Skip to main content

Review: The Fourth Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones 4 was very sad. The whole thing was flooded with dusk - a farewell to the boys of summer, Spielberg and Lucas, and Harrison Ford, who brought us so many great sci-fi and adventure classics.

Together, they have given the world much unreconstructed pleasure, and here, again, they revisited their key themes, of Americana, innocence, boys-into-men (and their fear of women and foreign entanglements) - and, of course, aliens wanting to return home. Most critics have noted that Ford looks and acts old - which is the case - and it is shocking, indeed, how grizzled, even (Ryder?) haggard, he does look - surely, that is the point. Rather than conceal the force of age from the fourth film, then, it seems a decision was made to foreground the idea of Time. Shakespearean as this is, it's apt, and adds a dimension to the film that, at first glance, is missing: namely, quality.

The movie feels half-baked. Then, on reflection, one reminds oneself that these are movies paying homage to the old cliffhangers of yore, and that this one, set in 1957, is a homage, even on top of that pastiche-fed floor, to B-movies, or worse. So, the grains of time, and time's losses and consequences, from atomic theory (and practice), to political shifts, to history itself (the struggle between West and East), is all put in a longer, deeper perspective - an ancient civilization, now merely relics, glows with future promise, if change can appear. Notably, the film is strangely menacing - the forces at the end are neither E.T. nor are they "Alien" - but something else - highly intelligent collectors, neutral, and ultimately above human concerns. On the subject of Blanchett's faux Ruskie babe in the ultra-cool uniform - well, you either "get" such things, or you don't. Watching this, I felt old - I felt a generation was turning a page.

I felt Indy's travels in my bones. Spielberg has made us excavate ourselves, all our own thoughts about all our American (read: Western capitalist) yesterdays - from greasers, to milkshakes, to the space race, to the McCarthy witch hunts - and recognize how these were built on force, on violence, on tragedy. At the end (the beginning begins out West, in a cheeky gopher mound echoing the mountain from Close Encounters) we get a comedic ending - a wedding - and are asked to bless this union. Problematic, tricky, and hard to do, given what's come before (Hiroshima and amour, indeed) - but that's the difficult American balancing act, or rather confidence trick - love our Elvis, forgive our Nam etc. - and Spielberg's been one of the masters of it, since Jaws.

Comments

Unknown said…
No! Don't say anything! I haven't seen it yet :(

PS - that is such a cool picture on the blog banner!

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".