Film Review
For his feature debut, director Steven Spielberg succeeded in crafting
a minimalist suspense masterpiece that surpasses virtually all of his
subsequent work in its economy, inventiveness and sheer cinematographic
brilliance. Although originally made for US television, the film
was so well-received that it was given an international theatrical
release a few years later (with a few additional sequences).
Today it is regarded as one of Spielberg's greatest achievements and a
cult film in the horror/thriller genre.
Based on a short story by Richard Matheson (who also wrote the film's
screenplay),
Duel has a narrative simplicity which both belies and
accentuates its rich symbolic complexity. The film can be
interpreted in many ways - as an allegory of man's attempt to gain
mastery over soulless machines in an increasingly technological age, as
an existentialist nightmare in which the appropriately named Mr Mann
seeks to assert his identity on a barren universe or just a study on
the psychology of road rage.
No matter how you interpret it,
Duel is an extraordinarily compelling
work, one that grabs you by the throat in a vice-like grip and does not let go until
the closing credits. Its homage to Hitchcock
is apparent in the subjective camerawork, which effectively builds the tension to an almost
unbearable pitch, and the eerie score, which appears to have been
inspired by Bernard Herrmann's music from the shower scene in
Psycho.
The fact that the identity of the truck driver is never revealed lends
an enigmatic, mystical quality to the film, making it both hauntingly
poetic and genuinely disturbing. There is something terrifyingly
primal in the game that the two protagonists - Mann and the truck -
indulge in, something dark and bestial which is hard to reconcile with
our supposedly civilised notions of behaviour and morality. It is
the baser emotions - fear and pride - that consume Mann and ensnare him
in a fight to the bitter end against his faceless enemy. Fear and
pride - the same emotions that led America into the futile and
seemingly interminable war with Vietnam. Is this what
Duel is
ultimately about - a coded diatribe on the absurdity of a doomed
military adventure?
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Steven Spielberg film:
Jaws (1975)
Film Synopsis
David Mann is driving his red Plymouth Valiant through the California
desert on his way to a business meeting. The only other vehicle
on the otherwise empty highway is a lumbering tanker truck which is
expelling noxious black exhaust fumes in his direction. When Mann
overtakes the truck, he is surprised when it suddenly accelerates and
overtakes him, before slowing down again. Mann overtakes the
truck a second time, but as he does so, the driver of the truck gives
him a fierce horn blast. Again the truck speeds up and Mann has
no choice but to let it pass him. Again the truck slows down and
Mann's impatience compels him to try to overtake it, but as he does so
he almost runs straight into a car passing in the opposite
direction. Mann suddenly realises what is happening. The
truck driver is drawing him in a dangerous game of cat and mouse, a
game that will quickly become a duel to the death...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.