You don't beat this river

It's not easy to objectively dissect and discuss a film whose shocking reputation precedes it, even 44 years after its theatrical release. But "Deliverance" is a movie chock-full of content and meaning, symbolism and subtext, metaphor and moral, so exploring it in depth via group conversation can yield a variety of diverse theories and opinions and prove to be richly rewarding and insightful. Such was the case last evening with our verbal investigation of this film, which produced numerous talking points, including the following:

HOW ARE EACH OF THE FOUR MAIN CHARACTERS DIFFERENT IN PERSONALITY, AND WHY ARE THESE DISTINCTIONS IMPORTANT?
• Lewis is a rugged hunter who embodies American arrogance, overconfidence and machoism. Interestingly, despite his brawn and outdoorsman experience, he is reduced to a shell of himself once he’s injured. The takeaway here is that Lewis’ negative qualities are liabilities that make him vulnerable in the merciless wild.
• Drew is more liberal and humanistic, a man who tries to conform to the laws and rules of the civilized world and adopts an intellectual approach. It’s important to remember that Drew is the first to die – suggesting perhaps that, as John Kenneth Muir wrote in his excellent blog entry on this film: “Perhaps the voice of society or morality has little practical value in a Darwinian, kill-or-be-killed universe…(his) abstract thinking and his artistic bent don’t permit him to tap into his primitive self.”
• Bobby is a typical flabby white-collar type who lacks experience outdoors; he’s sarcastic, disrespectful of nature, and demeaning to the natives in their rustic environment. But Bobby is the most vulnerable because he sticks out (literally and figuratively) as a target for abuse and he can’t “carry his weight.” He represents the overindulgent, content, fat American who is used to a life of leisure.
• Ed is an everyday guy and typical family man/husband who serves as more of a surrogate for the viewer in that he has a few of the qualities of each of the others – strength and resourcefulness when the going gets tough and a desire to remain within the rules of society, yet he’s also a city slicker who lacks experience. According to Muir, the film intentionally compares Ed to the “soon-to-be lobotomized river. The raging, dangerous river will be replaced by a serene – but dead – Lake. And Ed has lived a life as that tranquil lake, never understanding the forces roiling beneath it.”

WHAT ARE THE MAJOR THEMES OF THIS FILM?
• Survival of the fittest and the search for heroism.
• Man versus nature: man’s rape of the natural world, and nature’s revenge against man. Man is punished for his sins.
• Devolution: Every man has a primitive side to his nature – kind of like the id buried in our psyche – that can disturbingly surface when we are threatened or aroused. Courtesy, civility, manners, tact and respect can quickly disappear when our dark side emerges.
• Deliverance – which is defined in the dictionary as the act of being set free or rescued. While those among the four who survive are delivered from evil, the ending of the movie suggests that Ed, especially, can never truly be free or rescued from what he experienced.

WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE DUELING BANJOS SCENE?
• It demonstrates the universal power of music to bridge all cultures and peoples.
• The banjo player is genetically deformed – suggesting inbreeding and reinforcing stereotypes. But the introduction of this character here is important, because we see him later on a bridge, standing as a sort of bellwether of doom, a guardian monitoring the Styx-like river our quartet crosses.
• The banjo player causes the audience to relax and let its guard down when we enjoy his musical camaraderie with Drew; once the song is over, however, we suddenly feel uncomfortable when we observe that the player refuses to shake hands with Drew. Now, the banjo player makes us nervous and serves as a portentous foreshadowing device.
• Their musical interplay also signifies a dual or competition between two what appears to be friendly forces but ends up being two opposing forces.

DELIVERANCE IS A FILM FILLED WITH SYMBOLISM AND SUBTEXT. CAN YOU CITE ANY EXAMPLES?
• The dead hand that rises out of the lake: This could stand for the potential for violence and brutality within each of us that can rise to the surface at any time, despite our efforts to suppress these instincts and defense mechanisms. It’s important that Ed in particular see the hand, because if Ed is an Everyman and surrogate for the audience who is capable of succumbing to violence and de-evolution, we all are. And this thought and imagery is meant to be haunting and disturbing – knowing that it can pop up at any time and remind us that the concept of civilization is illusory.
• The bridge from which the banjo player performs: This bridge represents a demarcation line that, once our four protagonists cross it, triggers violent and dangerous consequences.
• The river itself: a dam is going to be built to tame this river, but not before it unleashes its raging violence and merciless power. The river can serve as a metaphor for life.
• The church that is being moved away: insinuating perhaps that morality, goodness, and faith in a higher power has no place in the jungle primeval that is our primary setting.

WHAT DID YOU FIND SURPRISING, SHOCKING, DISTINCTIVE AND INFLUENTIAL ABOUT DELIVERANCE?
• It contains two of the most famous scenes in movie history: first, the “dueling banjos” sequence, and second the notorious scene where the mountain men rape Ned Beatty.
• Adding to the verisimilitude and heightened realism, the filmmakers shot along the Chattooga River in Georgia and the four main actors really had to brave those rapids and, in the case of Burt Reynolds, perform dangerous stunts.
• It seems wrapped in the veneer of an adventure yarn and a “buddy” picture, but it quickly descends into the horror genre with its graphic violence and terrifying situations.
• This picture served as a notable inspiration for backwoods horror/torture films that followed, including The Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hills Have Eyes.

AFTER SEEING DELIVERANCE, WHAT OTHER SIMILAR FILMS COME TO MIND?
• The aforementioned horror films featuring inbred and/or deranged killers brutalizing victims in wild/remote places
• Straw Dogs, which was released one year earlier
• Pulp Fiction, which also features a disturbing male-on-male rape scene
• Survival-in-the-wild adventure films where man hunts or terrorizes man, including The Edge, The Most Dangerous Game, The River Wild, Hell in the Pacific, and Southern Comfort

OTHER MOVIES DIRECTED BY JOHN BOORMAN
• Point Blank
• Hell in the Pacific
• Zardoz
• Excalibur
• Hope and Glory
• The Emerald Forest
• Carrie (both films and with the shocking image of a dead hand rising up)
• Stand by Me