“I'm
making this up as I go along.”
-Indiana
Jones
Here I
am, first movie in and already breaking my word. I had previously
said that the first film I would tackle would be Rio Bravo,
which turns out to not be the case. Elements beyond my control
brought Steven Spielberg's and George Lucas' 1981 bag of joy Raiders
of the Lost Ark to a theatre here in Winnipeg, and for the first
time ever (I'm not really counting the unfortunate Indiana Jones
and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) I got to watch Indy battle
the forces of Nazidom on the big screen. I, along with three other
souls, were transported back to a time when men solved their issues
with fists, ruggedness meant carrying a whip and wearing a fedora,
women are constantly in need of some rescuing (though thankfully
without the incessant screaming of Kate Capshaw as seen in Temple
of Doom) and God teaches the lesson of leaving things be by
melting peoples faces off.
It is
difficult to watch certain elements of Raiders of the Lost Ark
at this stage in my life. The gender politics are not stellar, though
Marion is one of the stronger female characters in such adventure
movies. There isn't so much a myth of redemptive violence as
wholesale support that killing the bad people for the right reasons
will make everything OK. Indy's constant catchphrase of, “It
belongs in a museum,” brings up some disturbing questions of
colonization and Eurocentrism. And the fact that all the bad guys
have an accent of some sort points to a certain level of xenophobia.
Though, in all fairness, one of the best characters, Sallah, is an
Arab from Cairo.
With
all this in mind I still count Raiders as one of my all time
favourite films. We should not ignore these issues, but for today I
will be. When creating the list I tried to not ignore my emotional
reactions to films, whatever they might be, and Raiders (along
with the other films in the series, save Crystal Skull) comes
with a profound sense of nostalgia.
I
distinctly remember my parents renting the VHS when I was a child,
likely far to young to be watching a movie with such a surprising
amount of grotesquerie on display. I was convinced that archeology
was the absolute coolest job ever, easily trumping scientist and
martial artist, my two previous coolest jobs ever.
I
remember receiving Temple of Doom for my birthday one year. I
was not allowed to watch certain heart extracting scenes so any time
I wanted to watch it a parent had to be present, who would tell me to
close my eyes and fast forward over the naughty bits.
I
remember being fascinated by the thick cloud of mist Allison Doody
falls through at the end of the Last Crusade. I wanted
desperately to have done that stunt, falling through an unknown space
to a crash mat just below.
More
than anything I wanted a whip.
These
were films I absorbed as a child, becoming part of my psyche and in
their way forming some of what I love in a film.
One of
Spielberg's and Lucas' great skills is the ability to create iconic
images. Indy is the platonic ideal of the adventuring grave robber.
The perfect combination of bravado, intelligence and ridiculousness.
Indy does not take himself too seriously so we do not hate him for
his arrogance, and his plans fail as often as they succeed. More than
this though are the sequences that have stayed in the cultural
consciousness. Boulders, bad dates, and being dragged behind trucks
are all images that people know today, even if they've never seen the
film. When I was young I was enraptured by these scenes, pulled into
their excitement. Now I am impressed by the skill behind them, how
effortlessly they seemed to print the form of Indiana Jones on the
minds of popular culture.
The
irony is that the film was originally conceived as a homage to the
movie serials of the 1930's and 1940's and has completely eclipsed
those influences and the adventure movie prototype. I have never seen
any of the serials that Indy was based on, and to my 9 year mind,
they did not exist. Raiders was not homage, it was a new idea.
In all the bitching and moaning about remakes, reboots and prequels
many of us forget that some of our favourite films are barely
original rifts on existing properties. Art is often self-reflecting,
and film as a medium has embraced this wholeheartedly.
However,
if Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is any indication this self
reflecting has it's limits. Crystial Skull is mostly a homage
to previous Indiana Jones movies. It collapses on it's homage to a
homage, creating a pretty surface with very little core. What is
amazing about Raiders is that it did contain a core, one of
pure jubilation. It feels like watching the result of ten year old
Spielberg and Lucas telling their families about their favourite
scenes from the Saturday matinee they just came back from. It is
excitement through and through, as it was created to be.
Raiders
fist squarely in the, “10 problems every minute” vein of films
common today. Some have pointed to Raiders as helping to usher
in this structure as the standard format for modern blockbusters. I
do not have the film knowledge to say how prominent this structure
was in films before Raiders, but I first really noticed it
while re watching Back to the Future last year. Marty McFly
did have one grand problem to be overcome, namely getting back to the
future, but within that were a hundred little problems. Every time he
bested one of these obstacles another would appear, and another and
another to what almost felt like infinity. The finale of Doc brown
attempting to attach a chord to a clock tower about to be hit by
lightening while Marty tries to get his parents to kiss so he won't
be erased from existence is worthy of Tati in the absurdity of it's
level of catastrophe. Raiders is of a similar ilk, though
tends to get the balance better.
Raiders
comes by this structure honestly as the homage that it is. I know
little of the adventure serials of the 30's and 40's but I do know
that they always ended on a cliffhanger. The heroes would always be
put in some perilous, seemingly hopeless situation only to escape the
next week. Raiders apes this format by structuring it's story
as small, 10 minute chunks of film, each with it's own arch that
services the larger story. When done well (Raiders, The
Avengers, Time Bandits) this results in an exciting,
propulsive film. When done poorly (Pirates of the Caribbean
sequels, Transformers films, anything by Paul W.S.
Anderson) it's exhausting, though often fascinating in it's
spectacle.
In the
end my choice of this film is the result of the shear amount of hours
I spent in my backyard trying to swing from tree branch to trampoline
on a piece of rope I desperately wished was a whip.
