1972.
Sometimes I'll watch a film just because it was made in that year. Whitlam, Watergate, Fischer v Spassky - it was all happening.
Some great films too: The Godfather, Solaris, Fritz the Cat. But I come to speak of a discrete genre of film, the white male war anxiety flic.
Perhaps we have Australian species of anxiety cinema in Walkabout (1971) starring a young Jenny Agutter (yowza!), The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (1978), and maybe the Cars that ate Paris (1974).
But the real deal was in the US: of course, we are talking about Deliverance (1972). Not only that, but also my personal genre fave, Southern Comfort (1981, but set in 1973).
I guess you don't need an SBS film reviewer on staff to work out these are male anxiety psychodramas about Vietnam, with probably also a touch of blowback from the rise of feminism, and the civil rights movements as well.
What do these great films boil down to? This: we're acting tough, but don't know we're the hell we are, or what we're doing. And the local folks we're really pissing off (Hillbillies, Cajuns) really do. They're out there. In here, in the US swamps and hills. Shadows on our peripheral vision.
The protaganists are plainly unequal to the task. They are either civilians with warrior fantasies, like crazy Burt and his bow, or just plain scared (read conscripts). Or literally firing blanks, like the Louisiana National Guard.
The (erm...) climax, of course, is the complete demolition of the fragile masculine psyche on parade. "Can you squeal like a pig, boy?". Apparently that was ad-libbed. Boy, that bit part actor got it. But no less, the mental breakdown of Cpl Bowden, whose insane destruction wrought on civilians to compensate for earlier cowardice seals the fate of all.
Only two will make it: not the showy Rambo. He's toast. Not the scared guy who believed Rambo would protect them either. He dies horribly. The survivor is the quiet American. The one whose reluctant bravery is directed solely at getting out of this insanity, and respected the locals more from the get go. And the other scared guy, who follows him instead. He's got a chance. In Deliverance at least, he's even more interesting: a Phoenix, arising from the ashes of the obliterated faux-macho self.
Oh, and Hoyt Pollard played the banjo.
4 comments:
Ben, that was another one. (1972; possibly war angst too.)
Something about Deliverance is irresistibly attractive to many men, which should not really be true - I wonder what you think it might be?
I am very much attached to the novel - haven't seen the movie for a while.
What's Ben about, Lucy? I don't think I know it.
Yep - Deliverance is gripping! I guess its the double-sidedness of war fantasy and fear.
In the film , the other three are more or less conscripted into battle by the Burt character.
There's a book??
There is a book alright - it's by James Dickey. I think it might have been the only novel he wrote - he was a poet really - in the American transcendentalist vein. He was a pilot in WWII. There's more in the book about the environmental angle.
Ben is a horror movie about an evil genius rat who makes friends with a bullied young boy. Michael Jackson sang the theme song.
Last Tango in Paris was a 1972 movie too. Maybe less of a war anxiety vibe to that one.
Everyone should know a lot more about 1972. It was also the year Nixon went to China, UNO was invented, and an Australian girl won Miss Universe.
I agree! Let's start a 1972 appreciation society.
There's also The Candidate, the the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
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