The Beasts (2022)

When I read the announcement for “Las Bestias”, the first thing I thought was “This is a kind of remake of “Strawdogs” (1971, Sam Peckinpah)”. And it was, mostly in the first confrontation in the bar at the beginning of the movie.Both “Strawdogs” and “Las Bestias” are about the difference between the big city and the countryside. The sympathy of the film is however not with the countryside, as in films such as “Sunrise” (1927, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau) and “Crisis” (1946, Ingmar Bergman). On the contrary, the characters from the countryside are a rather awkward combination of narrow mindedness, distrust, jealousy, xenophobia and aggression. As far as xenpphobia is concerned, in “Las Bestias” Antoine (Denis Ménochet) always remains “The Frenchman” for the locals, as if he doesn’t have a surname.There are however also differences between the two films.The hatred against David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) in “Strawdogs” is purely motivated by the fact that he is smarter and more cosmopolitan the the locals. In “Las Bestias” however there is a real conflict of interests between Antoine and the locals. Antoine is the cosmopolitan man who retires to the countryside at a certain age. He cannot imagine that there are people who want to take the city-country journey in the opposite direction, and certainly does not want to take their interests into account. In this respect he is no less stubborn than his assailants, and maybe there is some grain of truth in their suspicion that he feels himself superior to them.The biggest difference between “Strawdogs” and “Las Bestias” is however the role of the wifes.In “Strawdogs” she is an escalating factor. She is the object of the conflict, and not involuntarily so. Deep inside she finds the English constructin workers much tougher and more exciting than her own husband.In “Las Bestias” the wife is a moderating factor. She warns her husband and in the second half of the film she treats the conflict in a different way. Maybe not less stubborn but certainly causing less agitation.One could interpret the film in a feminist way, the message being that women are better in handling conflicts than men. I didn’t interpret the film that way. Women certainly handle conflicts in a different way than men do, but the behaviour of the wife in the second half of this film must first of all be interpreted as the grieving of someone who has lost the love of her life. For grieving taking on a very different form, and also for prove that women do not always de-escalate, one can look at “Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017, Martin MacDonagh).