Goodbye, Indiana

June 9 2008

I never thought I’d miss the Nazis.

One of the most profound movie-going experiences of my life was in the summer of 1981, when my dad brought my sister and me to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. It took some coaxing on his part. The original Drew Struzan poster showing Harrison Ford in that fedora looked, to my ten-year-old eyes, like a cowboy hat. A Western? No thanks, dad. The sci-fi pulse of Star Wars was still in the air and those dusty sepia tones looked like something from his era, not mine.

Turns out the old man knew a thing or two. And I’m still waiting, 27 years later, for a movie experience like the one I had that summer night in a Pittsburgh theatre.

I watched this latest Indiana Jones with sad resignation and—sadder still—a bit of boredom. Everything about it seemed phoned-in—with the exception of George Lucas’s fanatical quest to pulverize the Holy Ghosts of my childhood. I shouldn’t have doubted his resolve after he burned through those embarrassing Star Wars prequels like Sherman through Atlanta. Indy never had a chance.

At the heart of my despair is Ford himself and the unkind ravages of the intervening years since 1989’s Last Crusade. His face is inert, frozen behind jowls and folds that have dulled the magnificent, flashing expressionism of his youth. Check out the early films and you’ll see what I mean. He was once taut and snarling with a 3-day beard and bared teeth. It’s nothing against aging—just look at Ford’s cinematic father Sean Connery for evidence of that; the guy got better after 60—Ford just isn’t aging particularly well.

But back to the Nazis. Their sinister iconography—blaring swastika banners, barked German, tucked Ruger pistols—had helped shape a character of supreme antagonism to our Dr. Jones. The contrasts were profound; a singular, mechanized evil versus a whip-cracking improviser with steel ingot fists. He was a bookish warrior without pretense. Translating Sanscrit one moment and, the next, knocking out your goddamn teeth. Auchtung motherfuckers.

Crystal Skull drops us in 1957 with—shudder—Chuck Berry on the radio. The Germans are long gone. Dead or in Argentina. Some Russians are served up but it’s just no damn use. It was called the Cold War for a reason; no heat. The hammer and sickle makes an appearance but—forgive the expression—bitch, please. There was always something a little “New Coke” about that thing.

So aside from the image of Ford’s sunken visage, the rest of it just falls away. I’ve already forgotten the ridiculous plot. But one scene stuck with me for its particular cruelty. Staggering from a fight, Indy finds himself in a staged 1950s suburb in the New Mexico desert that’s about to be vaporized by an atomic test blast. He stumbles into a house—a tabernacle of surburban banality with wood paneling, television and convenience appliances—like a shellshocked interloper. A humorous anachronism trailing grit into the deep-pile carpets. I felt the urge to hide our shame. His fumbling, his face, his panic cried out, “what am I doing here?”

I asked myself the same question.