Deliverance (1972) dir. John Boorman
Starring: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronnie Cox

By Alan Bacchus

Each character is written to highlight the Freudian core of ourselves. Ed (Jon Voight), a lawyer and organizer of the excursion, serves as the everyman point-of-view into the nightmare. Lewis (Burt Reynolds), a swaggering outdoorsman and Darwinist to the extreme, acts as the group's spirit mentor to their internal expression of their primal desires. Drew (Ronny Cox), the moralist and guitar player, fights the group's amoral decision-making. And Bobby (Ned Beatty), the portly nave, famously loses his bravado and gets raped and humiliated by the sadistic hillbilly woodsmen.

Whether it's the conflict within the foursome, such as Lewis's constant taunting of Bobby, or the culture clash of the mountain men versus the city slickers, it's a passive battle for the ages. Look carefully and there's very little direct conflict. Instead, Boorman simmers his pot with scenes of brilliantly quiet tension and consciously oblique plot turns.

The opening scenes are masterful, featuring the group's stop off at the gas station and the first meeting of the foursome and the locals. Despite their inbred poverty, the locals easily read Bobby's arrogant superiority and tense body language. Lewis's negotiation for the drivers who would take their cars to the bottom of river deliciously establishes Lewis's confidence and respect for these salt of the earth inhabitants. The scene, of course, ends with the memorable duelling banjos sequence, a superlative metaphor for the battle of wills about to commence.

John Boorman and Vilmos Zsigmond's brilliant outdoor, on location cinematography looks stunning in Blu-Ray. Few directors used anamorphic widescreen better than Boorman, and fewer films have are more intimately connected to its location than Deliverance.

The film's most famous sequence ― Bobby's rape ― sits right at the midpoint and represents the only scene of direct, face-to-face violence. At a glance, it's certainly most cruel to the character of Bobby, but it can also be seen as one of cinema's great acts of comeuppance for his passive but brazen superiority complex and disrespect for the environment and its people.

The visual and visceral brilliance notwithstanding, Deliverance is as rich in theme and context. The environmental story of man's desire to tame nature, redirecting the river and flood the valley for the benefit of its largely white, civilized population, is inseparable from America's self-determined, wealth-based class system and the external desires of men to conquer everything they encounter.

The Warner Special Edition Blu-Ray, wonderfully packaged with comprehensive liner notes, does right by the film. Featurettes and director commentary from a 2007 release are present, as well as a new high definition retrospective of the four actors sitting down and discussing the making of the film. The lack of a moderator in the discussion makes it mostly awkward, not to mention its location: the Burt Reynolds museum in Jupiter Florida.

****

This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca

Excalibur (1981) dir. John Boorman
Starring: Nigel Terry, Nicol Williamson, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay, Paul Geoffrey, Cherie Lunghi

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Excalibur is both supremely awful and inspired at the time, arguably the most passionate, intense, gory and gothic romantic version of the legendary story of King Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, Perceval, the Holy Grail and the Sword in the Stone ‘Excalibur’. This is John Boorman's adaptation with help from his creative collaborator Rospo Pallenberg and as per the credits, adapted directly from the Thomas Mallory writings on the legend.

I still marvel at the grandeloquent mix of operatic melodrama, supremely gory bloodshed and sexual activity, set to the best-ever use of Richard Wagner on film (yes, even better than Apocalypse Now). It’s also acted with subtly of a wart, featuring performances so wooden and atrocious, it’s no wonder we’ve never heard of any of these actors, save for Helen Mirren and small early appearances by Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, and Patrick Stewart.

Boorman begins with the story of Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur who uses the sword Excalibur to defeat his enemies and become King of England. Unfortunately his carnal desire for his best friend's wife overcomes him and he uses Merlin's magic to deguise himself and rape the woman Igraine (played by Boorman's own wife, ew!). Eventually Uther is killed, embeds the sword into the stone, years later to be unleashed by his own bastard son, Arthur. Using Excalibur's power Arthur unites the scattered knights of England forming the 'round table of Camelot'.

Peace doesn't last long when Arthur's #1 knight Lancelot, betray his own moral conscience and succombs to his lust of King Arthur's wife Guenevere. Meanwhile, Arthur's half sister Morgana plots revenge against Arthur by encouraging the conflict with Lancelot and eventually manipulating Merlin into disguising herself as Guenevere, man-raping Arthur and giving birth to Mordrid, his half-Nephew/son/heir to the throne and thus his soon to be mortal enemy.

Visually, it’s a stunning work of art, John Boorman’s ability to protray the rich pathos of this fantasy medieval period with glorious cinematography and perfect compositions. Stylistically Boorman employs the same soft hazy lighting scheme popular in the 1970’s and used to fine effect in Boorman’s own films, ‘Point Blank’ and ‘Deliverance’, and to lesser effect in bombs, ‘Zardoz’ and ‘Exorcist II: The Heretic’.  The psychedelic embellishments rides a fine line between on laughable unintentional comedy and the right supernatural elements contained in the mythology.

Alex Thomson finds a unique visual design which blends the rich medieval period details with the pure storybook fantasy elements. Watch carefully the scenes in which the Excalibur sword is featured, Thomson subtly shines a cool green glow in the background or on the actor’s faces to remind us of the mysterious quality of the sword. And the wondrous lady of the lake moments seem to be pulled directly out of that awesome final shot of Boorman's own Deliverance.

As mentioned the immaculately designed armour worn by the knights gleam magnificently under Thomson’s lighting, especially in the wedding scene. It’s a distinctly glamour 80’s look, just stopping short of using a star filter to accent the reflections. I doubt that ever came up as an option, but it’s distinct to the decade in the best way possible nonetheless.

The finale is especially grandiose and operatic violent. The confrontation of Arthur and Mordrid, father and son who climax their oedipal relationship by stabbing each other through their plates of armour, spewing blood over their chests is so bloody grotesque and phallic. As preposterous and extravagant the scene is played, it fits like a glove to Wagner’s music. Well, that’s obvious because the bookending music is actually Parsifal, music from Wagner’s opera about the Arthurian legend.

If you understand and appreciate the connection to the opera and the tonal extremity where this film needs to reside in order achieve spiritual heights that is does, then you can look past the atrocious performances and the general silliness which critics and detractors oppose. Nigel Terry in particular as King Arthur, whom we see first as a meek squire and then grow to become King of England and die in that bloodbath ending is mostly unmemorable. Nicol Williamson’s Merlin could be seen a nasily sportscaster reciting faux Shakespearan dialogue, yet to me his giddy performance is representative of the tone of the entire movie and glues everything together. If you can't accept Nicol Williamson as Merlin, then you'll find yourself on the other side of that fine line between appreciation and repugnance.

Excalibur is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Entertainment

Deliverance (1972) dir. John Boorman
Starring: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox and Bill McKinney

****

By Greg Klymkiw

In this day and age, is it possible to imagine a filmmaker assembling a cast and crew willing to risk life and/or limb to make a movie? Not just any movie, mind you - I'm talking about a movie of such importance that rendering it properly would be so fraught with peril that the production company would never be able to secure anything resembling insurance.

Furthermore, would one be able to find on today's landscape a financier with the balls to green-light a movie so dangerous to its participants that the picture and the very act of making it would seem, to any reasonable individual, a completely irresponsible act? In an industry increasingly ruled by lawyers, accountants, insurance agents, frail, sensitive actors and their weak-kneed handlers and worst of all, powder-puff movie executives and administrators who can only do business by dotting all the "I-s" and crossing all the "T-s" , my answer to the abovementioned questions would be a pure and simple, "I think not".

That anyone would risk ANYTHING to make a movie at all these days seems to be a rare occurrence and with the lack of risk-taking at all levels, one sincerely doubts John Boorman's stunning adaptation of James Dickey's novel "Deliverance" would even be made today.

Well, I suppose it would and could be made in today's climate of caution, but it would be awful, or at best - not nearly as good - at least not if it was made with the sort of punch-pulling, namby-pambiness that renders most everything these days as rather trite, especially since most pictures will choose to use a battery of stunt men to take the places of actual actors engaging in acts of derring-do and digital effects to make up for the lack of being able to take the time, trouble and decidedly risky business to actually capture on film those said acts of derring-do.

One of the many things that contributes to the greatness of "Deliverance" is that we see real men in real canoes on a real (and really fucking dangerous) river. In fact, when I used the Blu-Ray technology to scan the more insane stunts, I was only able to detect one - COUNT 'EM - one instance where a stunt man was used.

And I was right - when I scanned through the generous extra features on the recently-released Warners Blu-Ray disc, my own findings were corroborated.

With "Deliverance", what we see is what we get - four great actors risking their very lives to make this movie. There are several terrifying instances of this, but two of them stand out. The first is when a characters's canoe turns over on the raging waters and he cascades over a rocky indent and plunges in such an awkward manner that the CHARACTER breaks his leg. Watching thew actor in question during the aftermath as he is carried along by the current, the pain on his face is so palpable that when it's finally revealed that his bone is actually jutting out of his thigh, there's no doubting his pain. While the actor in question didn't break his leg for real, he did, in fact, break his coccyx. The other terrifying moment is witnessing one of the characters scaling a huge, treacherous rock cliff. It's an extremely harrowing scene and even more so when you start to realize that this is the actual actor scaling the actual cliff. To say this enhances the drama would be an understatement. (And never mind the actor - think of the camera people and director who would have been dangling perilously with the actor to capture these harrowing shots.) Narratively, his goal is one of life and death. If he does not accomplish his mission, everyone in the party is lost - therefore, the narrative importance of making this real cannot be underestimated.

And why, you ask, is the character scaling this cliff armed with a crossbow gun? And just who is the grizzled, toothless psychopath waiting at the top with one mean-ass shotgun Well, by now, only those living on the moons of Jupiter DON'T know what "Deliverance" is about. For those aliens, the answers to the above questions will not only be found watching the movie, but within the brief plot summary below:

Four city slickers take a weekend canoe trip along a raging river in the deep South that will soon be flooded and consumed by a huge, man-made lake. When they are attacked by crazed hillbillies with a penchant for forcible sodomy, they must not only survive the perils of nature, but dig deep to discover their dormant savage nature and defend themselves at all costs. It's pure and simple and through that purity and simplicity, the filmmakers have delivered an astoundingly rich and complex work.

With his novel, the late, great American poet James Dickey used this simple narrative coat hanger to explore man's relationship to nature and his inner beast. Director John Boorman pushed the simple narrative further to explore the notion of the effects of man playing God and the results of trying to beat and/or control nature. Clearly a perfect creative team, Dickey (who also wrote the screenplay adaptation) and director Boorman, successfully collaborated on a movie that thrills us viscerally and engages us intellectually and finally, just plain scares the shit out of us.

And to reiterate, it's not just the action and suspense that grabs us. The characters are perfectly etched and rendered. The four motley city slickers are a typical mixed-bag, not just for the drama, but are, like life itself, a microcosm of people we all know - including, perhaps, ourselves. Lewis (Burt Reynolds) is Mr. Macho Man - he loves nature, he loves danger and he's as gifted in traversing raging white water as he is with using a cross-bow to secure their food and, eventually, to defend themselves against the toothless, drooling, inbred, sodomy-loving hillbillies (Bill McKinney and Herbert "Cowboy" Coward). Ed (Jon Voight) is, by default, a rugged-enough hunk, but he has suppressed his true nature so long that it takes quite awhile to find the way back to manliness. Drew (Ronny Cox) is a guitar-picking, folk-singing bleeding heart Liberal who also gets to be part of a scene that has already - among several in this movie - become indelibly etched on the memory banks all who see it. Drew is front and centre of the "duet" sequence involving the traditional backwoods song "Dueling Banjos". And last, and certainly not least, Bobby (Ned Beatty) is a jovial, ribald, bumbling fat man who suffers the most savage indignity and learns to "squeal like a pig" in a scene that is so horrific that it's both painful to watch and unforgettable. These four men are strange bedfellows, but it's their very differences that make them a good team and ideal company for each other.

Boorman attacks the material with both intelligence and ferocity. Supported by the stunning location photography of the brilliant Vilmos Zsigmond, "Deliverance" is a movie that knocks you on your ass the first time you see it and is so exquisitely rendered that repeat viewings never disappoint. The picture continues to creep you out, thrill you and stimulate the old brain juice - again and again and again.

Another astonishing thing about "Deliverance" is that its stylistic and storytelling techniques are not dated. It feels as fresh and vibrant today as when it was made back in 1972. On one hand, it is a product of its time in that it explores such dangerous territory unflinchingly, but aside from some big-ass old cars that nobody drives anymore, it feels like it could have been made yesterday.

Finally, that's what renders it a classic. There's nothing ephemeral about this movie. It is a picture for now and forever.

"Deliverance" is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video. It's an astounding transfer that happily and wisely does not attempt to blunt the raw quality of Zsigmond's photography which, by the way, has some of the finest day for night work in cinema history. On HD, it's as stunning as it was when I first saw it on a big screen in 1972.