The story in short is about a couple who are well-educated and come to spend time in countryside of the lady who had had past relations there and how surroundings folks react to it.React to it is of course an understatement.
Points to discuss:
1. In old, the hero is american and it might have contributed towards his and Brit's hostility towards each other which is not the case in the new one as everyone is goddamn american.
2. Openness of starring actress without minding the environment they were living in could be a major source of how events turned. like she didn't use to wear a bra which made the construction workers of their garage ogle her which she being a city girl must have known about.
3. Hero's suposedly intellectual stand on these activites,which suggest he was incapable of taking actions because he was afraid of burly countryside folks and also because he being a city guy couldn't confront things directly,he had to indirectly get to the point. this is amply reflected in his inability to ask the garage-fixing folks about the murder of their pet cat and not being clearly able to refuse the offer of hunting made by garage folks.
4. His supposedly knowing of his lesser part of manliness made his have a ego trip to agree to go on a hunting trip which he knew he couldn't manage and he unable to say no, got along the guys to make them feel that he was closer to them which country folks knew was rubbish.
5. The rape part is a key sequence in the movie and it is entirely different in the two movies although schematically the same. The essential differences being that the first rape by her bygone era boyfriend was not against her wishes,eventually she came to enjoy it which is justified by her expressions and also the statement 'hold me' in the old movie. while it is not so in the new movie because she was more on her husband's side that in the old movie. And hence she resisted the rape more forcefully and also was not taken aback when the second person came to rape her.exactly opposite of which happened in the old one where she was very surprised when the second person came.
6. The different support level of women in old and new movie is clearly an indication of the level of understanding between the couples. IN the old movie, she was vying for attention and also had nothing to do which made her available more so compared to the new movie. In the old one, the husband being a physicist was more apart intellectually from the actress and they had a sort of mutual distrust between them which is reflected in the last sequence when the actor asks her to take jeremy to upper floor and shut the door which she refuses to do and insists on giving up jeremy.Exactly opposite of this happens in the new movie in which the actor and actress casted as a writer and tv actress respectively allows them to professionally respect each other and also understand each other better. This we see in the part when the actor explains her the meaning of straw dogs in the new movie which is not there in the old movie.Also in the climax,the actress complies the actor which results in handling the situation more harmoniously compared to the old movie.
7. Being a small countryside the people have smaller thinking horizons which leads them to object to anyone which is against convention like everyone likes football so even the non-interested that is the actor and actress have to go there and when the author argues about his ill-faith in bible,village folk gets angry.
8. Coming to question of why the actress did not tell her husband about her rape.
1. It maybe because of her firm belief that her husband was incapable of any manly action that is doing something physically. And he would start yelling at her or something like that.. this is shown in the part in which he comes back from hunting and his wife says that he is a coward.
2. Other reason might be that she did not want her husband to get hurt.
3. In the old movie,she would not tell because she enjoyed the first rape but this reason does not work for the second movie.
8. The climax of the movie amply reflects the mob mentality in the countryside folks who cannot think above what they have not seen.
I like the new movie more than the old one because there are less logical inconsistencies in the new.
wiki pages might shed some more light
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