Raiders of the Lost Ark - Back When Spielberg Used To Care

Sep

6

Raiders of the Lost Ark - Back When Spielberg Used To Care

≡ Category: Action, Essential, Movie Reviews By Country, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Action
Director: Steven Spielberg
Year: 1981

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE

Once upon a time, Steven Spielberg really cared about trash cinema. It excited him. Look at how he started out. The first eight films he directed were genre exercises, but he wasn’t slumming. These projects, starting with Sugarland Express, were executed with the passion and love of a train freak who inherits a basement full of model trains.

Yes, Spielberg still alternates his “serious” projects with trash like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but he no longer takes it seriously. (Clearly, Spielberg got bored halfway through the latest Indiana Jones adventure. See my post Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Spielberg Flips Off Indy’s Fans for more details.)

Raiders of the Lost Ark was Spielberg’s last great film before his seemingly irreversible decline. I’m not talking about his technical ability, which is self-evident. I’m talking about the corrosive combination of ever-increasing cynicism and sentimentalism that has marred his films ever since. The genuinely childlike sense of wonder is long gone. Now we get films like Schindler’s List and Saving Ryan’s Privates with their grotesque sentimentality and simplifications and cynical exercises like the Jurassic Park flicks.

Anyway, I’m getting off the track here. I’m supposed to be talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark, aren’t I?

To begin with, Raiders of the Lost Ark is as tightly written as they come, and you can give the credit for that to Lawrence Kasdan, a real screenwriter whose most recent credits at the time were Body Heat and The Empire Strikes Back. (By contrast, the tone deaf sequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was written by Willard Huyck, who was responsible for the legendary fiasco Howard the Duck.) The first forty minutes move by at a lightning pace. Aside from the writing, much of that is due to the muscular direction of Spielberg. There are several simply masterful action sequences here, such as Indy’s fight with the German pugilist in and around a circling prop plane and Indy’s hijacking of a truck convoy. But Spielberg isn’t only an action director.

After Karen Allen’s embarrassing sub dinner theater performance as Marion Ravenwood in the latest Indiana Jones adventure, I was hugely impressed by the way Spielberg protects her in Raider’s of the Lost Ark. Allen’s performance is full of youthful energy, but it’s unmodulated and rather awkward. But if you weren’t really paying attention, you would never notice it, thanks to skillful editing and how Spielberg focuses the action.

The other performances don’t need protecting. Harrison Ford is charming as Indy, Paul Freeman is suitably slimy as Indy’s archeologist competitor, and Ronald Lacy and Wolf Kahler are wonderfully hissable as the chief Nazis.

Spielberg’s sense of humor showed signs of curdling into nastiness in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it was still balanced by his sense of fun. I won’t spoil any of his gags here, but it’s rather startling how mean spirited and graphic much of the humor is. The graphic nature of the violence in Raiders of the Lost Ark and it’s sequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was so egregious that the ratings board was forced to institute a PG-13 rating for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in order to mollify the public.

Truly, these films show how political these ratings are. Because Spielberg was an industry titan, he got away with murder while independent filmmakers routinely get raked across the coals. I mean, c’mon. I like the imagery of metal spikes through the face as much as anyone, but in a PG rated flick?

The plot? The Nazis are trying to find the Ark of the Convenant (you know, the box that contains the stone tablets engraved with the Ten Commandments by God himself) because they believe that any army that carries the Ark into battle will be invincible. The U.S. government hires Indy to beat them to it.

Speaking of the Ark of the Covenant, the special effects by Industrial Light and Magic that accompany it’s opening still hold up, which is incredible, especially when you consider the nonexistent shelf life of the digital effects in movies today, such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Ahem.

What can I say? Raiders of the Lost Ark has it all: solid genre writing, blistering non-stop action, charming performances by Harrison Ford et. al., inventive direction, a responsible and effective mix of practical and digital effects, and maybe most importantly, a sense of fun. Raiders of the Lost Ark stands as a stinging rebuke to the soulless, mechanical, industrial dreck that routinely passes as action these days.