| |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
|
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
There’s a quiet little line of dialogue at the bottom of the first act in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that is absolutely right. Indy, older and grayer, sits in a diner with a young whippersnapper named Mutt who needs his help tracking down his mother and his stepfather in the Amazon. Indy knows the stepfather, an old colleague who disappeared into the jungle decades ago, but he is trying to put together how he knows this kid’s mother, who was evidently on quite intimate terms with him at one time. “What’s her name?” Indy asks. “Mary Williams,” Mutt answers. Indy thinks about it for a moment, shakes his head, and says wearily, “I don’t know, kid. There were a lot of Marys.” Which is exactly what Indiana Jones would say at this point in his life, and exactly how he would say it. The latest entry in this action-packed saga takes place twenty years after we witnessed the swashbuckling archeologist ride off into the sunset in 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and its single greatest advantage is how it allows that era in the great cinematic hero’s life to ride away with it. Two decades later, he’s not the same man. And he shouldn’t be—in the years between films, he’s been a spy in World War II, witnessed the beginning of a Cold War, lost old friends to the ravages of time, and has reached the point in which students ask him questions based on his academic knowledge rather than because they’re enamored by his roguish charm. We’ve come a long way since doe-eyed college girls of Raiders of the Lost Ark wrote “Love You” on their eyelids. At one point, Mutt observes, “You fight pretty well for an old guy,” and Indy thanks him instead of looking insulted. In a time of greasers and atomic bombs, his bullwhip and revolver are growing increasingly irrelevant, and though Indy never directly mentions that his heroics have grown outdated, the truth is present on Harrison Ford’s increasingly world-weary face. If you are reading these words, you probably already have an opinion about The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. James Berardinelli over at Reelviews is absolutely correct in his assessment of the critic’s role for a film as anticipated as this one: “There are some films for which critical opinion is important. Then there are movies like The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull where we're merely providing words for people to agree with or disagree with.” So I’ll save you the trouble of having to skip over an obligatory plot-summary and assume that you're not reading this article to get information about the story or the twists or the surprise guest appearances from old favorites. Nor are you interested in whether or not I think the film “works:” You know whether this movie works for you or not, because you’ve already seen it if you so desire, and if you do not so desire then you’ve probably already clicked the “back” button (which is hopefully returning you to my archives page). So let me brush past the stuff you know: I will concede that this is probably the weakest of all the Indiana Jones storylines in that the MacGuffin is over-analyzed but rarely explained coherently. And the villains are paper-thin and could have used a lot more fleshing out. And that even the action sequences aren’t quite as exhilarating as the truck pursuit in Raiders or the mineshaft chase in Temple of Doom or the show-stopping tank assault in The Last Crusade. And, yes, this film is absolutely a prequel to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as it is a further escapade of Dr. Jones, and it is difficult to swallow Indy and friends watching a UFO hovering above their heads. It’s kind of baffling to think that after nineteen years of creative brainstorming, this is the best premise Spielberg and friends could dream up in which to frame a new Indiana Jones picture. But I’m not concerned about these reservations, because none of the Indiana Jones films have ever been about plot. I had to watch Raiders, the best of the lot, over a dozen times before some of the little nuances in the narrative began to reveal themselves to me. Frankly, holes in storylines, even those large enough to drive a Nazi tank through, never concerned me when we’re dealing with premises as absurd as Indy’s adventures. These pictures are about sitting on the edge of your seat and having an interesting hero to root for as he dashes from one action scene to the next. No, I didn’t think the extended chase in this film was as memorable as the others, but I still had a jolly good time watching the running, the dodging, the swashbuckling, and our hero’s plummet down three—three, mind you—waterfalls while in a Russian jeep. Sandwiched between such action scenes are moments of well-written character development, presented in order to humanize Indiana Jones so that we have a likable hero to root for instead of a cardboard cutout. In previous films, quiet scenes with Marion Ravenwood, Short Round, Indy’s father, etc. were never filler; they rather raised the stakes by revealing characters who we believed enough to accept them in these hopelessly unbelievable scenarios. Had The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull merely fulfilled these standard obligations of rousing action and charming heroes, it would have been a perfectly fine film. It does fulfill them, but it also does something far bolder: It allows Indiana Jones to shed his former skin and act his age. He is now a man aware of his own encroaching mortality; he comfortably accepts that his time as an action hero is almost at an end and has therefore shifted his focus and priorities to more academic endeavors. This change is accomplished almost exclusively in the way that Harrison Ford, along with director Spielberg and writer David Keopp, subtly present Indiana Jones here. It is both in what Indy says and what he doesn’t say; the way he silently observes the youthful Mutt and seems more impressed with the young man’s spryness than at his own knack for escaping from increasingly death-defying dangers. He’s not a womanizer anymore—he’s too old for such nonsense—and he’s actually reached the point where he will fight for his job as a professor because perhaps he has come to enjoy its quiet comforts. Compare this man to the Indy of the previous films, who seemed to consider teaching as nothing more than a nuisance required to maintain funding for his adventures, and you see the mileage finally taking its toll. But still—there’s a twinkle in Indy’s eye that makes clear he longs for the good old days, when he could still seduce beautiful women and not quite have to worry about keeping his job. Devoted geeks all across the internets have complained that Indiana Jones never once looks worried in that face of doom in Crystal Skull, that he always seems to soften his daring exploits with one-liners that make clear that he doesn’t believe he’s in any real danger. This is a certainly contrast to the way he panics while thinking on his feet in the previous entries (“I’m making this up as I go,” he said in Raiders, and we believed him), but let’s consider for a moment: Twenty years have passed since we last saw Indy, and there’s no sign that he’s actually ever slowed down. Here is a man who, in his previous adventures, encountered the Angel of Death hiding in the Ark of the Covenant, battled demons and mystical shamans, and formed an alliance with a 700-year old knight living off of the Holy Grail’s magical powers. He has dodged gigantic boulders and other such booby traps, survived being buried alive, has been turned into a zombie and lived to tell the tale, witnessed divine powers melt his enemies, and caused an avalanche by merely playing a loud note on a saxophone. That’s not counting the “Young Indiana Jones” television show, several video games, and a dozen tie-in novels, all officially part of the canon according to George Lucas, in which Indy battles Count Dracula, rides with Pancho Villa, fights the mob with Elliot Ness, survives trench warfare in World War I, finds Noa’s arc, discovers Atantis, Eden, the Tower of Babel, unicorns, and time machines, and foils a plot to resurrect Adolf Hitler using the Spear of Destiny. It’s also not counting everything that might have happened in the last twenty years that remain unspoken—including hints that he was a double-agent for the secret service during World War II. What is left to give this guy pause? Crystal Skull thoughtfully addresses Indy’s experience with action scenes and clean getaways by allowing him to now accept them unblinkingly. The change is absolutely right, and thinking that it could be any other way after all these exploits is cheating. But Indy’s humanity is preserved in what has changed in his personality to fill the void of what was once his surprise at his own ingenuity. Instead, we now have an old man who prefers to recollect more, who talks about his old adventures with a beaming pride and amusement that these young punks won’t believe him. There’s a scene when Indy recounts the aforementioned Pancho Villa story to Mutt, and the camera affectionately lingers on them both and lets Indy recount the story like the reminiscing old timer that he is. It’s a tender, loving moment because it shows us a new dimension in this aging, more thoughtful archeologist. He’s a man drawing from his past now instead of focusing on the present because, as a colleague observes, “You’ve reached the age where instead of taking things from the world, the world is taking things from you.” He has risen to the world’s challenge by finding comfort in the life he has led and trying to compensate for missed opportunities. The whole film works in this fashion; Indy is effortless while in action, but nostalgic and quietly thoughtful in all of his scenes of dialogue. And it’s a surprisingly poignant portrait. Note in particular the brilliantly touching conclusion to a motorcycle chase sequence, in which Indy and Mutt crash through the front door of the university library. Students, undeterred by their uncouth entrance (they should be use to it by now), approach Indy and ask him a question about the homework he assigned them. Indy, as he dusts himself off, provides them with an answer. Watch the way Ford plays this scene—he seems more grateful that he could be helpful to his students than happy to be out of danger. Those who say that The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull does not adequately address Indy’s age are not paying attention to Ford’s gestures, his tired gleam, the way he obsessively considers his own legacy when he should be more concerned about escaping from a pit of quicksand. That he doesn’t seem exhausted after action scenes is a moot point; by now, Indy has had his whole life to prepare for the perils he faces in this film. Rather, his age is revealed in the very way that Ford carries himself, how he exhausts his energy by staring at a picture of his dead father or by looking a little ashamed when he admits that he can’t remember anyone by the name of Mary Williams without dismissing the clear fact that she certainly will never forget him. What Spielberg, Ford, Lucas, and company have done is fluently make a film that sums up their careers, which were defined early on by blockbusters that included the previous Indiana Jones pictures. They’ve been producing movies for decades and have now attained the kind of success and experience that make a film like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull both effortless and, from a financial point of view, redundant. What propelled them forward, after two decades of speculation and false starts, to finally invest time and energy into another chapter? I suspect that they were compelled by the notion of Indiana Jones as an aging hero feeling outdated in a changing world because they could see their own journey in such a tale. Perhaps they hoped that in reinventing the greatest hero in all of cinema, they could remind us—and certainly themselves—why we love him, and them, in the first place. And while they were at it, perhaps they also hoped to thrill the hell out of us with battles against man-eating ants and magnetic alien skeletons while they giddily drove their hero off the edge of a cliff into three waterfalls—all to the famous score by John Williams. Welcome back, Dr. Jones: You can reminisce with this longtime fan as much as you like, in as many more adventures as you feel necessary. Cast: Paramount Pictures presents a LucasFilm production. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by David Keopp, from a story by George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson. Rated PG-13, for action and frightening sequences. Running time: 124 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: May 22, 2008. |
||
