Sometimes for a movie to be considered “great” it doesn’t have to have a lot of depth, character development or even originality. In many cases, a movie’s worth is determined almost solely by how much it has become a part of culture.
Though I had never seen “Raiders of the Lost Ark” at the start of this project, I knew plenty of things about Indiana Jones simply due to the fact that I have a pulse and live in America. I knew that whenever someone puts on a goofy hat you are supposed to call them Indy, I knew that if you scream like a bitch when someone waves a snake in your direction chances are they will laugh cynically and refer to you as Dr. Jones and I knew that if a very, very rotund person chases you that you are supposed to hum “Du du dunt du, dunt dun du.” What I didn’t know though was that the character of Indiana Jones is nothing like the stereotypical action hero (an assumption that prevented me from ever wanting to watch these films before).
I think in many ways “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was attempting to do the same thing that Dan Brown did with “The DaVinci Code” but to a much more parent-friendly extent. The use of religious iconography in a more modern scholastic/archeological context lends itself to a scenario that is easy to create well-defined “good guys” and “bad guys” with little-to-no depth to the characters. Make the ones who have bad intentions with said religious artifacts Nazis and you don’t even have to try!
Of course one conflict that arises from using a tool like this is the fact that you have to either believe the stories that come along with these holy relics or you have to be able to suspend disbelief long enough to buy into the significance. Fortunately this film is able to do so without forcing faith down the viewer’s throat. They even acknowledge (albeit safely and non-offensively)the possibility that these religious relics may not be all they are cracked up to be when Indiana Jones describes the Ark of the Covenant by saying “if you believe in that sort of thing” which clearly he does otherwise he wouldn’t spend the duration of the film looking for it.
In many cases when blogging about these films I have had to devote equal time to just describing the plot as I have to analysis of the movie itself. In the case of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” I can do so in just one paragraph. And I mean I can do it fairly, not just bashing or over-simplifying it. Watch:
Harrison Ford plays Indiana Jones, an archeologist/college professor who specializes in ancient artifacts. He travels the world looking for rare and often mythological trinkets and fights off bad people along the way. When he is presented with a chance to locate the Ark of the Covenant, described in the Bible, he leaps at the opportunity. However, the Nazis want it too and have the same leads as him so it becomes a race against time and superiority in numbers. All the while he rekindles a relationship with an ex-flame, Marion Ravenwood (played by Karen Allen) and all kinds of awkwardness and hilarity ensues. That pretty much covers it, right?
As I was saying before, one of the most endearing things about the Indiana Jones character is that, despite all his adventures and daring escapes, he is very much the antithesis of a traditional “hero.” He is kind of a wimp, resorts to dirty fighting up to and including the nastiest trick in the book, throwing dirt in his opponent’s eyes and usually falls ass-backwards into his solutions rather than creating them. The unlikely, scholarly hero paradigm not only makes Jones a more “everyman” kind of character but also makes for more exciting action sequences as he is usually less imposing than the people he is matched up against.
This type of character also lends itself even further to my earlier Dan Brown comparison. Robert Langdon is very much a more refined version of Indiana Jones. Be honest, if I were to give a synopsis of this film without you already knowing what it was, and I simply said:
“A college professor uses brains over brawn in his mission to find a long-lost holy icon. Despite his skepticism he embarks on his quest aided by an older and wiser mentor and a strong, independent career woman trying to outrun her past. He finds himself on a continent far from home desperate to locate his prize before the evil cult disguised as a righteous band of religious fundamentalists does.”
would you not think I was talking about “The DaVinci Code?” Not that I am saying if there had been no “Raiders of the Lost Ark” then there would be no “DaVinci Code” because that would be more absurd than Karen Allen’s acting, but I am saying that this film was definitely one of the first to tread such unorthodox waters.
"Take this... wave it at anything that slithers" (Indiana Jones, "Raiders of the Lost Ark")
I also have to believe the special effects in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” played a large part in the acclaim this film received. There is a scene where the Ark is being dug up that begins with a breathtaking desert sunset, (an anomaly by itself simply because desert-like settings are typically associated with searing and suffering) and as the excavation crew gets closer the weather turns harsh and frightening. The storm used to depict this eerie foreshadowing of divine vengeance looks better onscreen than many of the weather phenomena shown in movies from the Post-CGI age, namely “The Day After Tomorrow” and “2012.” When the box containing the Ark is opened the specters that fly out to unleash the Wrath of God on the evildoers are reminiscent of The Dead Army in “The Return of the King,” again a movie that benefitted from enhanced technology but still falls back on principles used in “Raiders” years before.
Other than the almost total lack of snooty things I was trained to look for in movies in all the Film Study classes I have taken (unique camera angles, creative placement of light and dark, plot devices or props being used as a metaphor for greater purpose etc) I can find no real flaws with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” other than the Marion Ravenwood character. For a woman whose first screen time in the movie shows her handily out-drinking a burly man and then almost kicking Harrison Ford’s ass a few minutes later, she becomes relegated to the Damsel in Distress role. It would have been nice if at least ONE of her and Indy’s escapes were managed by her. I know this may have lent itself to a certain degree of unbelievability given the fact that Karen Allen is 100 pounds soaking wet and not very intimidating, but come on, we are talking about a movie where a middle-aged schoolteacher fights off the entire Third Reich with a bullwhip!
A few blogs back (“Tootsie”) I mentioned the subtle impotence of simple enjoyment being a factor in a movie’s overall greatness and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” certainly falls into that category. I don’t have to use my brain too much to enjoy this film but it is still a little too lofty and convoluted for the type of person who would enjoy a film like “Delta Farce” or pretty much any movie based on an SNL skit.
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