journal features

movie review - Straw Dogs

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Vancouver, 2002.07.02

I'm writing this review a full two weeks after I watched the flick, because I've been trying to decide what the point of the thing really was. It's a Sam Peckinpah movie, so I haven't been trying too hard, but it's been nagging at me. It's about a young American mathematician and his English wife who return to the small town where she grew up so that he can work on a book on mathematics. The couple are terrorized by thugs from the local village, the whole thing explodes. The last scene makes it seem like the point is 'killing will make you a man'. I dunno. I can't recommend this one; the unnecessary rape scene alone is enough to stay away from this.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I would be crazier than I've been on this trip. I know very few things I'd take seriously any more. I'd certainly be less hygenic... I would take more chances, I would take more trips, I would scale more mountains, I would swim more rivers, and I would watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it all over again, I'd have many more of them, in fact I'd try not to have anything else, just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of my day. If I had it to do all over again, I'd travel lighter, much lighter than I have. I would start barefoot earlier in the spring, and I'd stay that way later in the fall. And I would ride more merry-go-rounds, and catch more gold rings, and greet more people and pick more flowers and dance more often. If I had it to do all over again - but you see, I don't.

—Jorge Luis Borges