And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground There are certain people of whom it is difficult to say anything which will at once throw them into relief—in other words, describe them graphically in their typical characteristics. These are they who are generally known as “commonplace people,” and this class comprises, of course, the immense majority of mankind. Authors, as a rule, attempt to select and portray types rarely met with in their entirety, but these types are nevertheless more real than real life itself. For instance, when the whole essence of an ordinary person’s nature lies in his perpetual and unchangeable commonplaceness; and when in spite of all his endeavours to do something out of the common, this person ends, eventually, by remaining in his unbroken line of routine—. I think such an individual really does become a type of hi
Straw Dogs (1971)
"One of the most ambiguous, neurotic, and disturbing of all American films"Straw Dogs was cut by US censors, it was banned in the UK on original release. Even most home video releases have been of edited versions of the feature. In this thriller, Sam Peckinpah’s most controversial film, David (Dustin Hoffman), a young American mathematician, moves with his English wife, Amy (Susan George), to the village where she grew up. Their sense of safety unravels as the local men David has hired to repair their house prove more interested in leering at Amy and intimidating David, beginning an agonizing initiation into the iron laws of violent masculinity that govern Peckinpah’s world. Shortly after they found their cat hanging in the closet.
An adaptation of Gordon Williams’ novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm, Peckinpah took the story and made it his own, delivering a controversial feature that stirs as much debate today.
At its core, it examines concepts of masculinity, of sex and baser instincts punching through the thin veneer that is civilization. David and Amy’s relationship are central to these events. It’s a marriage on the wane, an obvious incompatibility.
Straw Dogs holds your gaze, no matter how hard you want to look away.
"Straw Dogs’ most infamous scene involves Amy’s rape at the hands of both Charlie and one of his cohorts, and only a director like Peckinpah would have the gall to show Amy as not only somewhat responsible for this crime but also partially enjoying the act of violence. The scene has long been condemned as proof of Peckinpah’s misogyny"
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