directed by: John Boorman
written by: James Dickey (+ book)
starring: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox
seen on 15th April, 2019
-"They're drowning the river, man."
No enchantment by a film classic for me this time. I don't intent to by any means uderestimate the abilities of John Boorman (or the general time period), but the number of things that seemed unintentionally ridiculous was so high this time that it completely ruined my viewing experience.
It started right away with the dueling banjos, I think. The opening sequence is pretty well done (and quite in opposition to the rest of the film, I want to add) but given what follows I'm not sure how to understand it at all. I guess it's supposed to be some kind of a dark omen and a premonition of all things different and dangerous, but in my point of view it only sets our four protagonists as morons and that's about it. There is nothing threatening or menacing about the sound of a banjo and Voight (who sees and as the only one seems to perceive the hidden nature of things in this sequence, including seeing the boy with the banjo on the bridge as a guard of the point of no return) then still calls on to the armed demons from the woods and starts chatting with them like nothing's up. I suppose this film generally is about men running away from difficulties of civilization and still (or because of that) being admirably unable to listen to their own instincts or at least interpret signs and hints that come their way. That would, combined with the horror genre, sound like an interesting topic to explore, but there are three main things that stop me from going on this trip:
1. Extremely poor acting. Voight functions as "the good-looking guy that can't express shit" from every other horror film and Reynolds manages to overact even in scenes he's not present in. The scene of the argument over a dead body then looks so much like a graphic example of "how not to make any kind of drama" that I got embarassed just by watching it.
2. Weird time jumps and selective realistic/non-realistic physiological consequences of what the "heroes" have been through. The perfect example of this is the hunting trip on the cliff - I mean, did the other two really keep standing in cold water for a day and a night straight while our reluctant hero upstairs slept and battled his inner and outer fears? Burt Reynolds did faint and they painted him white, but the chubby guy seemed completely fine, not even a cold or something, eh? And Voight also stayed pretty active after being pierced with a hunting arrow.
3. Clumsy tricks. With this I mostly mean the during-the-day-shot-and-then-tinted-blue night complete with sun reflecting off water and sweaty skin. I mean, it kinda gives the impression that they all died and are now reliving their stupidity forever in the purgatory as ghosts, but I don't think that was the intention. The obviously fake hand in the closing dream sequence then represents a last nail to the coffin of my effort to take the film seriously. Or did I misunderstood everything and it is supposed to be a B film being enjoyed because it's so bad?
