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Jon Voight, Deliverance by Michael Atkinson You don't need one of those notoriously short Hollywood memories to have forgotten about Jon Voight. The glimpse we got of him in Heat--as the seedy, hooked-in middleman of super-heists--was a mildly shocking reminder that he once was both a major star and a world-class actor, a card-carrying member of the same generation as his Heat costars De Niro and Pacino. Voight got there perhaps too quickly--just a few minor films before instant screen immortality for Midnight Cowboy (1969)--and faded too fast, but in the meantime a few great films were lucky enough to be anchored to his alert, quiet intelligence. Deliverance is by far the best of them, and it is the film that represents Voight's greatest claim to being an all-purpose leading man. As Ed, the too-comfortable Atlanta businessman whose canoe trip down a treacherous river in the Appalachian wilderness turns into a primal nightmare of rape, murder, shallow graves and human hunting, Voight is so civilized and baby-faced that we're never certain he'll survive his ordeal at the hands of white-trash backwoodsmen. He's just too vulnerable, too soft. It's Nature vs. the Law, and Voight is the Urban Male at his tamest and most self-indulgent, right down to the pipe you're almost glad one of the loathsome hillbillies slaps out of his mouth. It's clear that up to this point survival was just a hobby for Ed, and the glaze of fear in Voight's eyes isn't just about the hillbillies, but also Ed's own inadequacies. Voight subtly plays up his boyish vulnerability, trying to shakily negotiate with the villains as if he's salvaging a business deal, spitting out a frustrated "Goddamnit!" at every turn, perpetually glancing in a panic around him as if looking for a clue as to what he should do next. He looks like a kid lost in an empty department store at closing time, just as the lights go out. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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It's a simple, brutally physical movie. Voight has little time to fart around with "acting." Just watch him watch the other men, his eyes working like a stenographer's fingers. Ed's so startled to be juiced up on adrenaline and terror that Voight's every breath is a mountain climb. After the encounter with the mountain men, Voight even rows differently, with the resolution of the damned. Ed grows even more haunted once he reaches civilization (such as it is). Sitting down to dinner in a hick flophouse, he spontaneously bursts into tears over his peas and corn. Voight's an open wound here, hunching up and literally holding himself together as if his guts will spill out if he doesn't. Once Ed starts to lie half-convincingly to the law about what happened upriver, Voight manages to let us see both the cool businessman Ed was before and the battle-scarred trauma patient he is now. He shows us a man nearly collapsing with paranoia, desperation and the labor of trying to make it all look like mere exhaustion. In the very end, when he is safely at home, Ed is shocked out of a nightmare, and as his wife tries to soothe him, Voight's expression is a chiller that tells us everything: Ed's all alone, his life is ruined, the fear will never go away. What did you think of this performance? Sound off in the Movie Forum. PAGE 1 | 2 |