Watching Movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The other night the XWB and I watched “Raiders of the Lost Ark” as part of my continuing program of going to Scarecrow and renting the next volume of some TV series, and some movie or another along with it. Both of which may be watched in Analytical Mode, though I haven't gotten anywhere near as analytical of Cowboy Bebop or the various movies we've watched as I did of Utena.

We'd both seen it before, of course. We were born in the 70s and raised male. Not having seen it would be amazing. But neither of us had watched it a zillion times. I think I'd only seen it once, probably on VHS or at a fourth-run theatre; I distinctly remember it being mentioned in a letter I got at summer camp as a movie my parents had seen and thought was probably too intense for my barely-ten-year-old self, so I know I didn't see it in its initial release.

I ate it up when I was a teen. It was super cool. It was probably one of the reasons I started affecting an increasingly-battered fedora for a while.

But now? I was most impressed by how little I cared about anything in the movie. Maybe this was partially because I vaguely remembered what was going to happen. But really, it was a movie so obsessed with the intricacies of its clever little plot, and its (wonderful) action sequences that it kinda forgot to really give us any reason to care about anyone. Dr. Jones is just running from one action set-piece to another for most of the movie. Except for the one part in the middle where he thinks Marion's been killed, and he sinks deep into an alcoholic fugue. That part was interesting. That part I completely forgot. But that's the part I was the most involved with when watching it as an adult; suddenly Indiana goes from being this action hero who laughs at danger to someone who's got a deep, deep well of misery inside that he can't cover right now, and he pretty clearly communicates that he really doesn't care if he lives or dies for a little while. Then he puts it away and goes off for more adventures, and Marion wasn't killed after all, and now they're both locked in a tomb filled with venomous snakes and and and *waves action figures furiously about while telling you about all the super cool heroic stuff Indiana did*.

The other thing that really struck me was how much it felt like it was five or six episodes of a serial pasted together. Which was pretty much what Spielberg and Lucas were trying to make, if I recall correctly; like Star Wars, Raiders is a shameless, lavish tribute to the cheesy action serials of the 50s that they grew up on. And a bit of a counter-reaction to all the artsy films of the 70s. Seen as that, the movie's lack of any inner life for its characters is not a flaw; it's exactly what it wanted to be. You see the last episode of one arc, followed by a four or five episode arc in its entirety.

Visually, it's impeccable. Everything is told clearly. There's some clever shots. There are never any shots that feel show-offy to me (though my threshold for that may be a lot higher than it would have been in the early 80s, after all the crazy CG I've seen). It is very clear and succinct visual storytelling. Admirably so, maybe even masterfully so, but the lack of any real emotional connection to the characters leaves me cold the same way Lucas' Star Wars prequels did. There's not much in the way of repeated imagery that gains significance, aside from the way the Nazis opening the Ark of the MacGuffin to only find sand deliberately echoes the way Indy sifts a little sand out of his bag before trying to swap it with an idol on a pressure plate in the opening sequence. His failure then is echoed by the seeming failure of the whole chase everyone's been on for this thing; it's just filled with sand… and then all hell breaks loose in a neat action scene that ends with this archaeological treasure being taken out of Indy's hands. By Evil Archaeologist in the opening sequence, by the US government in the ending.

And that's kind of interesting, now that I think about it. Despite the movie constantly telling us Indy is a super archaeologist hero, ultimately he kinda fails. He doesn't get the idol he's been chasing after for, oh, probably about 4-5 episodes before the start of the film. He doesn't get the ark he spends most of the film hunting. The most human moment he has is when he's failed to protect Marion. Whose arc of going from “someone Indy kinda took advantage of when she was the possibly-underage daughter of his old mentor” to “Indy's main squeeze” felt kinda creepy to me, to be honest. Indy as a failure speaks to me a lot more as a grownup who has doubts and past fuck-ups and has lost people she loved than it did to a teen with their life ahead of them.

I was kinda expecting it to be more problematic in terms of politics, really. But if you accept that Indy is basically a state-sanctioned graverobber then nothing else felt too terrible to me; the exotic locations were handled in a way that felt specific enough to me to not fall into total caricature. Also of course I may have been cutting it some slack for clearly being A Piece Of Pulp Trash and proud of it.

3/5, a solidly made goddamn piece of pulp trash that's proud of it. 5/5 if you're not in the mood for any fucking nuance and just wanna watch Harrison Ford get the shit kicked out of him while fighting with Nazis over stuff they both stole from the locals. It's really well-made but it just feels so empty somehow.