August Archaeology: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

With the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark this year, the release of the 4K box set (finally!), and the franchise’s omnipresence on Showtime the past few weeks, The Cinema King has come down with a bad case of Indy Fever. Having already reviewed the films some time ago, let’s try something a little different this month. In the tradition of the “Grand Marvel Rewatch,” let’s dig around the Indiana Jones franchise and see what comes up.

 

First up, from 1981, it’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is tasked with finding the fabled Ark of the Covenant, a biblical artifact of unspeakable power, before the Nazis unearth it. Indy enlists the help of former flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), and the race is on across continents as old rival René Belloq (Paul Freeman) dogs Indy’s every move.

1. The music. You don’t need me to tell you that John Williams is the greatest film composer of all time. Just listen to the iconic and unforgettable “Raiders March,” thrill to the spectral and mystic “Miracle of the Ark,” and swoon to “Marion’s Theme.” Williams famously drafted two separate themes for Indiana Jones, uniting them both at the suggestion of director Steven Spielberg. Yet the two themes gel so well together, melding the triumphant march with a sense of the hard work it takes to get there. Each musical motif swirls into the film as though Williams is speaking a language all his own, commenting on the plot and driving us furiously into the action.
2. Speaking of the action… I can’t count how many times I’ve seen Raiders, but it’s tremendously exciting every time. From the pulse-pounding opener, which puts one very much in mind of a James Bond pre-credits sequence, through the climactic desert chase, Raiders gets the blood pumping. The best part about the action is how often it’s used to develop and humanize the characters, as when a tired Indy laconically guns down an overeager swordsman. Ditto for the small beats where Indy catches himself enjoying the violence, only to wince and remember that he’s been shot in the arm. Raiders practically reinvented blockbuster movie pacing, and it’s not hard to tell why.
3. What a world! The world-building in Raiders makes writing look easy; I should only hope to write a story this good. The film effortlessly introduces Indiana Jones as a superheroic archaeologist and a world-renowned scholar, and it gives him such a richly textured background filled with fascinating characters who have their own complicated history with Dr. Jones. When we meet Marion or Belloq or Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), we can tell immediately how they know Indy, what each thinks of the other, and what might happen next time they’re in a room together. Moreover, Spielberg deftly introduces the Ark into the film’s world through sophisticated lighting tricks and audio cues (like soft winds or, yes, Williams’s score). It’s an overall unified narrative where no piece is wasted – smart filmmaking at its smartest.
4. Is this the best supporting cast of all time? Harrison Ford rightly takes up a lot of oxygen when we talk about great performances in Raiders, but everyone else nails their roles. Karen Allen is superb in all the moments where she refuses to be the damsel in distress, and it’s only too bad that she wasn’t in more Indy films (or, put another way, that there weren’t more Indy films for her to join). Meanwhile, Paul Freeman dials up the smug smarm of the enemy archaeologist Belloq, a walking moral compromise; he sells the competitive rivalry with Indy almost immediately. Then there’s the stalwart John Rhys-Davies and Denholm Elliott, about whom I’ll say more in two weeks. (So to answer my question, I’m sure I’m forgetting another movie, but Raiders has to be in the conversation somewhere.)
5. The formative years. My dad brought home a copy of Raiders on VHS back during a McDonald’s promo circa 1991, and the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Raiders was a seminal moment in my moviegoing career. For my money, it’s everything a movie should be – a brisk adventure that puts well-crafted characters in impossible situations with nothing less than the fate of the universe at stake. It’s also a period piece, which helps explain my obsession with movies like The Rocketeer and The Mummy. It’s unlikely I saw this before Star Wars, but it’s possible; either way, it set a high bar for every subsequent movie to come. You don’t get on the Personal Canon any other way.

What more can one say about one of the greatest movies ever made? Sound off in the comments, and tell me your favorite part of Raiders of the Lost Ark. We’ll be back next week – back in time, that is – with the prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. 

Monday at the Movies - December 31, 2012

Welcome to Week Forty-Five of “Monday at the Movies,” the final installment for 2012 (and, I think, also the final numbered installment).  We close the year with another arbitrary theme, movies that start with the word “The.”

The Debt (2011) – The Debt barely got any play when it came out under the radar last year, which is both a surprise and a shame, because there’s enough A-list material here – done successfully, to boot – to entertain most audiences.  Parallel narratives reveal what really happened when three Mossad agents (Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas) pursued a fugitive Nazi official (Jesper Christensen) and how the experience affected them later in life.  The older agents are portrayed by “big names” – Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds, and Tom Wilkinson – all of whom turn in their usual exceptional work; Mirren and Wilkinson find themselves at moral odds over the truth of their experience, with Wilkinson’s determination matching Mirren’s internal and external scars.  But it’s Chastain who gives the best performance; granted, she gets the lion’s share of the film as the younger Rachel, but her work in The Debt proves why she’s a rising star in Hollywood.  She is tough and vulnerable, holding her own against Christensen’s Dr. Vogel (who’s the smarmiest Nazi this side of Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List) as a proper action heroine while also allowing the audience to see just how traumatic her encounter is.  It’s an interesting companion piece to Munich, but director John Madden wisely avoids the preachy moralizing Spielberg deployed in his 2005 Mossad movie (which, coincidentally, also co-starred Hinds).  It’s hard to believe this is the same director behind Shakespeare in Love and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, since The Debt is more intense and more severely compelling than those two (not to denigrate either, of course), smartly playing on the relationship of past to present while brilliantly leading the audience to several premature conclusions.  In short, The Debt is overwhelmingly underrated.

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) – After 12 Angry Men, I’ll follow Henry Fonda into any movie, particularly with the expectation that he’ll be playing a character of similar moral fiber (Juror #8 is, after all, one of cinema’s best good guys) – even if I’m not the world’s biggest devotee of westerns.  The Ox-Bow Incident, regarded as a classic, stars Fonda as a drifter suspected of rustling before he gets enfolded into a lynch mob in pursuit of a trio of suspected murderers.  The “plausible doubt” element (familiar to us 12 Angry Men fans) is of course the central conceit of the film, as is an interrogation of the validity of vigilante justice (familiar to us Batman fans).  My father rightly pointed out that the film feels a bit like a Twilight Zone episode, and I think he’s onto something; the film is sans the supernatural, but it includes the morality play aspect and the simplistic cinematography, as well as the cast of character actors in smaller roles.  What’s disappointing is that the film feels a bit like a 22-minute story stretched into 75 minutes, repetitive at times and unfulfilling in others (as in a hasty subplot involving Fonda’s sweetheart).  Perhaps worse, Fonda is criminally underused, likely due to the size of the large supporting cast.  It’s not that the movie is bad – it just isn’t great.  And it suffers by the unfair comparison to 12 Angry Men (which I contend is a perfect film) that I held in my head the whole time I was watching The Ox-Bow Incident.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Happy New Year, loyal readers! 

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

It's not spoiling anything to reveal that Quentin Tarantino's most recent film, Inglourious Basterds [sic], closes with one character remarking to another, "I think this just might be my masterpiece." The film is punctuated with moments like this, when one character says to another (as Hitler to Goebbels, for another example), that the other has just achieved his crowning glory. While I'm not convinced that Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino's magnum opus (it's tough to top Pulp Fiction, for my money), it does represent a return to form after indulgent experiments like Kill Bill and Death Proof.

Inglourious Basterds is, per Tarantino's description, a spaghetti western with World War II imagery, with the story divided into five semi-standalone chapters, each revolving around one set of character interactions. The film follows, separately, a ragtag team of Jewish-American soldiers scalping Nazis on the orders of their quirky Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, channelling Foghorn Leghorn); Jewish fugitive Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), who plans to use her movie theater to kill Nazis during the premiere of war hero Fredrick Zoller's (Daniel Brühl) biopic; British Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), commissioned by Winston Churchill to aid German actress-turned-secret-agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) in an attempt to blow up the Nazi premiere, ignorant of Shosanna's plot; and SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, in a performance well-deserving of its Supporting Actor Oscar), the ranking Nazi official standing between Hitler himself and all these plots, which converge in a stellar finale that's as fun as it is fantastic.


I've voiced my discomfort with labeling Inglourious Basterds Tarantino's masterpiece, but if it's not Number One it's certainly Number Two (although I may change my tune once I rewatch Reservoir Dogs). The screenplay is one of Tarantino's best, in the "interconnected disconnect" tradition of Pulp Fiction and, to a lesser extent, Kill Bill, in which vignettes are tied together as part of a narrative thread but are easily (re)watchable outside the context of the film as a whole. The script is a taut exercise in dramatic tension, deceptively composed of long scenes of dialogue (often subtitled from German or French) but which bring to a simmer intense anxiety about if and when each character's deception will be revealed and cause events to boil over into a brutally gory yet classically Tarantino shoot-'em-up sequence (which, don't worry, happens more often than not).

Perhaps, then, we can ascribe a masterpiece to Tarantino, but with the caveat that it isn't his only one. If we're hellbent on labeling Inglourious Basterds the masterpiece, we can always excuse Pulp Fiction for being partially co-authored by Roger Avery. But Basterds is all Tarantino, showing a maturity level that heretofore has been absent (but, in retrospect, showed signs of nascency in Death Proof); rather than clutter his work with blatant homages and showy stylization, Tarantino wisely pulls back on both, creating a work that's more subtle than I think most of us knew Tarantino could produce. It's not for nothing the film nabbed a Best Picture nomination, you see. It stands as the perfect intersection of a first-rate screenplay and a more-than-capable cast.

The true star of the film is Tarantino's dialogue, which manages to transcend the drudgery of subtitles by leaping off the screen without calling attention to its own built-in flair (from what I've been told, the translation work isn't bad, either). But the members of the cast are all so good that it's difficult to find a star made of flesh and blood. Is it Pitt, who takes first billing bcause of his name recognition but whose star power is dwarfed by the comparatively small role he plays? Is it Laurent, a protagonist in the tradition of The Bride who does a solid job portraying all her character's fears and determination? Is it Waltz, who obviously dominated the public imagination about the film with a delightfully nuanced and delectably wicked performance as the Nazi with as many cards up his sleeve as held close to his chest? Or should we merely throw our hands up in uncertainty by saying it's an ensemble cast? Well, it is. But they're all so good that you won't notice, for example, that Pitt is absent for the first, third, and most of the fourth acts; actors like Fassbender and especially Waltz take control of their screen time such that you'll forget that it isn't entirely their movie.

It's a movie that isn't really about anything. It's about World War II, sure, but it's more the story of a group of very radical figures fighting it on different terms, on different fronts, and for different reasons. One of the most significant features for me is the way in which the film brilliantly cheats itself; it contains the single most creative way I've ever seen for dealing with a film in which the objective is to assassinate Hitler - even though we know Hitler was never assassinated (Bryan Singer did an equally solid but different job with Valkyrie, though it's nothing on the scale of audaciousness that Basterds brings to the table). Hint: the first major clue comes before the first scene of the film; pay attention.

Oh, what the heck. High tension, tight scripting, fantastic performances - maybe it is his masterpiece, after all.
Inglourious Basterds is, like every Quentin Tarantino movie, rated "R for strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality." Obviously, the language and the violence are pretty extreme, with F-bombs and scalpings all over the place, as well as the sporadic bloody shoot-out. There's an implied sexual liasion between Goebbels and his translator, and Fredrick flirts heavily with Shosanna, but it's pretty tame compared to other Tarantino films in this regard.

Trailer Park: Inglourious Basterds (2009) [Trailer #2]

For starters, I'm reviewing the second trailer for this video, though I'll be taking for granted a slight familiarity with the first trailer (and that one's embedded at the bottom of this post).

We've been waiting since Kill Bill for the next Quentin Tarantino movie (okay, Grindhouse fans, Death Proof counts) and here it is. We've been hearing about Inglourious Basterds (back when it was spelled Inglorious Bastards) for some time now, and I was just about to relegate it into the dead pool where The Vega Brothers currently tends bar. Thankfully, Tarantino managed to get his script put together and filmed in time for the 2009 movie season.

This one looks like what every Tarantino fan loves - kitsch, violence, and hyperstylized dialogue. Furthermore, Brad Pitt devotees will probably have much to enjoy when it comes to his distinctive characterization of Lt. Aldo Ray (an interesting combination, one reviewer has noticed, of Cary Grant and Foghorn Leghorn), whose every movement is in step with a unique character - the kind for which Tarantino is best known.

Inglourious Basterds probably isn't landmark cinema, but it looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Plus, Mike Meyers is doing an accent again, and Hitler is wearing a cape. Like I said, a lot of fun.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

"I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog."

That's about the way I feel about the third Indiana Jones film, which I still consider to be the best of the four-film series. Recovering from the Temple of Doom debacle - a redeemable film, to be sure, but certainly less spectacular than its predecessor and successor - Steven Spielberg and George Lucas culled together this masterpiece, one of the best of Spielberg's and arguably THE best complete film of Lucas's (I exclude the Irvin Kershner-directed The Empire Strikes Back from contention on the basis of its incomplete cliffhanger ending).

I almost feel like plot synopsis is irrelevant here, since this movie is pop culture history only 19 years after its premiere. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford, in his defining role, perhaps even more so than as Han Solo) is contracted by antiquities collector Walter Donovan (Julian Glover, who is the only actor holding the distinction of playing in the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Harry Potter series [and a Woody Allen movie, to boot] - talk about cultural monopoly!) to recover the Holy Grail, the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. Perhaps a more immediate motive for Indy is the disappearance of his father (the always marvelous Sean Connery), who was also hot on the Grail trail when he went missing. Of course, the Nazis are after the Grail, as well, so it's literally a race to the finish.

I have the same gripe here that I had about Raiders of the Lost Ark - that I remember it too damn well. This is, again, more my fault than the movie's, but here I've been able to discern a key factor in the movie's memorability factor - a script apparently predominantly written by an uncredited Tom Stoppard, who's been called the modern Shakespeare, and perhaps not without good reason - recall he's the author behind John Madden's 1998 Shakespeare in Love (no, not THAT John Madden). The writing of this film is pitch-perfect, one of the funniest action movies I've seen (take that, Pirates of the Caribbean).

The acting is phenomenal, with every member of the cast deftly moving between slapstick comedy and subdued scenes of dramatic dialogue. The action scenes are spot-on, as well, directed brilliantly by Spielberg with just the right amount of levity to prevent a heart attack. And the return to Nazis and Judeo-Christian artifacts is one well appreciated in light of the more mystical Kali cult and Sankara Stones.

Like I said, I'm having a tough time reviewing a movie that I've seen dozens of times and love to death. I feel obligated to include this movie on my short list of "Perfect Movies" and also feel obligated to share that list at some point. The trouble is I have too many fond memories to look at this movie with any degree of objectivity. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, because seeing this movie again with an older eye proved to be two of the best hours I've had this month.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Here's the difficult thing about reviewing a staple like Raiders of the Lost Ark: I've seen this film so many times that two very distinct things make reviewing it impossible. First, I've already made up in my mind that this is an excellent movie. But secondly and perhaps more importantly, the movie loses some of its magic because it feels as though it's going through the motions. Maybe that's a commendation on the caliber of the film, that I've forgotten very little over the years that I've loved the movie.

But "it's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

After 27 years and three sequels, Raiders of the Lost Ark holds up reasonably well. Obligatory plot summary follows, for those who have no idea what an Indiana Jones is or why he's raiding some ark that's been lost. The product of the Spielberg-Lucas filmic powerhouse, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford, as if I needed to clarify that) is pitted against Nazis and French rival archaeologist Rene Belloq (delectfully wicked Paul Freeman) in the cross-continent race to find the Ark of the Covenant, an Old Testament artifact that channels the power of God.

Steven Spielberg often says he set out to "make a B-movie, but better," yet I'd argue that he's made a full-fledged A-List movie that's every bit as enjoyable as it was when it first debuted. Perhaps I shouldn't fault the film for cooperating with my photographic memory by being so gosh darned memorable. Perhaps I should rather be commending the convincing performances, the artful direction, the impeccable John Williams score, and the chill that runs down my spine when the Nazis open the Ark.

It says a great deal about the movie that a lot of its third sequel, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), takes cues from this one. Note the return of Karen Allen, whose performance as the spunky Marion Ravenwood was so unmatched in the other Jones films that Spielberg didn't even try to find a new girl for Indy in the fourth film. Also note the return of the Ark Theme in the fourth film's opener - as well as a split-second cameo by the Ark itself! Finally, take note of the similar ways in which the film's villains acquire the MacGuffin and have it lead to their quest's ultimate failure. Rip-off, derivative, homage, or tried-and-true formula?

This film and its threequel, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), both share the similar structure of Nazis seeking religious artifacts, and there's something grounded in fact about that combination that makes this film work better than its sequel-prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The villians, though slightly exaggerated, are not cartoonish and serve as perfect foils to the straightlaced professor of archaeology.

What's more, Raiders is funny. Of course the standout scene here is the one in which Indy meets an expert swordsman... and irritatedly shoots him dead. The humor would later be amped up in Last Crusade, but it's a marvelous tension-breaker here when the action scenes get too intense - which, believe me, they do. Though on this, what must be the 50th viewing of the film, I didn't gasp in horror during the epic car chase sequence as I surely did the first time, I still Oohed and Aahed at all the right places. I even laughed at punchlines I remembered when I decided I wanted to watch this one again.

It's not the years, it's the mileage. My only complaint about this film is that it's so memorable that it holds few surprises for multiple viewings. Other than that, it's a perfect thrill ride from start to finish. And of course any movie that ends with an homage to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) can't be all bad.

Visual Language In Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

This isn't a review per se, and it definitely isn't written by me. But I thought this blog could open itself up to critical analysis, both from myself and from others.

http://www.cineobscure.com/visual-language-raiders-of-the-lost-ark/

This chap (or chapette, I suppose) has deconstructed one of the less remembered moments from the first Indiana Jones movie, and as someone who's taken classes that delve into film analysis, I think this article opens our eyes up to the unconscious ways that filmic vision guides our understanding of film.

Interested to know what you think...