Director: Sam Peckinpah
Nature has made the male species biologically different from their counterpart. Nature's constant need to improve the quality of their offspring to survive the competition with other species has made the male species fight it out to qualify to sow their seeds.
Their robust physical attributes made it handy when hunter-gatherers settled down in communities. The male gender is assigned to protect the weaker segment of the community. So, a male is expected to play his role as virile, aggressive and fierce.
With time, power is no longer at the tip of a sword or a fist's knuckle. Culture made people less volatile and able to reason out things. To ease this, the rule of law was rolled in. The need for women's empowerment also arose. Power is a zero-sum game. The women's gain must be indeed a loss to men. Increasingly, men are said to be domiciled. That is at a macro level.
At a micro, things may be different. A man is still expected to protect his wife and family. He is expected to defend them tooth and nail. A cultured man is supposed to be less combative and give everyone their space and due respect. But when caring for his family, he is supposed to man up, rise as the man of yesteryears, and use his physical attributes to defend the pride and dignity of the people under his care. He is expected to use his primitive defences to make them feel the females feel important.
At one time, the women felt fed up with the chivalrous gestures showered up. They thought they were treated condescendingly. They wanted to prove to the world that they were in no way inferior to their male counterparts. Hence, it started the spree of the female gender to outdo the male. Liberation went on so far that the women took a 360° turn. Now, they reminisce about the times when they were treated as princesses.
So, being a man in the modern world is challenging. On one end, he is expected to be mild-mannered, able to articulate and express his concerns and not resort to violence to air his opinion. Protecting one's safety has been outsourced for this exact reason. Everyone is expected to work within the ambit of the law. Being violent is, they say, low-brow.
To complicate things, women, with their newfound freedom, flaunt the very thing that used to be taboo all those years. They know very well that men have to restrain, failing which the mighty weight of the law may befall them. In the immediate future, they have their men at the beck and call for protection, like a guard dog.
In its time, this movie created a lot of controversies for its gruesome depiction of rape and glorifying violence. There is even a scene where the rape victim is apparently seen to enjoy the act. It is debatable whether, as the perpetrator is her ex-boyfriend, she longs for the good old carefree sex-filled days. She has sexual tensions with her husband.
It is a story of a couple trying to spend a short stint in the English countryside of Cornwall. The husband, David Sumner (played by Dustin Hoffman), is an American maths professor doing sabbatical research. The wife, Amy (Susan George), who is less academically inclined than her husband, used to grow up in Cornwall. Her sojourn is like a chicken coming back to roost. All her contemporaries, with whom she shared a common past, are still there, albeit stuck with their low-brow ideas and behaviours, doing menial jobs. They are hired to do some home repairs.
The peace in the couple's home is shattered as the workers lust on the flirtatious wife. The pacifist husband tries to deal with the situation in a cultured way, but it is futile. Things turn sour when the mentally challenged man accused of molesting a teenager is harboured in the Professor's house. The incensed townsfolk are out for his blood, but the Professor is adamant that it is his duty to protect the accused. Thus started a blood bath. The Professor is finally able to show his true grit and prowess. Through quick planning and execution, he manages to defeat the aggressors.
On the one hand, the modern man is pussified and domesticated to fit into a non-combative world where the duty of law and order is outsourced to the nation. Culture teaches him non-aggression, but he is still expected to rise occasionally as society deems it necessary. The thing is, man has to choose his battles carefully. He needs the wisdom to wage unnecessary wars and how to avoid being suckered into it.
