Blogical Conclusion

THEY DO MAKE ‘EM LIKE THEY USED TO

JUNE 8, 2008 - NOSTALGIA HAS A WAY – at once innocent, at once insidious – of mummifying our most cherished aspects of popular culture. That Duran Duran number, that Star Trek episode, or, more relevantly to this writing, those Indiana Jones adventures – our experiences of them are embalmed and locked up in vaults inside our heads, and we’ve thrown away the keys. And there they remain, frozen in time, untouched by outside air, by good sense (or, sometimes, by good taste even) – and that’s why, in our minds, we still see them as they were, the way they sounded and played when these memories were born.

But reality does not come with these rose tints. We remember the adventures of Indiana Jones as an unstoppable, white-knuckled thrill ride, but seen today – and despite the propulsive kinesis of John Williams’ score – they’re, at best, a gentle canter through a beloved theme park stuffed with familiar sights. The moviegoing culture has changed, the movies have changed, the audiences have changed – so the question about the intrepid archaeologist-adventurer’s fourth outing wasn’t just if it would be any good or even as good as the earlier ones, but whether the movie playing on screen would live up to the movies playing inside our heads.

And because Steven Spielberg opts for nostalgia over novelty, the answer is a thumping yes. The elegant, deliberately paced Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a steadfast anachronism in this ADD-CGI age – as if reiterating that in moviemaking, as in archaeology, old is, well, gold – and if that makes it nothing more than a gentle canter through a beloved theme park stuffed with familiar sights, that’s about all some of us senior citizens were looking for. (And let’s face it, some of us are senior citizens when it comes to the movies today. One look at a special-effects extravaganza based on some newfangled video game, or a gore fest that’s the acme of splatter technology, is enough to make you feel as old as… Harrison Ford.)

Crystal Skull is a wallow in pure nostalgia, and it’s not just about the characters. (There’s a touching nod to the demise of Henry Jones Sr. and Marcus Brody. “We seem to have reached the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away,” notes the Brody stand-in, played by Jim Broadbent with the exquisite befuddlement of a new recruit trying to fit into a long-standing platoon towards the end of a war.) Above all things, this film is suffused with a nostalgia for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Watch the “Ark” theme linger in the background when Indiana Jones is trapped amidst stacks and stacks of crates, and watch the Ark itself, as it’s revealed a minute later. Watch the return of Marion (the irrepressible Karen Allen, reprising her character from Raiders), watch her being gagged (just as she was in the earlier film), and watch her, once again, in a white dress by the end of the adventure. (And what a charming reuse of that “white dress” it is.)

I didn’t catch that many (or, indeed, any) specific references to Temple of Doom or Last Crusade. (Well, if you’re going to tell me that the relationship Ford shares with Shia LaBeouf mirrors the one he shared with Sean Connery in Last Crusade, then let me point out that Temple of Doom had its father-son equivalent too, with Indy and Short Round, just as Raiders itself noted that Marion’s dad, Abner Ravenwood, was like a father to Indy.) But there are nostalgic nods to the series in general – once again, we’re told that Dr. Jones doesn’t think very far ahead, that he makes it up as he goes; once again, Dr. Jones dismisses a legend as just a story. (“Belief, Dr. Jones, is a gift you hef yet to receif,” hisses a malevolent Russian scientist, played by a gloriously over-the-top Cate Blanchett.)

What’s not carried over from Raiders, however, is the portion of Indy’s character arc so memorably expressed in the scene where he discovers that Marion is still alive – tied up in a tent in the middle of the desert where the excavation for the Ark is underway. He’s so relieved, he kisses her – presumably the way he did many years ago, when she was young and he “should have known better;” do you know another “hero” tarred, even this lightly, by a paedophile’s brush? – and he’s about to untie her, when he realises that if she escapes, the bad guys will start combing the place for them.

Indy knows where the Ark is. He’s been to the map room, he’s put the head piece on the staff of Ra, and he’s determined the exact location of the sacred artifact. So, no, it won’t do to free Marion. The only thing that matters is the Ark. (Like son, like father, we find out in Last Crusade, when the Joneses make their escape from the Nazis and Indy decides to go after Brody, who needs to be rescued. But Jones Sr. commands Indy to head to Berlin, because, “the only thing that matters is the Grail.”)

But over Temple of Doom (except for a brief spell where he’s hypnotised into a bloodthirsty Thuggee) and Last Crusade, Indy got to be cuddlier – and if I’m somewhat disappointed that Crystal Skull does not reinstate that core of ruthlessness in its hero, I’m grateful that, in having him play his age, the crusty cuddliness is at least easier to take. Indy has mellowed now – with the years, and with Marion beside him. The film is set in 1957, and there’s a great laugh when Marion steers them through a particularly risky manoeuvre. “Don’t ever do that again,” Indy cries, and Marion mockingly replies, “Yes, dear,” mimicking a good fifties’ housewife. And right there, you get the feeling that she’ll tame Dr. Jones after all, that she’ll instill in him the most famously nostalgic of Spielbergian notions – that the only thing that matters is family.

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