First of all, Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my all time favorite movies even though it doesn’t make a lick of sense, and while it was certainly Spielberg at the peak of his filmmaking abilities, turning a Saturday matinee B-movie story into cinematic gold with amazing action setpieces and Lawrence Kasdan’s script, the performances are what really elevates this movie above the many imitators that came after. There is not a single weak performance in the movie, even by the bit players with just a couple of scenes; you don’t forget George Harris’s smuggler boat captain, Katanga, or the early performance by Alfred Molina as the turncoat assistant in the opening vault raid who gets himself impaled on a trap.
It goes without saying that this film cemented Harrison Ford as a bankable star after his turns in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (one can only wonder what it would have done for Tom Selleck if he’d been able to stay in the role), and Karen Allen is one of the most believable “tough girl Friday” heroines, who when Indy doesn’t show up to save her can (mostly) take care of herself; she’s often put in the position of ‘damsel in distress’ but never views herself that way, which makes her character stand out. And while I’m sure the casting of a Welsh actor as an Egyptian digger would be viewed as ‘brownface’ today, John Rhys-Davies grounds the film in the dramatic moments; it is unfortunate he was reduced to mostly comic relief in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade because he is a much better character actor than to just be reduced to a jokey goof.
Anyway:
- Fave scene?
Too many to count; the obvious ones are re-entering the Tibetian bar to confront Toht and his thugs, shooting the swordman, “bad dates”, the horse-vs-truck chase sequence, being smacked in the face by a Nazi flag as an improvised rope in the Well of Souls, and of course the final warehouse scene that is an obvoius homage to Citizen Kane. If I had to pick one it would actually be the bar scene between a distraught and drunken Jones and the preening Belloq; it’s a great character moment that doesn’t feel forced and it highlights Belloq’s motivations and his self-reflection that, although he is the principal antagonist of the film, he doesn’t view himself as a bad guy even though he’s working for the Nazis; he’s just “a shadowy reflection” of Jones, a soldier-of-fortune interested in the glory of discovering a historically significant artifact that will get his name mentioned in archeological circles along with Heinrich Schliemann and Howard Carter. That he’s also a petty, sleazy leach just makes Jones look that much better even though by any objective standards Indiana is just about as bad in terms of how he treats people and desecrates archeological sites.
- Best quote
“It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.”
- What aged the best?
The action sequences in this film are astonishing when you think about what both the stuntpeople and actors had to go through to make them, and it is difficult to find another film where the character actually looks like they are in so much danger; the closest I get in a modern film is the parkour chase in the 2006 Casino Royale. The practical effects, while obviously ‘faked’, are far more visceral than most attempts at CGI gore ever achieve. This was made a year before John Carpenter’s The Thing but the same comments to that film apply to this one.
- What aged the worst?
Well, Marion as a ‘child’ lover of Jones isn’t great. I think the chronology of the film has her being an adolescent compared to a 20-something Jones, but it is a period piece and such pairings were hardly unusual for that time if beyond the pale today. The film is relatively free of the grotesque cultural appropriation of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and I think would generally play as well to a modern audience as a current film, in no small part because Marion has real agency as a character.
- Unanswerable questions (was there anything about the movie which made you say ‘wait, but…’, knowing you would never know the answer)
The entire film is a bunch of answerable questions. There is clearly the indication of divinity; God (presumably) strikes the swastika from the Nazi crate while it is in the hold of the smuggler’s ship, but until the penultimate scene we don’t really see any other indications of supernatural activity. It is often asserted that had the Ark been sent directly to Berlin and opened in front of Der Führer that it would have ended the war by eliminating Hitler and the Nazi High Command but that seems unlikely, and there doesn’t seem to be a particular reason the Nazis wouldn’t have figured out how to use the Ark as the Hebrews purportedly did to smite enemies not astute enough to close their eyes.
Aside from that, there are a huge number of questions from the very beginning (How does the light-triggered impaling trap work and reset itself using pre-Colombian technology? Why is Indy trapsing through the jungle with a bunch of duplicitous gear-carriers when he has a seaplane sprinting distance away from the temple?) but the film moves so quickly you don’t really have time to think about this problems until it is all over, and even then you are so amped up on adrenaline that you are humming the John Williams score and shopping for a fedora rather than thinking about plot holes big enough to flight a fake Nazi flying wing through.
- Apex mountain - who in this movie was at the peak of their creative or market power because of this movie? (For example, Jennifer Lawrence’s apex mountain was likely the first Hunger Games movie - after that, she had her choice in roles and for a 2-year stretch became America’s goofy sweetheart.)
Aside from Ford and Allen, pretty much all of the actors in the film are character actors. I suppose this was probably a career peak for Paul Freeman (Belloq) in terms of recognizability but he’s had a steady career since. Speilberg and Kasden both went onto greater aclaim; I guess if this was a top of the pyramid of accomplishments for anyone it was George Lucas, although all he really had was a “Story By” and Executive Producer credit; ever since then it has been a slide into increasingly mediocre sequels and retooling of his own work.
- Who won the movie? Can only be one answer for this category.
The great thing about the film is that nobody really won in any material sense. I mean, Indy delivered the Ark to Army Intelligence but he and Marcus never get to study it as they were originally promised, and Indy walks out of the meeting frustrated and defeated. The ending has a very Chinatown or The Third Man ending, albeit without the deeper moral ambiguity of those films, and the Ark of the Covenant, being a quintessential McGuffin, is never explained except as “a source of unspeakable power”, hidden in a vast government warehouse where it will probably be found by some future generation to their misfortune.
Great film, I love to talk about it even though it does not have any deeper subtext beyond being a high budget pulp actioneer with great characters and nonpareil pacing that those seeking to make engaging action blockbusters would do well to study.
Stranger
not a good look, Mr. Jones.
history. No wonder they ended up in Nepal!