DELIVERANCE

US, 1972, 104 minutes, Colour.
Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty.
Directed by John Boorman.

Deliverance is an outstanding film. It was nominated for the Best Film of 1972 and John Boorman was nominated for the Best Director. Boorman showed in Point Blank that he lilted to use the shape and colour of his film's environment as an important and integral part of his film. In Hell in the Pacific he showed hostile men confronting nature and questioning the reality of their enmity. Here these factors all come together with many more. (Boorman then made Zardoz).

Men, challenged by the adventure of nature, are attacked by hostile men and find nature menacing. While this oversimplifies the film, it highlights the central issues which are explored in a visually stunning way in a film which communicates a physical exhaustion by its sheer energy. The film has many excellent features, especially the now famous "Duelling Banjoes" sequence and the performances of the stars.
The author of Deliverance, James Dickey, appears in the role of the sheriff.

1. What did the title mean?

2. What was the significance of the conversation daring the credits - about nature, man, society, conservation and progress, survival; about extreme attitudes and moderate views? How did the conversation contrast with the images of the dam-building?

3. What kind of man was Lewis? How 'savage', 'primitive' was he? Why were his attitudes so extreme? Why did he value survival? Why did Ed say that Lewis could hardly wait for the time of survival to come? Was he right? Why did Lewis want to make the trip? How much challenge was there? How much enjoyment and exhilaration? How much harmony with beautiful, unfettered nature?

4. What kind of man was Ed? How conventional? How much 'the man in the street'? Why did he go on trips with Lewis? Did he know? What did he expect of the trip?

5. How much sense of foreboding was there at the beginning of the film?

6. What impact did the natural scenery make on the audience - how did director and photographer make nature so important?

7. How important was the presentation of the Georgia hillbilly world and people? What did it stand for - rubbish dump, remote, suspicious, inbred and mentally defective, an old world (which needed destruction?}?

8. why was so long spent on the musical sequence between Drew and the boy? How important was it? What mood and atmosphere did it give to the film? To the four men? How effectively was this music used again throughout the film?

9. What kind of man was Bobby - typical city softy looking down on the hillbillies? Drew - sympathetic and humane?

10. How well were the canoeing sequences filmed? Why did they have such impact?

11. How did the quiet camp scene at night lull the audience before the violent onslaught of the next day?

12. Did you expect such violence in the film? From the hillbillies? What was the meaning of such viciousness? Did it have any meaning? What effect did it have on the audience? On Bobby? On Ed?

13. Was Lewis entitled to kill the assaulter? Was the picturing of his death too violent - did it balance the assault on Bobby?

14. How convincing was the discussion about law and order? Should they have reported the truth? Why did each man react as he did? How convincing (and right) was Drew? Should he have joined in once the vote was taken?

15. Why did Drew fall out of the canoe? Was this the beginning of retribution?

16. What physical reaction in the audience did the fear, Lewis' pain, the rapids evoke? How? Why?

17. How was Ed changed by the desperate situation - his climbing the cliff, his stalking the hillbilly, his terror of firing the arrow (with the previous preparation in his fear of killing the deer)?

18. How did the physical effort of the canoeing evoke the impression of fear in the filming of the final part of the trip?

19. Should they have told the truth on arrival? Why didn't they? Were they less men for doing so?

20. How did we leave Bobby? What effect did it all have on him?

21. What of Lewis in the hospital?

22. What of the Sheriff's suspicions and warnings to them and his comment on the peaceful dying of the town?

23. How was Ed affected - his meal with the hillbillies, answers to the Sheriff,
homecoming and the necessity of continuing on living, his dreams, (conscience), the comfort of his wife?

24. How symbolic was the river, the trip? What did the experience teach these men? The audience? Was violent retaliation inevitable? Is nature really hostile and does man have to come to terms with it? Can he?

25. Is this a great film? Does it make a substantial contribution to the understanding of the US?