Before continuing this review, I would just like to say that when I was in Grade 10 I went on a white water rafting school trip, and I'm glad it was in Maine and not in Georgia. Though I must say the actual footage of the rapids themselves was quite similar.
Perhaps the most noticeable technique I observed in John Boorman's off-kilter 1972 hit Deliverance was how the entire piece was constructed from the vantage people of the four lead characters Bobby Trippe (Ned Beatty), Ed Gentry (Jon Voight), Lewis Medlock (Burt Reynolds), and Drew Ballinger (Ronny Cox). From their urban perception of the great wilderness to their off-hand remarks concerning their impression of the local hillbillies (particularly during the famous "Dueling Banjos" sequence), the movie concerns itself with the world according to them, and it works quite nicely.
Deliverance surprised me. Of course the misnomer about its disturbing content is valid; the controversial sodomy scene that the movie is best known for is shocking. What I found interesting, though, is how well-made the picture is. On the surface, it appears to have quite a simple narrative: Four guys looking for some R & R on a canoe trip are accosted by two backwoods nutcases and they have to live with the traumatic aftermath of their actions. But that's only one level. Another comes in the form of biblical allusions and its allegorical implications. As Lewis chimes on and on about modern man's rape of nature, he carelessly finds himself doing the same thing, and then to take things one step further, it happens to him literally. As events turn from bad to worse, it's ironic the "civilized" men find themselves acting like savages, digging graves with their bare hands and opting to throw away rifles in favour of using their bows and arrows instead. The symmetry is quite subtle in other scenes, including a reference to the Great Flood (the region will soon be completely flooded out), and more overt in others, including one where Ed seems unable in one scene to kill a living creature (he draws his bow on a deer) but then in another he connects with a man he suspects is one of the grisly mountain men.
But is the hunter the same person as the pervert from the earlier scene? I will confess: When the characters looked at the body, I couldn't tell either. However, I have a rewind feature on my VCR; the characters in the movie don't. That's part of the intelligence of Deliverance. It keeps moving onward, there is no "Meanwhile, across town..." subplot to give the viewer a break. You can only form opinions of the rest of the characters through the eyes of the four businessmen. So, then, here's a question: other than the scene with the two sadists, were any of the other characters bad or evil? Were Bobby and Ed justified in their paranoia? If you've watched this movie, you'll know what I mean when I say the closing shot tells all... by telling absolutely nothing.
