Film Comment: Duel

Duel was just a 1971 TV movie, like all the others which showed up once a week on network television back when good movies didn't cost as much to make as they do now. It is today considered to be one of the classics, a fine textbook example of tight, fast-paced plotting and suspenseful direction, and, incidentally, the first feature effort of Steven Spielberg.

Richard Matheson, a master of the twist ending short story, wrote the screenplay with its bare and simple story: a traveling salesman named David Mann (Dennis Weaver, Chester of Gunsmoke fame), driving a less than reliable car, is followed by, toyed with, and then menaced by, a relentless large tractor trailer truck which seems intent on terrorizing him.

When the frantic salesman stops at a truck stop the truck does also and the salesman unhappily realizes that one of the customers in the restaurant is probably the truck's driver. The problem is that he could be any one of them.

David Mann survives his ordeal by tricking the truck (and that is how it is presented, the truck more than the driver) into running off a cliff into a fiery crash below. Mann survives but there is no reason for any of it. Absolutely no explanation is ever given, just as there often seems to no explanation to real life.

Some people seem to be relentlessly pursued and crushed by life and never seem to know how to escape or improve their fate. Desperation hounds them every minute (the British call it "quiet desperation") and their every situation seems to fall apart into smelly mush. They live in fear and dread, often of nothing in particular.

Psychologists would advise the sufferers to step back from their problems, acknowledge their fears, and learn to view their situation from outside of their situation. The rationale is that what can be viewed without emotional baggage can often be handled and controlled logically.

There is, of course, some truth in this approach, but Christians know that it is sadly incomplete.

Placing one's trust in the Lord in every situation opens the believer up to the power of God. There is no situation which He can not use for His purposes. Being within His will means that, ultimately, the believer is safe no matter what happens. This is how Paul and Silas were able to sing after being beaten and thrown into jail for refusing to shut up about Jesus. (Acts 16:16-35)