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Peckinpah’s Last Testament: The Osterman Weekend
- Southern Illinois University Press
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147 Peckinpah’s Last Testament: The Osterman Weekend Tony Williams We’re all being programmed and I bitterly resent it. —Sam Peckinpah Most critics usually regard Sam Peckinpah’s last film as a disappointing conclusion to his cinematic legacy. Biographer David Weddle describes it as a work where “one had to squint hard to spot the traces of a once-great talent” and as “a pretentious, hopelessly muddled potboiler with a few nice performances and fitfully energetic action sequences.”1 Written by Alan Sharp, scenarist of Ulzana’s Raid (1971) and Night Moves (1975), The Osterman Weekend (1983) is based on a mediocre novel by Robert Ludlum. Peckinpah hoped the project would facilitate his return to Hollywood. This did not happen. His last assignment was directing two short music videos to promote Julian Lennon’s latest album for Charisma Records in 1984. Peckinpah died at the end of that year after ironically working within a visual apparatus he had criticized in his last film. DespitePeckinpah’s dissatisfactionwith the finished product, The Osterman Weekend does not deserve dismissal. Key differences exist between film and novel,theformerexcellinginmakingaudiencesfeeltheconfusionexperienced by characters who are manipulated in such a manner they know nothing. This makes the film far more superior to the novel since Peckinpah employed audio andvisualtechniqueslongfamiliartohimfromhisexperienceinfilmandtelevision to emphasize such feelings. Far from being regarded as another chapter in the fall of “Bloody Sam,” The Osterman Weekend needs recognition in terms of what it actually attempts to do. Peckinpah does not deserve the admonishment uttered by the elderly bank clerk in The Wild Bunch (1969): “I don’t care what you meant to do. It’s what you did I don’t like.” Despite reediting by the producers, the film’s intention and achievement are complementary. 148 Tony Williams The Osterman Weekend is another Peckinpah film critically interrogating the roots of violence in the human psyche. It is set in a dehumanized latetwentieth -century world influenced and controlled by a media the director distrusted. Peckinpah saw television as a new weapon in the hands of those deadly corporate forces condemned in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), and The Killer Elite (1975). Like Straw Dogs (1971), The Osterman Weekend intends to alienate audiences in the hope that they may not only confront dangerous aspects of corporate violence but also understand the contemporary role of technology. As Gabrielle Murray notes, despite the unsubtle nature of the plot, “we still find in Peckinpah a dazzling inventiveness as he turns this film into an exploration of facets of reality, commenting on the unreliability of technological communication while turning the screen into a multi-purpose surveillance screen.”2 This brief insight from one of the recent studies of the director’s work necessitates further examination. It is unlikely Peckinpah ever read Michel Foucault. Had he done so, might he have enjoyed undermining the Discipline and Punish aspects of the media even more? As in Straw Dogs, The Osterman Weekend’s real focus is on a victim of psychological torture who moves toward the position of victimizer. In earlier films, Deke Thornton in The Wild Bunch and Amy Sumner in Straw Dogs undergo different forms of male institutional violence. Although each bears deep psychological scars from their experiences, neither character turns into a brutal aggressor. By contrast, in The Osterman Weekend, Peckinpah depicts Lawrence Fassett (John Hurt) as an anguished victim of an inhumane corporate system, “tortured into unconscionable acts.”3 Although Peckinpah lacked the creative freedom he had on Straw Dogs, both films complement each other by emphasizing the roles of victims of institutional psychological torture, roles far more crucial to the narrative than those of the main actors. The Osterman Weekend is really a unique cinematic last testament of Peckinpah ’s fascination with dark individual psyches and oppressive institutions. Peckinpah did encounter problems with Sharp’s screenplay, such as clearly defining Fassett’s activities and motivations and the lack of a character to empathize with. However, these “problems” are more positive than negative . The film is another attempt to translate one of Peckinpah’s influences, Bertholt Brecht, into Hollywood narrative. The director tried this in his own particular manner by intuitively directing a film completely different in style and content from the usual type of contemporary film. It engages in a [54.210.83.20] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:00 GMT) 149 Peckinpah’s Last Testament deliberate non-pleasurable assault upon viewers’ sensibilities in the hope that...