Straw Dogs (1971)

Link.

This is Sam Peckinpah's violent controversial film in which the assumptions we make about people, for good or ill, are subject to misconception. The phrase, attributed to Lao-tzu, is that "Heaven and Earth are not humane, and regard the people as straw dogs." Within the film, it can be seen that things which are seen as harmless are not necessarily so, and that misjudging them is something that we do to our peril.

It's not a spoiler to state that the film is violent; that element is so well known about the film that the value or purpose of the violence within the story's frame is conveniently ignored, misconstrued or fatally misrepresented. Much of that comes down to a class of people, particularly in the early 70s, who had become so isolated and preserved from real violence, they had come to perceive it as something unreal. Even the shocking events of Helter Skelter had done little except to imbue the cultural elite to the blindness of a four year old who, having burnt his fingers on a stove, now lives in such fear of the object that he won't go into the kitchen. Viewed in these terms, criticism of Straw Dogs at the time was little more than a cacophony of performative ignorance, as though violence was not a regular daily spectacle surrounding the Vietnam war.

These are just the surface reason why discussion of the film at the time went horribly wrong. Peckinpah created content for a mature audience while deliberately provoking an immature one. It is self-evident to anyone with their eyes open that he did not create this to "get attention," again, the sort of way a bad parent describes every action of their four-year-old, but to force attention, to create something that couldn't be ignored. He succeeded.

That said, it's not an easy film to watch. It's not for the faint of heart. There's quite a lot of it where the viewer is bound to ask, "Is something going to happen?"  This is plainly intentional. Straw Dogs does not include Hitchcock-coded tension. It is normality to the point of banality, this being much of the point. It is a film that requires patience for something that is wholly unpleasant. One might ask why anyone would make such a film; or for that matter, what sort of person would like it.

I saw this film first when I was just 15.  Imagine, television airing such a thing.  It opened my eyes in a way that no film ever had. That feeling is hard to explain, particularly with a film like this.