RETROSPECT: DELIVERANCE (1972)
August 12th 2009 07:18
Ned Beatty, Jon Voight, Ronnie Cox and Burt Reynolds in Deliverance.
But Deliverance is also very much a product of the Vietnam era, a smelling salt for the passing of the idealistic 1960s, and an introduction to a darker era when superpowers could fail and presidents could be corrupt.
Often referenced in popular culture for one of two scenes – the indignities suffered by Ned Beatty’s Bobby at the hands of two toothless hillbillies (“Squeal like a pig!”), or Ronny Cox’s ‘Dueling Banjos’ scene with an inbred boy – Deliverance offers so much more than these respectively shocking and striking moments, and defining the viewing experience through them is perhaps a reductive way to describe the film to others.
James Dickey adapted his own popular novel for the screen, telling the tale of four Atlanta businessmen – weekend warrior Lewis (Burt Reynolds), family man Ed (Jon Voight), prattling insurance salesman Bobby (Ned Beatty), and gentle-natured Drew (Ronny Cox) – who decide to eschew a golfing trip to paddle down the Cahulawassee River, enjoying the wilderness one last time before the area is flooded by a newly constructed dam.
But what begins as a boys’ weekend takes a turn for the worse after an ugly encounter with a pair of mangy hillbillies, and its not long before the four men are battling for survival against both man and wilderness, the increasingly brutal rapids separating them from the safety of civilised society.
Deliverance’s great strength as a film is its ability to pack a wealth of subtext and theme into what is really an efficient adventure film, albeit one that goes terribly wrong. And it’s not all squirreled away either, relating to issues of the time and becoming esoteric as a result. Deliverance wears its concerns on its sleeve, but at the same time manages not to browbeat its audience into submission.
The film’s subtext of man’s eradication of nature is one that has of course only become more powerful in the years since its release, and the images onscreen sometimes rival Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi in their epic grandeur. But Deliverance’s theme of civilised men being chewed up and spat out by the forces that they can’t control – both Mother Nature and fellow human beings whose base behaviour is impossible for them to understand – also resonates just as much in a modern world, where wars fought in the name of the West are once again not necessarily right, and a terrorism supposedly unable to be reasoned with is always lurking just around the proverbial corner.
By the end of the film, Ed (the audience’s cipher) has been profoundly changed by his experiences, his earlier comfortable naivety having given way to a desperate and ugly knowledge of how thin the veil of civilisation really is, and how easily he reverted to nature and then lied to the authorities just to survive. It’s a loss of innocence that the audience feels with Ed, and the wire frame bed on which he lies now seems a prison rack made for an eternal psychological torture.
As impressive as its work beyond the frame is Deliverance’s technical strengths, with the whole film being produced with stunning conviction.
Dickey’s screenplay was rock solid, nailing its beats and winding out the different characters skilfully. The film follows its source material closely, so for Dickey to produce such a lean script was very impressive.
Onscreen, everything was given a grand scope by yet-to-be-acclaimed cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond. The Hungarian created an ethereal and slightly unearthy atmosphere, so that when you watch the film it’s almost from the angry viewpoint of Mother Nature herself, whose fickle and combustible nature has been irresistibly drawn to the four unfortunate canoeists.
Sam Peckinpah was originally touted to direct the film, but the task eventually fell to British director John Boorman. While Peckinpah would have almost certainly created just as striking a film, one can’t help but feel that Boorman was the better choice, his interest in the breaking down of masculinity serving Deliverance well. Boorman seemed to possess an instinctual knowledge of what made the story tick, resisting the temptation to follow more closely the rugged and brawny Lewis, instead making sure the story is nailed to the gentle humanism of Ed.
The actors nailed their parts too. Newcomers Ronnie Cox and Ned Beatty were impressive, and Burt Reynolds would never again get such a chance to illustrate his intimidating physicality in what remains a career-defining role. But it’s Jon Voight who perhaps deserves the most praise, his natural, young ability to shift from soft, wide-eyed innocent to granite-browed killer serving Ed’s development well.
The final result is a stunning piece of celluloid that can’t help but remain with the viewer. As the art of filmmaking advances, in many ways becoming more sophisticated in its exploration of theme and subtext, older films sometimes have the tendency to date. Deliverance, however, is that rare item: the film that seems to get younger with every passing year, its concerns about innocence and the true nature of man striking an alarming note within an audience that lives through a modern world of moral, social, economic, and geopolitical turbulence.
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Mountain Fog
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Deliverance still packs a wallop after all these years for sure.
Again expressing my opinion in my own review:
"Challenging and shocking audiences upon release, Deliverance is still unsettling to the most hardened voyeur. There is an authentic realism, an embracing of the world in which the story is set that makes you wonder where the facts end and the fiction begins.
Admired Director John Boorman (Excalibur, Point Blank, The General, Hell in the Pacific) creates unyielding tension through steady pacing and focused storytelling with imagery. Frenzied scenes of violent confrontation astound in context because of the intellectualising and etheral calm that preceeded them.
The script by James Dickey is an insightful examination of man’s arrogance, disrespect and destruction of the planet and its inhabitants. Told with a humanity that digs deep into the motivations for our cultural programming and primal urges, definitions of right and wrong. "
If your interested you can read my review HERE
Comment by Matt Shea