Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

I watched Deliverance last night.

I saw the beginning of the film years ago, and its status as a part of popular culture makes it hard for anyone not to know about the infamous rape scene.  But there’s much more to the film than that.

Deliverance isn’t really a movie you watch.  It’s a movie you experience.  That may sound a little cheesy, but it speaks to the heart of the film itself.  What begins as a weekend canoe trip anyone could relate to quickly becomes a descent into a frightening world that feels completely real, but the mind balks at its existence.  The dichotomy between society and the wilderness is terrifying — as close as they are to civilization,  they are far, far away.

I think the profound effect watching Deliverance had on me is largely due to the fact that I have lived in Georgia my entire life; I grew up less than an hour from where much of the movie was filmed.  I have never met anyone as cruel or disturbing as the inbred, backwoods people who assault Lewis, Ed, Bobby and Drew on their journey.  Could people like that truly exist?  Could a refreshing escape from daily life become twisted into a nightmarish removal from the laws that keep society on the rails?

The film is as much an emotional journey as it is a physical one.  The convincing acting makes the transformative process believable and forces you to wonder what you would do when presented with an impossible situation.  Could you take a human life to save your own?  And, if you did, could you live with it?  Very little music accompanies the movie, and what’s there is incredibly laconic.  A single acoustic theme, subtly varied, steers the film’s mood from cheery to tragic, hopeful to hopeless and back again.  Leaving the majority of the scenes without a score serves to intensify each moment and make them feel all the more real.

The cinematography captures the vitality of the Georgia wilderness, and I find it more than a bit ironic that I recognize its beauty on film — I haven’t appreciated the real thing in a long, long time.  The moment that encompasses the entire journey of Deliverance comes as Ned lies panting at the top of a sheer cliff face (a feat Jon Voight accomplished himself).  He looks out at the world beneath him, the place where he will most likely die, and says, breathlessly, “Christ.  What a view.”

That line, that scene, single-handedly wraps up the essential humanity of Deliverance.  In that moment, the film bares its soul — and it’s yours for the taking.