5. Deliverance
Those unplanned summer excursions we discussed in the previous entry are almost always fun, and sometimes life-changing, as we also saw in the previous entry. However, sometimes things go wrong. The trip which unfolds in John Boorman's classic 1972 film Deliverance is a case in point; the trip detailed in the film is just as life-changing as the one in Stand By Me, but, due to something going wrong, it goes about changing its characters in a much darker way. The film shows us a weekend trip taken by Lewis (Burt Reynolds), Ed (Jon Voight), Bobby (Ned Beatty), and Drew (Ronny Cox), four city boys who, in an attempt to affirm their manhood, gather to take a canoe trip down the Cahulawassee River before it's dammed. The extremely inbred residents of the backwoods area that the four men launch their canoes from are bitter about being forced from their homes to make room for the new lake that'll be formed by the dam, and they see these four city guys as embodying all the things that are ruining their lives. Two of the hillbillies decide to act on this hate, one of them, being attracted to Bobby, rapes Bobby (in the infamous "Squeal like a pig!" scene) while the other holds Ed captive. Unfortunately for the hillbilly holding Ed, Lewis has traced Bobby & Ed back to the rape site, Lewis has his bow and arrow, and Lewis is a champion archer. Lewis shoots an arrow through Ed's captor, killing him immediately; the man who's violated Bobby takes off. After much deliberation, the four men decide to bury the body and go on as if nothing's happened. However, the hill-people aren't about to take the death of one of their own lying down, and they set out to get revenge on the four city slickers, forcing Lewis, Ed, & Drew to take a stand. If there's any film that'll make you leery about camping, this is it. The film works best on a visceral level; John Boorman, the director, and James Dickey, the man who wrote the screenplay and the novel the film's based on, were true men's men, and they didn't shy away from showing us anything. The rape scene is explicit, as is every scene of violence in the film, but equally striking is the look of the backcountry residents. This isn't the Clampett clan; these are grungy people who haven't bathed for days, are losing half their teeth and are about to lose the second half, and are just generally weird-looking; Boorman & Dickey don't shy away from the fact that these people are entirely inbred. What makes this film a masterpiece, however (and what probably got it nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture of 1972), is the fact that the film hints at more than what its plot tells us; there are several levels of meaning to Deliverance, and if one looks deeply enough, one can find some really interesting ideas lying beneath the film's surface. Ultimately, however, the film works best as a thriller. There are two kinds of "getting ready for summer" movies; there's the films that get you pumped for the season and the cautionary tales. Deliverance is a prime example of the latter; it's a warning about what could potentially happen to you if you decide to "not play golf this weekend" (as the trailer and posters for the film say) but go rafting and/or camping. Of course, it's not likely that Deliverance-esque events will happen to you, but you never know...