Author: EarlD Page 45 of 315

Delivered Into Action: “Deliverance”

On May 17, 2023

Cover of Deliverance (Deluxe Edition)

I have read James Dickey’s novel, Deliverance, but I don’t much remember it. I remember enjoying it, though, and I also enjoy the John Boorman film version of it (1972), whose screenplay Dickey wrote.*

Four middle-aged men head to the forest and take a canoe ride on a treacherous river. The rapids are bad enough; the men also encounter bullying hillbillies, one of whom they kill after he sodomizes Bobbie (Ned Beatty), a member of their group. Without contacting the police, they bury the man and then try to high tail it out of the region. They gradually fear, however, that a vengeful hillbilly is attempting to waste them with a shotgun.

I am perfectly sure the movie is a lesser work than the novel. How I see Boorman’s concoction is as a nicely shot, mostly realistically made adventure story which conveys a message about moral uncertainty and compromise being involved in physical survival. The canoe riders do not trust lawful authorities who might help them, and the mountain man whom Jon Voight‘s Ed shoots with a crossbow may or may not be a murderer. Another thing the film tells us is that packs of violent cretins like the hillbillies are out there. They may lie low, they may be hidden, but they’re there.

Most, though not all, of the acting in Deliverance is impressive. A fine thespian, Jon Voight is nevertheless a bit unsteady here, maybe because the script “does not offer him sufficient motivation and opportunity for emotional shading” (John Simon). Agreed. Even so, the film is anything but dull. It’s exciting and, in its own way, trenchant. And it’s a nature lover’s film. I firmly disagree with the critics who dismiss it.

*Rewritten by Boorman, apparently.

A Horror Like Life: “Struck”

By EarlD

On May 13, 2023

In Movies

The movie Struck (2007) was “inspired” by a terrible news story about an inhumane woman’s car accident. In life the woman was African American, in Stuart Gordon‘s film she is white (Mena Suvari as Brandi)—a white woman with black friends. No angels, these.

Unintentionally Brandi hits with her car a newly homeless, jobless man (Stephen Rea), much of whose body becomes stuck—and bloody—in the car’s busted windshield. He is still alive, though, while anxious Brandi is unhelpful.

Human beings are so self-protecting and self-aggrandizing, as Brandi is, they will disregard another’s suffering and death when these things threaten their welfare. This is what Gordon and his co-writers are telling us. The majority of the characters here are the film’s dartboards, with a lot of sympathy naturally going to Rea’s down-and-outer. Struck is fierce, candid and practically nihilistic. Candid, I say: it’s for mature audiences only. The problem is Brandi’s not being examined, and a little exploration of Brandi’s boyfriend (Russell Hornsby) would have been nice as well. Even so, the movie was worth my time.

Watch Your Back, “Charley Varrick”

By EarlD

On May 10, 2023

In Movies

The 1973 Charley Varrick is gritty fun but not one of Don Siegel‘s best. This is because it is nigh mindless, a sometimes obtuse crime flick.

“A man, his wife and their friend stage a bloody bank robbery without realizing they are stealing from the Mob” (imdb). Thereafter the plot is not always well served. Siegel said Walter Matthau, as Charley Varrick, did not understand what was going on in CV, but it is not a hard movie to follow. You may not always like, however, where it takes you. It has some pretty colorful crooks, though, in Joe Don Baker‘s Mr. Molly and Andy Robinson‘s Harman. And it’s vigorous.

“The Confessions of X”—Ex-Concubine

By EarlD

On May 5, 2023

In General

What is The Confessions of X (2016), a novel by Suzanne M. Wolfe, about? Its narrative is about the concubine, unnamed, of St. Augustine before he became a Christian. Thematically it is about the unbreakable tie between former lovers who have lived without any other lover (or spouse). It is about unexpected conversion and sudden change (a minor example: a saved woman, Perpetua, becomes like a sister to “X” after initially snapping at her for her concubinage). It is about love.

The book is almost always finely, astutely written, even if the characterization lacks admirable depth. Also, I found certain parts of it a bit of a slog, and yet Wolfe’s details are very often memorable. If The Confessions of X is a Christian novel—it was published by Thomas Nelson, and Wolfe possesses a Christian sensibility—it’s probably the best Christian novel of 2016. It’s not the kind of book that comes out frequently.

Hitler And Company: “Downfall”

By EarlD

On May 1, 2023

In Movies

Adolf Hitler, magnificently acted by Bruno Ganz in the German film Downfall (2004), is half-educated and hot-tempered, a sane psychopath clearly unhappy over abysmal failure. His is not the only suicide in this scorching chronicle. The Third Reich falling to pieces, as Russian soldiers pour in, becomes a charnel house of self-killing. The non-suicidal are often wounded. Many long to survive.

Two things about Oliver Hirschberger‘s movie must be said, and at least one of them already has been, viz. it lets the German people off the hook for tolerance of antisemitism, etc. The other thing is that it humanizes people who were human beings—blind ones, alas. These folks include Traudl Junge, Gerda Christian, Alfred Jodl, Albert Speer, and the unhinged devil at the top of the heap. All the same, they were not victims. Their suffering does not match that of Jewish men, women and children in the death camps.

(In German with English subtitles)