Lee Marvin unloading his revolver into his wife's bed (Point Blank),
Ronny Cox surfacing all twisted from the river (Deliverance):
Boorman's is a cinema of resonant, mythic images. He makes accessible,
mainstream movies, but delights in dark subversion. Point Blank
reinvented the gangster thriller as existential puzzle; Deliverance
was a primal howl of a buddy movie. Both are classics. Films like Zardoz
and Excalibur can seem absurd if you don't enter their spirit - but if you
do, you're rewarded with an honest, ambitious attempt to find
visionary truths. For a myth-busting look behind the scenes, see his
film-maker's journal Bright Dreams, Hard Knocks (in Projections 1,
the magazine he founded).
