Don’t ask me to rank the original Indiana Jones trilogy. I think they’re all great. Put a gun to my head (I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that) and I’ll say Temple of Doom is my favorite because it’s the most cartoonishly exotic, but I’ll take any one of them any day of the week. One nice thing about them is that they’re so well-made that there’s no need to ever apologize for liking them or qualify it somehow. You don’t have to resort to the N-word (nostalgia) to explain yourself. Spielberg’s work here is clever, painstaking and learned about film history. As flighty fantasies, they hold up.
They still play beautifully in theaters, too (and still draw a crowd). I’ve seen all three of the old Indiana Jones movies in a theater in the past 3-4 years and, unlike a lot of other 1980s hits, none of them ever brings unintended laughs. Harrison Ford never plays shirtless volleyball with Val Kilmer. There are no campy training montages. No one walks around in the 1930s with an 80s hairstyle. Kenny Loggins, Survivor and Frank Stallone are nowhere near the soundtrack. NOPE, the Indiana Jones films never feel like yesterday’s junk. They feel like classics. The room is held rapt and laughs when Spielberg wants and sometimes even claps after big moments.
This third entry in the series keeps the good stuff coming. It’s the same formula as the previous two (we’d be annoyed if it wasn’t). The object: The Holy Grail. The enemy: The Nazis. The year: 1938. The locations: Utah, Portugal; Venice, Italy; Germany and Turkey. The twist: This time, Indiana Jones’s father (played by Sean Connery) is involved. The number of punches thrown, bullets fired and bodies tossed by explosions: somewhere around 38,000 in total is my very scientific estimate.
If there’s a difference between this film and the others, it’s that Spielberg at this point is extra bold about the ridiculous luck of Indiana Jones. The most brazen example is in the prologue when the young Indy (River Phoenix) is on the run from profiteers after he steals The Cross of Coronado from them (because “It belongs in a museum!”). The pursuit climaxes on the speeding train of a traveling circus. Encounters with lions, rhinos and snakes follow. Indy eventually makes his getaway in the magician’s train car by hiding in a magic box that turns out to REALLY BE MAGICAL. When his pursuer throws it open, young Indiana is gone and inexplicably transported outside of the train, running home.
Spielberg presents this with a straight face. Matter of fact. It’s funny, but it’s not exactly a joke. It happened. And we buy it.
Because this is a movie. It exists in a dreamy movie world. It has a license to be absurd and Spielberg comfortably takes advantage. He owes no favors to reality. His job is to keep the dream running. Drown out the real world with perfect dessert tray-like imagery and a marching, swooping John Williams score turned up loud. This movie conks me out in the very best way. Seen it fifty times, gonna see it fifty more times.
Also, shout-out to cinematographer Douglas Slocombe. This is his final film. Born in 1913, Slocombe was 75 years old when he shot this (he’d live to age 103), capping off a fifty-year career, during which he shot some of the most seminal comedies from England’s Ealing Studios and worked with a roll call of notable British directors such as Alexander Mackendrick, Basil Dearden, Bryan Forbes, Joseph Losey and Ken Russell. Spielberg hired him for ALL of the original Indiana Jones trilogy and this one might be his best work within it. The interiors (Julian Glover’s vanilla-colored luxury home, the mint green apartment in Venice) ache with a near-Technicolor glow. The Venice exteriors gleam beneath a golden sun and the desert in the climax is rich with life and detail under ultra-blue sky.
It’s top notch blockbuster moviemaking, outlandish and beautiful.