Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
6/6/10
If
adventure had a name, it would be Indiana Jones. If adventure had
a theme song, it would go like this: “Duh-duh-DUH-duh, Duh-duh-duh, Duh-duh-DUH-duh,
duh-duh-duh-duh-duh”. It's difficult, as we close in on the 30th
anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark, to remember that the movies
chugged along for a good 80 years WITHOUT Harrison Ford's iconic whip-toting
archaeologist of action, because he's so utterly the embodiment of a certain
kind of escapist adventure that it feels now like he invented it rather
than the other way around. Like George Lucas' other triumphant franchise,
Raiders
was conceived as an homage to the serialized B-movie entertainment that
flourished in the 40's and early 50's. The thing is, what Lucas lacked
in originality, he more than made up for in execution, and Raiders of
the Lost Ark, directed by his legendary pal Steven Spielberg, wasn't
just the most expensive self-contained serial ever made, it's still the
only one you really need.
In
1936, Fedora-clad adventurer “Indiana” Jones (Harrison Ford) treks through
the South American jungle with an exploration party in search of a valuable
statue. Natives, turncoats and hidden traps pick them off one at
a time until it's just Indy and Satipo (Alfred Molina). A plan to
snatch the Idol from its' perch without triggering the security system
doesn't work, and soon the cave is collapsing around them, his friend betrays
him and a giant boulder is chasing Jones toward the exit. After all
this, Dr. Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman) simply waits there with an army of
locals to snatch the statue from Indy's hands. Back home in the states,
we meet the other side of Jones, Dr. Henry Jones to be precise, teaching
a college archeology class. His friend and boss Dr. Marcus Brody
(Denholm Elliott) asks him to come speak to some government men who've
come to see them. They ask him about the Lost Ark of the Covenant,
the chest in which the Israelites carried the pieces of Moses' shattered
Commandment tablets. It's said to have the kind of power that can
turn the tide of wars, and the Nazis, gearing up for their own war against
the world, are scouring the Earth for it and other religious artifacts.
They ask Dr. Jones to find the Ark before the Third Reich can. The
trail leads to Nepal, where his old flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen)
knows the location of a pivotal clue, then to Cairo, where the Nazis are
digging for the Ark. With his old friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies),
Indy gets a head start, but again Belloq is there to cut him off.
With both the Ark and Marion in Nazi hands, Indiana Jones might need divine
intervention to save an archaeological treasure... and the world.
Steven
Spielberg has worked in so many genres over so many decades and made so
many more movies than most major directors of his era that inevitably each
of us will view about half his output as either throwaway or misguided.
But when he's at the peak of his powers, there's an iconic ease to his
storytelling, and Raiders of the Lost Ark may be the loosest, most
smoothly flowing action extravaganza ever filmed. The movie rarely
stops for a breath, but also never seems rushed or to be straining for
effect. The stunts and setpieces are legend: Indy running from
the boulder, somehow hanging onto a truck that drags him beneath it and
choosing the simplest way to dispatch that showy Cairo Swordsman.
And don't even get me started on that Citizen Kane-inspired final
shot. And they all still pack a punch nearly 30 years later.
Just
as important is the dorky vulnerability that makes Indiana Jones just as
much of a guy as a hero. He leads a double life as a bespeckled academic,
is afraid of snakes, and falls asleep just when his big love scene is about
to start. What made Ford a superstar is his ability to play his masculinity
straight and for laughs simultaneously, and he never did it better than
here in his signature role. Allen's Marion is his perfect love interest,
more comfortable drinking people under tables and gleefully blasting away
at Nazis with a machine gun than going through the obligatory paces of
being “the girlfriend”. Freeman actually makes the collaborating
archaeologist Belloq more three-dimensional than you might expect, not
that it changes his fate. And Rhys-Davies effortlessly summons years
of common ground with Ford's Indy, so much so that we always find ourselves
asking “Where's Sallah?” when he's absent from two of the three sequels.
Lawrence
Kasden was the poet of Lucasfilm from 1980-83, when he co-wrote the last
two chapters of the original Star Wars trilogy and the first of
the Indiana Jones saga, bringing the way with dialog he'd later put to
work as a dramatic filmmaker to these fantasy worlds. And Raiders
may
be the pinnacle of his career, jam-packed with quotable lines and telling
a tale (Lucas and Philip Kaufman share story credit) that amazingly satisfies
despite the fact that its outcome would be the same even if Indiana Jones
had never gotten within a mile of the Ark of the Covenant. That positively
Biblical climax comes completely out of left field yet makes total sense:
here we were thinking we needed a whip-toting adventurer to keep the power
of God out of the hands of the Nazis when, you know, God might have a thing
or two to say about it as well.
Those
melting, shriveling and exploding faces show their age (though for their
sheer audacity remain pretty cool), but most of Raiders' other effects
are still looking pretty spiffy. John Williams iconic score can take
pride in not sounding like it belongs in a museum despite decades of repetition,
and the art department created a spot-on Hollywood 40's look that keeps
the movie from ever seeming like a relic. In some ways, it even improves
on how the same production might look today, using real stuntmen to get
the impact of being dragged behind a truck in a way that the modern use
of CGI avatars and green screen rarely matches. While Lucas spends
far too much of his time trying to keep his Star Wars saga on the
cutting edge technologically with CGI (and now 3D) retrofits, Raiders
takes care of itself simply by having been built to last. Pity he
felt the need to slap the words “Indiana Jones and the...” at the beginning
of the title on DVD, but he IS George Lucas, and there are limits to his
restraint.
Between
them, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg more or less invented the modern
summer movie, and their styles have never blended more smoothly than this
first time they worked together (fun fact: though he's not credited
other than with a “Special Thanks”, Lucas supervised the post-production
of Jurassic Park so Spielberg could move on to direct Schindler's
List). Raiders of the Lost Ark is best remembered because
it gave us Indiana Jones, who rose above the occasionally spotty material
in three sequels of wildly varying quality. But here, the material
is every bit as good as he is, and the result is one of the all-time movie
classics. |
