Peckinpah criticisms of harbouring misogynistic inclinations. However, this is a film that does indeed “despise everyone”, not just women. There are very few redeeming characters, and a running suggestion that brute violence exists in all of us. Perhaps Peckinpah’s folly was to not include enough female characters, to offer a depiction other than that of ‘the victim’, but that is a discussion that could span 5000 words.
 
 The inner sleeve of the recent Criterion Collection release features an interview with director, in a particularly cheerful mood.  He greets the lucky interviewer with a gruff “What do you really want with me?” but then continues to offer detailed responses to questions about his position on violence: “I revolt against those who hide or ignore the social and moral perspectives of violence. It exists everywhere. It is part of our existence, it is in us.”
 
 Coincidentally, a remake featuring James Marsden and Kate Bosworth gains an Australian release this week. When I researched this version, the googlemachine threw up terms like, “unnecessary”, “muddled and meaningless”, “…only offers the white noise of empty violence…” It is interesting to compare the environs in which these two editions appear, what was outrageous in 1971, is today greeted with a public reaction of, “What’s that you say, dear? Graphic violence and sex? Well that’s original, isn’t it?”

 Shall I be running back to the customer for more film recommendations? Maybe. But I’ll definitely be wary of what I’m getting myself into. Straw Dogs makes for difficult viewing, however, it must be said that to see the film as nothing more than misogynistic torture-porn, is to misunderstand it; Peckinpah’s complex depiction of violence may be a little morally problematic, but this lends it a weight and tension oft missed by cinematic representations today.