Okay, so.
I am am well aware that different generations have different iconic movie scenes, and yet a part of me thinks that there are at least a few movies from my generation that shouldn't be forgotten, and at the same time, I know it is ridiculous to think that everyone has to watch a movie just because it had a big effect on me when I watched it in my teens.
So I am trying to strike a balance here.
I think every man should watch "Deliverance."
I also know time has moved on.
"Deliverance" was iconic because it dealt with a group of city men braving the backroads and backrivers, thinking they were superior to the countryfolk, and then finding themselves in a situation that tested them as men in a new way, a way that didn't involve offices and calling the police.
A bit of backstory.
The movie "Deliverance" was based on a novel by a poet who left it in limbo for years, and then, in a fit of passion, wrote it in one weekend, or so the story goes.
It tells the story of a group of friends from the city who headed out to the wilderness because a river was about to be dammed, and it would be the last chance for them to canoe down the river before it was gone forever.
The author of the novel said, in an interview with The Paris Review,
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People were caught up in a savage fable of decent men fighting for their lives and killing and getting away with it.
So, their river trip turned into a fight for their lives, and they had to suddenly fight out of their urban personas and deal with reality in all its savagery.
Again, from the Paris Review, the author, James Dickey, says:
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I'll tell you what I really tried to do in Deliverance. My story is simple: there are bad people, there are monsters among us. Deliverance is really a novel about how decent men kill, and the fact that they get away with it raises a lot of questions about staying within the law—whether decent people have the right to go outside the law when they're encountering human monsters. I wrote Deliverance as a story where under the conditions of extreme violence people find out things about themselves that they would have no other means of knowing. The late John Berryman, who was a dear friend of mine, said that it bothered him more than anything else that a man could live in this culture all his life without knowing whether he's a coward or not. I think it's necessary to know.
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews...mes-dickey
Ther are plenty of powerful, emotional scenes that speak to me from the movie "Deliverance," some of which I dreamed of for months afterwards, so it is hard to choose just one, just one scene to inspire others to watch this amazing movie.
The one I will choose though is not violent, and it has no heroism or sacrifice. It happens early in the movie when the city slickers are getting gas in a hillbilly outpost, trying to find someone to drive their cars down lower on the river to meet them after their canoe trip.
All the people they talk to seem retarded, uneducated, unable to communicate or even listen, and one of the city guys starts playing his guitar while he is waiting for the business to be concluded.
He hears someone echo whatever he plays on his guitar with their banjo, and he plays the call and response with his guitar to their responses. Soon he realizes that the person playing the banjo is this weird kid, either interbred or retarded, and yet the music is what bonds the two of them.
Pretty soon the forward momentum of the call and response between the banjo and the guitar supersedes all the the city folk talking city talk and the country folk talking country talk.
There is a very short shared moment between the two cultures, based in music, and then it is over, and they are separate again.
Suspicious hillbillies vs. the condescending city guys.
Most compelling movie scene I ever seen:
Don't even know if it is relevant to young guys today, but if this scene speaks to you, there is a hell of a movie you might want to watch.