Everyone and everything is shrouded in danger in DELIVERANCE, from the hillbilly rapists to the jagged rocks in the river’s rapids, to the threat of mankind destroying his own environment. To the arrogant superiority of Lewis, to the conflict that rages in Jon Voight as decisions beyond right and wrong are heaped upon him.

Many viewers see the woods themselves as the source of DELIVERANCE’s darkness. It’s as if the wilderness is just short-hand for the place unspoken savagery and primal horrors lie. The truth is, the green machine is indifferent to our plight. It’s civilization that invented murder as well as the laws to keep it in check. Nature is simpler than any of that. It exists without judgment, without prejudice: the strong survive, the weak get eaten.

The social contract tricks us into seeing DELIVERANCE’s protagonists as civilized men forced to act barbaric to survive. We believe they’re above nature when they’re simply just part of it. Jon Voight becomes the film’s most accessible character, and a sober reminder of what man really is: cunning, hypocritical, resilient, existing in-the-moment. Only at the end, when he’s finally disconnected from it, does he fearfully dream the river will punish him his transgressions. But nature is incapable of judging him. Only his conscience can.

Lewis: “Do you know what’s gonna be here? Right here? A lake. As far as the eyes can see. Hundreds of feet deep. Hundreds of feet deep. Did you ever look out over a lake and think of somethin’ buried underneath it? Buried underneath it. Well, man, that’s just about as buried as you can get.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzae_SqbmDE