Deliverance is one of those movies that's defined by one scene (you probably know the one) in a way that really doesn't do justice to the film as a whole. Its central thematic concern is the changing relationship between the urban American and the wilderness. Deliverance smartly makes its protagonists Southern urbanites to mitigate the kind of cultural biases that a story about murderous hillbillies calls up, although it's still not exactly a positive portrayal of the Appalachians community. As much as our quartet of hikers profess a love of nature, their relationship with the interior is profoundly antagonistic, a mixture of antagonism and a desire to conquest. Their interaction with the locals is a synecdoche of the larger geological transformation hanging over the whole film: the destruction of a complex wilderness to meet the water needs of growing cities.
What's so refreshing about Deliverance is that it flatters absolutely no one. Burt Reynolds plays a primitivist alpha male, a role he would spend the next couple decades misinterpreting, and while his steely nihilism is attractive at first he is ultimately rendered useless. Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox are buffoons of entirely different stripes. Jon Voight plays a civilized man whose descent into savagery is never made heroic. Despite being famous for a scene of violence, Deliverance never revels in its depravity in the same way that some of its contemporaries do. These characters have some surprisingly philosophical debates, debates that are ultimately rendered meaningless as they scramble for pure survival. And as for the much-vaunted interior, it's represented by a pair of rapacious monsters who are just as intent on reducing people to animals as the city-dwellers are.
John Boorman is a competent director but has trouble livening up the scenes that take place outside of the main action. The opening dueling banjos scene is brilliant, and basically sums up the entire film, but the initial rafting and camping is a slog and the epilogue stretches on too long. The lack of strong direction stops Deliverance from really being among the elite of the New Hollywood films, but it's a respectable entry into that tradition nevertheless. In terms of both its politics and its art, Deliverance captures a moment in time that was already vanishing, and does so in vivid and unforgettable fashion.
What's so refreshing about Deliverance is that it flatters absolutely no one. Burt Reynolds plays a primitivist alpha male, a role he would spend the next couple decades misinterpreting, and while his steely nihilism is attractive at first he is ultimately rendered useless. Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox are buffoons of entirely different stripes. Jon Voight plays a civilized man whose descent into savagery is never made heroic. Despite being famous for a scene of violence, Deliverance never revels in its depravity in the same way that some of its contemporaries do. These characters have some surprisingly philosophical debates, debates that are ultimately rendered meaningless as they scramble for pure survival. And as for the much-vaunted interior, it's represented by a pair of rapacious monsters who are just as intent on reducing people to animals as the city-dwellers are.
John Boorman is a competent director but has trouble livening up the scenes that take place outside of the main action. The opening dueling banjos scene is brilliant, and basically sums up the entire film, but the initial rafting and camping is a slog and the epilogue stretches on too long. The lack of strong direction stops Deliverance from really being among the elite of the New Hollywood films, but it's a respectable entry into that tradition nevertheless. In terms of both its politics and its art, Deliverance captures a moment in time that was already vanishing, and does so in vivid and unforgettable fashion.