The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 48 Days to go: 34
Movie #392: Raiders of the Lost Ark
When I was a kid, this movie was just called Raiders of the Lost Ark (and that’s what IMDb still calls it, if we’re keeping score) but the packaging and disc menu titles have all been changed to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark because apparently we as a society can’t just leave well enough alone.
This was my mother’s favorite movie when I was very young. Or at least, that was my impression of things. Whether or not you choose to believe a kindergartener really understands her mother is up to you, but I definitely have a half-remembered impression of her being really excited about it.
For me, Raiders of the Lost Ark is kind of rough around the edges and wet behind the ears, like it’s still finding its footing in the action-adventure world. Not that there’s not a plethora of both action and adventure in the film, it’s just that it’s a little choppier than its sequels — it’s easily identifiable as the first run. It’s not bad at all — it’s GREAT — but that choppiness is perhaps why I’ve seen it the fewest times (not including Crystal Skull, which is awful and doesn’t count).
Oddly enough, I’ve seen the stunt performances from Raiders done live, at whatever Disney World is calling their movie studio theme park these days, more times than I’ve seen the actual film. They do the iconic boulder scene, the marketplace fight where Marion (Karen Allen) is taken, and the scene with the Nazi plane. It’s pretty great if you’ve never been, or if you’ve never indulged in that particular show. Honestly, if they had a live face-melting performance it would probably sate my desire to see the film entirely. But they don’t, so I still come to the film now and then.
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is not, to my knowledge, a typical archeologist, though he probably single-handedly sent thousands of kids to college as archeology majors for a decade, at least. We meet him first in the Peruvian mountains (the fading of the Paramount logo into a mountain in the film’s setting is one of my favorite gimmicks of the series, because it’s such a simple, clever thing), where he’s besting a number of deadly puzzles in order to retrieve a golden idol from some sort of ancient booby-trapped tomb. He does all the work, gets betrayed by his friend and assistant Satipo (Alfred Molina), still manages to escape the tomb with the idol, and winds up with it stolen from him by his nemesis Belloq (Paul Freeman) anyway. He returns to his more sedate existence as a professor (where literally the only other women in the movie are simpering idiots writing love notes on their eyelids in the hopes of winning Dr. Jones over), and is informed by his colleague Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) of efforts by the Nazis to uncover the Ark of the Covenant, which is apparently a pretty big deal in biblical lore.
So Indy dons his leather jacket, his fedora and his whip again and heads to Nepal to find a medallion from Marion’s father. Only her father is dead and she hates Indy for screwing her and then ditching her, and frankly I’m on your side, Marion. I don’t care how good-looking he is. It’s no excuse. But the characterization of Indy is of course as a charming, intelligent rogue. He’s a ladies’ man, sure, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. He’s a fantasy of male and female legend, a romantic hero of the highest order (as long as you don’t mind him leaving the moment the next adventure calls, but we won’t focus on that part). Brave and daring with a weathered look and a knowing smirk sexy enough to melt the hearts of millions, Indiana Jones was a hero for the ages.
And the adventure he and Marion go on is pretty exciting too. Well, mostly. She gets kidnapped by Belloq multiple times so he can dress her up and leer at her (best case scenario, that’s all it is), while Indy fights off every kind of hoodlum imaginable, travels half the world trying to track down the Nazis and the Ark, and once again does all the work of finding the thing before Belloq steals it out from under him and the Nazis throw Marion into the pit of snakes Jones has been in all this time. (“It had to be snakes.”) That’s not going to stop Indiana Jones, though. He and Marion escape, blow up a plane, steal the Ark back and try to take it away on a ship, only to have it (and Marion, sigh) stolen away again. (It’s a little repetitive, this movie.) Luckily, though, Indy gets himself kidnapped next so he can instruct Marion not to look at the Ark when the Nazis open it. It’s like somehow he intuited it would melt all the eyeballs exposed to it!
I give Raiders of the Lost Ark a bit of a hard time, but I really do like it a lot. That sweeping score, that heroic theme, and a man whose greatest traits are his intelligence and his nerve. Sure, he’s about to ditch Marion AGAIN (I mean, I assume, eventually. He isn’t seeing her anymore by the time of his next adventure at any rate), but I have a feeling Marion can take care of her damn self. If all else fails, anyway, she can at the very least drink everyone under the table. That’s a pretty important life skill.
Up next: A prequel that launched a thousand PG-13s!
Viable Option 