Bobby: “We beat it, didn’t we? Didn’t we beat that?”
Lewis: “You don’t beat it. You don’t beat this river…”
For all his swagger, unapologetic machismo, and consummate derring-do, Lewis is still, at his core, a realist. He’s up for a challenge, yes – any challenge, really – but he’s not about to take anything lightly. He can ride a river, look it in the eye, and go all out, but the best he can ever hope for is a draw. Defeat, certainly, but success? An ultimate triumph? Surest way to end up dead. As with the river, so it goes with one’s very existence. You can raise your fists, spill blood and sweat, and go down with a rebellious yelp, but you’re not getting out of life alive. Lewis knows full well immortality isn’t the end game, but by god, you’d better act as if it were. His mantra, and the unbroken philosophy of anyone who ever gave a damn and left their mark. The sidelines are for the weak. And Lewis is anything but.
Deliverance is the story of many things – cautionary tale, rural vs urban, the rugged individualist’s last gasp before yielding to the respectability of civilization – but at its heart, we’re here for the ultimate test of Lewis’ cri de coeur. Whether by buttoning up and settling in, we’ve lost our very souls. Lewis believes we have, and it’s his job, at this eleventh hour, to take a group of friends into the very heart of darkness. Where the rule of law by necessity yields to the law of the jungle, and you’d better have a backup plan. A place where the smartest, the wisest, and he with the most toys not only doesn’t win, but is most apt to misunderstand the reason why. Gotta go deeper, back into our primordial past. A conjuring of sorts. An almost mystical era of instinct and gut feeling. Lewis might have stayed there, but a man’s got to pay the electric bill.
Still, what he doesn’t have to do is play it safe. Succumb to being overly cautious. Take the path of least resistance. Most of all, it means never having to buy insurance. “Insurance?”, he spits, “Shit…I never been insured in my life.” He continues. “I don’t believe in insurance.” And then the kicker: “There’s no risk.” No character was ever summed up so succinctly by a single line, and no line better captures the essence of a character’s real-life counterpart. In this case, Burt Reynolds. Before his anarchic Bandit consumed the box office, or the Cannonball Run movies enshrined goofing off as the ultimate fuck you to both Hollywood and the nation, his Lewis strapped on the only life vest doubling as high fashion and shot into the abyss as if an entire way of life was at stake. Because it was. By flooding the valley, we cut off that last, best hope of finding ourselves. Okay, so no one factored in a particularly emasculating rape. Or murder by an appropriately primitive bow and arrow. But if that’s what it takes to recapture the masculine spirit, so be it.
But lest we think Lewis has retreated too far into unthinking savagery, he channels an inner logic that trumps even the headiest member of his group. When calls are made to contact the police and do it all by the book, Lewis reminds them all that once the inquest is finished and the indictments set, they’ll have to face not an impartial jury, but the dead man’s entire fucking family. For all the talk of law and order, Lewis knows it still comes down to a feeling. Loyalty. “The law! Ha! The law! What law? Where’s the law, Drew? Huh?” Instead, we’ve got to play by the rules set by our immediate surroundings. Bury the body. Alert no one. Vigilante justice writ large, and we escape by the skin of our teeth. Lewis can sleep nights, murder or no. Because that hillbilly had it coming. For the others, it’s not so easy. They’ll sweat. Look over their shoulders. Cave and confess at some later date. Drew’s guilt is so overwhelming, in fact, he leaps overboard to his doom. A conscience? Ideally, yes, in calmer days, but not here. Not this time. It’s the one thing sure to sink the entire plan.
Later, as Lewis lay bleeding, consumed by pain, he cannot conceive of Drew’s weakness. “Drew was shot!”, he insists, failing to believe that a man would happily die for so ridiculous a belief. Self-slaughter, for killing a toothless rapist? Surrender to that, and we haven’t a chance. Drew’s way – the increasingly suicidal empathy now seen in the West – or Lewis’ camp, which calls ‘em as we see ‘em, and sees them all too clearly. When Lewis left our world, followed soon the real article, we left behind, perhaps forever, a force that kept us shackled to what made us great. On the edge, perched, scanning the horizon for an obstacle to be overcome. But as the waters rose in that Georgia wilderness, we got comfortable. Cozy. Doughy soft, excuses passing for wisdom. Sure, I’m the first one to turn on the air conditioning. And a river rafting excursion with friends? I’d rather by eviscerated at dawn. I’m very much part of the problem. But I’m also not so far gone that I can’t see Lewis out there in the mist, cackling at our retreat. We are the poorer for his absence.
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