Cinema
The hard stuff
Peter Ackroyd
Indiana Jones and the Temple of WO (PG', Empire Leicester Square)
AA 11 the world knows that Steven SPielci ..1i,berg is the director; what the wad, may not have heard is that Michael Kahg''' the editor, that John Williams (late a thet Boston Pops) wrote the music, and th,a, George Lucas was in part responsible le' what we must learn to call the `st°rY These names are important: without editing, Indiana Jones and the TemPle °Jr Doom would be as flat as a newsPaPep cartoon; without the grandiose scot' almost all of the excitement would be lO and, without the story, there would, a course be no film at all. George Lucas is Californian who has no doubt read To: kien, as well as large quantities of scieno'h fiction, and tends to invent plots whice concern quests, Sacred objects, and stra„ril native creatures with unpron0unee7na Jones s: and this is the theme of India— It opens in Shanghai in 1935; it seentsAato first that the plot will have something t° with the ashes of the first emperor Of tn7., Manchu dynasty, but this turns out siMP„loY to be a diversion enabling the audience 'd get through the credits without being b04 by all that printed material. The real Pp) concerns some sacred stones, stolen fr°_, wise but impoverished Indian villagel'o't and transported to a dark palace in Pall,kof where they are used as emblems in a cult b, death. Indiana Jones, together with Wed's singer and small ruffian (still Hol1Yw01e equivalent of the Holy Family) rescue 3 stones but in the process are subjected t00 number of escapades which spread aer° the large screen like flags in a gale.
Since this is populist cinema, it effete all of those images which have been the
staple of cheap fiction since before , advent of film itself: underground cav,e0e, secret palaces, maltreated slaves who 1.i* the lash of the whip without being visl„, a scarred (in this case, Indian children) an shamanistic villain. It is often said that Young American directors such as Steven Spielberg are, in recreating such plots, PaYing explicit homage to the films which, they saw as children – the kind of 'B films Which were also popular in England as constituents of the Saturday matinee. That may be the case – but what masquerades as a quasi-psychological or pseudo-sociologi- cal theory of creation only really suggests that these directors are woefully unin- spired; it is as if a novelist decided to write comic strip dialogue 'in homage' to Beano.
There is no doubt that Steven Spielberg
does whatever it is he does do very well – for he has discovered a secret which, like all secrets, is simple to relate. He has discovered that watching a film is a PhY- sinlogical rather than reflective activity – that the audience actually re-enact in phan- t°111 form the movements and sensations of the actors on the screen. His basic device therefore is a unit of action which, by skilful cutting and editing, bounds forward and carries the audience with it on its back. Under the circumstances it is difficult for the audience not to become involved in what occurs, since this kind of basic narra- tive rhythm is one which even the most sceptical or intelligent spectator finds it Physiologically impossible to resist. These effects are compounded by liberal helpings of spiders, centipedes, snakes and other crawling things which are effectively able to transmit another basic physiological ricacti°ft – namely withdrawal and revul- s'°n. The use of loud music, and an essentially wham-ham-rat-a-tat script, also conspire to create for the audience an overwhelmingly physical experience.
„The real skill comes, however, from not
allowing the audience to become unnerved or disgusted by this insidious appeal – and ,s° it is that all of the adventure and horror III Indiana Jones are brought close to 1,.)arody,•allowing the audience to laugh at h ,"e film as 'corny' and thus congratulate ;',self for having the intelligence to mock at i`te film even as they are being entertained it. This is also a trick used to great effect SciaP operas such as Dallas and Dynasty; not that these programmes are so bad at r we are forced to laugh at4thein: it is, ather, that they are made deliberately bad precisely so that we can laugh at them. The p thus of watching simple television is compounded by the even greater Pleasure of self-congratulatory scorn. is orfidinna Jon es and the Temple of Doom „z2course of rather better quality than the 1.,a.7 American soap: Harrison Ford is ti.li,eran ably impeccable as the sardonic and he is in this instance ably assisted n,),"'Onian and child. Some parts of the film re'L ,involving those actors are genuinely siolellenr: I can remember a recent televi- Programme about 'video nasties' in trioscene depicting the eating of live tion°"eYs' brains was taken as an illustra- saintniiii cool rtrhueprneral tendency to 'deprave Curiously enough, a very Whichar scene is employed in this film, has been granted an anodyne 'PG'
certificate. The monkeys without brains who are supporting Graham Bright's Bill should take note.
Indiana Jones is not, however, able to maintain its remorseless pace until the end and the story loses some of its momentum when action sequences are replaced by some apparently dramatic tableaux of a boring kind. Mr Spielberg is only good at orchestrating action, 'and gets lost in the areas of drama, dialogue or feeling: those who hailed E. T. as the expression of a genuinely spiritual consciousness should go and see what the young master is doing now. Having said that, however, the film does stop just this side of being merely mechanical and boring. It is of course mindless fun – but what other kind of fun is there?
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