::sigh:: . . . if only he spoke Hovito. :smack:
Tripler
And if only Alfred Molino weren’t such a backstabber.
Never had I until seconds before I typed it. I wasn’t a good English major, but sometimes I could sling the BS on cue. If, say, you were staring at a blank sheet of paper after being asked to discuss a leitmotif in Raiders of the Lost Ark, sand is a good choice. It’s all over the place, though it helps that most of the movie was set in the Egyptian desert and we know how sand can get into everything.
Upthread comment about the tablets was the only correct (or close to correct) one among all the speculation. Tablets were carved by God, and therefore holy. They would not have been left in the desert. The sand, though, was not the original commandments that Moses had his freakout over during the Golden Calf scene. No, it was from earlier. It’s not in the Torah, but from the apocrypha:
Brooks: HoTW:1
*Moses: The Lord, the Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen…
[drops A tablet]
Moses: Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey! *
Sorry for the delay. From Raiders of The Lost Ark: The Storybook Based on the Movie (Random House, NY, 1981, Storybook adaptation by Les Martin): the guy who’s translating the front side of the headpiece says,
I think the movie cut the first bit, and just translated beginning with “Measure a staff six cadem high…” The original warning must have been in the script but then chopped, but made it into the storybook. That’s how Indy knew that he and Marion had to shut their eyes.
If intentional, it was a smart cut. As is it adds to the mystique of Indy, someone who … *knows *things. Someone who you actually trust when they say “trust me.” Whether it came back to him from some obscure book-knowledge years ago or his intuition, the lack of direct explanation was part of his character.
That he overheard it x scenes ago makes it seem pedestrian.
Shouldn’t that be Inca? The film opens in Peru.
I’m honestly asking here… I wouldn’t put it past RotLA to mess that up.
Neither had I. Told you I was a lousy English major.
Wasn’t much of an Anthropology major, either. 
In my defense, I missed the first minute or two when I first saw it.
OTOH, I saw it several times since.
"I have these fifteen…, " one of three tablets falls and shatters “… no, ten! Ten commandments!”
I have it on good authority that he has a butt like two clenched fists.
Pokes at JohnT with post #63. You know, if–
Wait.
We’ve been reading the question wrong.
This should be in GQ, not Cafe; there is a definite answer to the thread title: here.
Dammit! :mad:
While certainly not the last word on indisputable cinematic fact, IMDB does have this item in the trivia section for Raiders:
There was also a bit of a minor reference at the beginning of the movie. When the Feds were interviewing Indy and looked at the picture in the book, they asked about the rays coming off the Ark and why all the people carrying it had blindfolds on.
If Indy and Marian had avoided hubris, what would be wrong with seeing God? What if they were curious? Or suppose someone just happened to come upon the scene as the ark opened? Would God distinguish that from Nazi hubris and spare them?
Keep in mind this is an artifact of the Old Testament Smite the firstborn Flood the world God. It didn’t get the whole Kinder, Gentler software upgrade.
If God noticed at all, he’d just consider them collateral damage unless they found some way to call themselves to It’s attention. And no matter how well disposed it may be towards them, the attention of a God or something that might as well be a God is not always a good thing to have.
Yeah, those were basically rhetorical questions I was asking. I liked the semi-self-mocking tone of the movie, so the ending was a letdown when it took laughable archaic notions seriously.
I always thought that the “Ark” was actually some sort of holy booby trap and the real ark was never going.
Well, I think the movie makes two things clear:
First, as Brody puts it, “The army that carries the Ark before it is invincible.” I don’t think the Nazis have a specific plan at all; there seems to be the idea that merely being the army that bears the Ark invoked the power of God to smite your enemies. Their plan amounts to
- Find Ark
- ?
- Win war!
Secondly, this lack of a specific plan is rather plainly exhibited by the fact that the bad guys themselves aren’t even on the same page. Belloq doesn’t give a tin shit about Nazis or Hitler, he just wants to glory of finding the greatest archaeological relic of all times. Toht is basically the Darth Vader of the peice, the agent who follows orders without question and so his entire life is “find Ark, bring to Berlin.” Dietrich is more the Grand Moff Tarkin to Toht’s Vader; his view of things is far broader. He’s willing to devote his efforts to finding the Ark but it’s clearly not his obsession; he’s a Nazi who’s eager for the war to start and sees this Ark thing as a bothersome task “…this… JEWISH ritual…” to be gotten out of the way.
Nobody in the enterprise really has a fucking clue what they’re going to do with the damn thing. The Nazis and Belloq are all working at cross purposes and, in fact, I always get the sense Belloq had a long con planned out where he’d screw the Nazis out of the Ark entirely. But the funny thing is that we end up finding out the good guys really don’t have a plan, either. It’s not just Indy saying “I’m making this up as I go…” at the end, once they have the Ark, it just ends up in a warehouse. The Americans had no plan beyond “gimme so the Nazis can’t have it.”
It’s a wonderful story, really. The Ark is like the Maltese Falcon, only better. It’s the stuff dreams are made of, but it packs a way more horrifying way of explaining why you shouldn’t chase material things.
Just a reminder, this is almost a year-old thread.
Do not anger Happy Fun Ark!