More fun than a monkey with a bad date: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
It would be churlish to dismiss “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” as a mere trifle. It’s way fun, for sure, but it’s so much more. Of course, it’s Lucas and Spielberg’s love letter to the serials of the 30s and 40s, but if it were only that, it wouldn’t have the staying power it has. That staying power doesn’t come just from the enthusiasm of two nostalgic men-children; it comes from a constellation of immense talent and I don’t think it’s too much to say, genius.
The introduction of Indy isn’t melodramatic; it’s straight up iconic. Has any other modern film star been repeatedly “iconic” as Harrison Ford? Not just Indiana Jones and Han Solo, but the way he’s carried himself through his career; even later Ford seems so much better than the roles he’s been in (even, that word again, in “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull” where I really can’t fault Ford so much as Spielberg and Lucas for pulling a third rate knock-off story out of their asses and frankly, blowing a lot of goodwill. Had it not been for Ford and Karen Allen, I wouldn’t have made it through that farce.)
Back to the film at hand: there isn’t a sloppy moment and to this day, it seems much shorter than its almost two-hour running time. Watching it on the wide screen at the Windsor Theater in Houston was a cinematic joy of the highest caliber. It was here, too, that Spielberg began to tighten his visual grammar. He always had a strong sense of composition and how to set up a shot and frame a scene. But with “Raiders”, the sweep and scope and of each shot is epic.
More than that, though, or as much, are the characters and the backdrop of the Second World War. The weight of the MacGuffin here - the Ark of the Covenant, itself - added to the World War II scenario adds an emotional depth to what, in other hands, would be pretty much B-movie foolishness and folderol. My goodness, though; each scene is beautifully set up, and the dialogue is Mankiewicz-worthy.
There is a freshness to Spielberg here that has become so signature as to almost be cliché. As homage-filled as this movie is, there’s a love and spirit throughout this film that raises it to a place of true originality.
How to break it down? Do we start with the homage, do we trace each point of origin for each shot? Do we find comparisons with every director from Michael Curtiz to William Witney? Or should we review the history of the adventure film in all its dimensions from those serials to more serious fare like “Casablanca” and “Lawrence of Arabia”?
Or do we look at the evolution of rascals and scamps like Indy and Sallah, villains like Belloq and Toht, and romance in the cinema? Harrison Ford has never been so ridiculously charming in a woman’s company as here (see Postscript). Not even with Fisher in “Star Wars”. Much of that could be attributed to Karen Allen, whose charisma and toughness matches Ford’s. If ever there was a match made in movie heaven, Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood would be it.
What of the double-crosses? Right down to the monkey (I never trusted that little son of a bitch). Need I go on? Nyah, probably not. My guess is that this is one of those “everyone has seen it” movies that doesn’t require the kind of analysis I feel it deserves but that I’m extremely ill-equipped to execute. However, that never stopped me before.
Watch Your Grammar
Who would be a better pair to bring this film into the world? The two greatest film students this side of Scorsese (some might say Tarantino, but Tarantino misses gravitas on a regular basis that Spielberg in his less-cloying instances can evoke with ease.) Admittedly, Lucas is not the director that Spielberg is, but he’s a heck of an ideas man. Between the two of them, I can’t think of anyone else capable of shepherding this to fruition.
And let’s not forget Lawrence Kasdan and Philip Kaufman. With credits between the two of them like “The Right Stuff”, “Henry and June”, “The Big Chill”, “Body Heat”, and, oh, right, “The Empire Strikes Back”, it’s little wonder that Kaufman and Lucas could pull together an okay story and Kasdan might be able to produce a reasonable script.
So here, then, all the pieces come together. I’m missing something, though. John Williams’ score. More and more, the bombast of his compositions has distracted from a lot of the films he’s written for. At his best, he’s a hell of a composer, and frequently, especially with his collaborations with Spielberg and Lucas, he’s met his perfect visual matches.
As much as this is an ode to the works of an earlier era, it has an almost timeless flavor. Watching the clouds swirl overhead as Sallah and Indy uncover the temple of Ra (if that’s what it is), I am reminded of the first time I saw "Close Encounters of the Third Kind”; Spielberg took De Mille’s clouds from, say, the 1950s “The Ten Commandments” and took them to Michaelangelesque heights.
Each shot is framed with a dynamic sense of moving from one scene to another; while you might see Indy in center frame at a mid-shot, there is a felt sense that this is going to shift into a dynamic play of sequences that will erase that momentary composition and replace it with another, equally as gorgeous. Michael Kahn’s editing (and for that matter, Lucas’s uncredited editing) is remarkable fluid and economical. No shot is wasted, no moment lingers too long or overstays its welcome, but I disagree with Pauline Kael who - if I remember correctly - dismissed “Raiders” as too kinetic and too much of a trifle. I always found that review disappointing because Kael seemed to have a good sense of B-movie fun.
Anyway, Spielberg uses a barrage of approaches to advance the story while at the same time trusting the actors to bring dialog to life that nowadays would be turgid in the mouths of lesser talent or ironic in a different context (except for something masterful like “The Purple Rose of Cairo”). And of course, he ratchets up the action cut by cut. The scene where Indy is boxing the massive bald Nazi escalates beat by beat.
Marion takes out the pilot, gets herself locked in the cockpit as the plane begins to taxi in a circle. Then she wipes out a truckload of Nazis, the plane wing slices open a gas tank, which of course, is in danger of being set aflame. You would think that with the off-camera decapitation of baldy, you couldn’t get any more frenzied, but of course, Indy’s going to pursue the truck that the Ark has been loaded on, and so on.
Again, what makes this work is the sheer sense of fun married with a sharp understanding of filmic grammar. We have no doubt that Jones will make it, but the thrill is in the journey. Plus, it’s fucking funny.
How’s Your Command of the Language?
Seriously, “I’m going after that truck.” “How?” “I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go along.”
“You want to talk to God? Let’s go see him together; I’ve got nothing better to do.”
...and this:
Indy to Marion: “Do we need the monkey?” Marion: “I’m surprised at you. Talking that way about our baby. He’s got your looks, too.” Indy: “And your brains.”
Aside from the chuckles, the hard-boiled dialogue throughout actually sounds like it’s out of a prime Bogart-Bacall piece. Of course, it helps if the lines are delivered with conviction and between Ford, Allen, Rhys-Davies, Paul Freeman, right on down to the bit players, there’s a startling sense of commitment to the script. They sell these characters thoroughly and with more heart than more so-called “serious cinema” often has.
To say the dialogue crackles is an understatement; on its own, it is - as Noel Coward might say - “whackingly good.” The added dimension comes, naturally, with the visuals and the music.
ACTING!
What to make of the performances? Well, shit. Everyone brought their A-game. The scene where Jones threatens to blow up the ark is a terrific example of what happens when you let actors do their job. Paul Freeman’s Belloq’s challenge to Indy is telling. He does know his protagonist well; throughout the film, Belloq has pricked Jones’s conscience repeatedly by pointing out their similarities and uses this to excellent effect in this scene. As for Ford, we see how compelling he can be as he realizes that as much as he loves Marion, he does want to see what transpires.
I could pick any number of scenes and each one succeeds on the performances. For an ode to B-movies, this is as A-List as you get.
Face-Melting Fun
As for the dénouement, it doesn’t get much better than this. Man, watching Nazis melt in fire is every bit the wet dream Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” was in a fraction of the time. The special effects are dated, but no less riveting. It’s amazing how fast the end comes.
The End
Oh, yes. Back in Washington, Indy and Brody are handsomely compensated but where is the ark? Being held, and studied by “top men.” Who are they? “Top. Men.” Cut to the warehouse.
We Never
Seem to Get a Break, Do We?
Sigh. I hated, hated, hated the follow-up “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” for one very, loud specific reason: Mrs. Kate Capshaw Spielberg. Compared to Karen Allen’s Marion, Capshaw singlehandedly destroyed any goodwill I might have had for that entry into the series. Only because Ford still looked like he was enjoying himself do I prefer it to “The Crystal Skull.”
Why couldn’t they have built the series around both Jones and Marion along the lines of Nick and Nora Charles? Probably because Karen Allen left the industry soon thereafter, I would imagine (or like to imagine; I don’t know if Spielberg, Lucas, et al ever had that in mind, but I’d like to think they did.) Right up to the end, Ford and Allen are luminous. It’s hard to recall just how much star power he had at the time. It’s also difficult to recall how much he seemed to really like making movies.
At the end of the day, this is one of the most satisfying movies ever made. It’s not a masterpiece like “Jaws” but it shows an ease of mastery that’s remarkable in a young director. By this point, Spielberg was exercising a sureness of the medium that would define how movies were made for the ensuing decades. By 1981, when “Raiders” was released, the landscape had shifted dramatically from the 70s. On the balance, perhaps it was inevitable.
Even auteurs like Scorsese and Coppola were going larger. “New York, New York” came out in 1977 and was of a considerably larger scope than anything Scorsese had done before. It’s still an intimate, harrowing film, but it’s...bigger. Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” was likewise more bombastic than the Godfather duo. It’s arguable that even Woody Allen was starting to feel like stretching with “Stardust Memories” (one could say that the arrival of aliens in that movie was a direct response to the “Star Wars”/”Close Encounters” phenomena.)
With the arrival of Lucas and Spielberg on the filmic canvas, we saw the rise of the blockbuster as a genre for good and ill. At its best, a big, splashy film can be not only great fun, but have a heart and soul to match its ambition. We see what happens at the worst, but this particular example before us is very, very far from that.
Post-Script…
Harrison Ford has one major flaw as a leading man. There are times when he looks like he’s in pain when it comes to romance. The exceptions are here and in the Star Wars trilogy (you know, the real one), but when he’s in a more conventionally dramatic context, it’s awfully difficult to take him seriously as a romantic lead. The only time this worked for me was “Witness” when he and Kelly McGillis were struggling with a relationship that could never be. It’s a poignant element in a film that is chock full of humanity and tragedy. Ford’s scenes with McGillis have a life to them that I don’t recall seeing elsewhere.
And no: not
“Blade Runner”, either.
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