For the past decade, I have had the same habit of covering the fashion weeks. The day is full of shows, presentations, and appointments that go into the evening with cocktails and parties. Once I get back home usually around midnight, I have reviews to write and collections to see again before I forget. I would always create a make-shift office space in front of the TV to keep me awake while I write into the night. TCM or Paramount in the background and for years they would always play Deliverance late at night. I have seen this movie nearly a hundred times, each time distracting me from my work.
Now that everyone is working from home, many people are also creating a makeshift office in front of the telly. And it always surprises me how many people haven’t seen Deliverance if it’s not part of their Netflix or Amazon algorithm. Additionally, it always surprises me that having seen so many collections inspired by films, that I haven’t seen one that openly referenced this cinema classic. Seriously, this film made bucket hats and vests a thing before they were a thing.
It may be almost fifty years old and sleeveless, ripped outdoorsman Burt Reynolds has never looked hotter, but each time I see the movie, I see a different one and perhaps, for this reason, I will never say it’s my favorite film. The premise of the movie roots itself in man’s raping of nature which we still see today, but it is also the desire to return to nature, tests of manhood, White-collar Vs Blue-collar, Redneck queer Vs cosmopolitan gay, the perceived macho manhood and the destruction of hyper-masculinity.
It’s a horror film without gore, but sometimes the real horror, what’s really scary, is the suspense when there is no gore in sight. It was on TV in Paris the first night of our official lockdown and I saw it as an exercise in restraint and paranoia, equally a film about PTSD, which I keep thinking about as we don’t know how we will come out of this lockdown.
Somethings should never be re-made, maybe I would consider a remake with Idris Elba, but I pray that won’t happen and I pray that I too will go back to nature even knowing that there will be unseen risks. So without destroying a classic, I rather imagine what the styling would be if it took place this summer.
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