Movie Night： Raiders of the Lost Ark
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Summary
In this episode, Mark and Mark discuss one of the most critically acclaimed films of the 80s and 90s, "Indiana Jones and the raiders of the lost ark" by George Lucas. They discuss the film's history, its influences, and its impact on the world of film and literature.
Transcript
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indiana jones and the raiders of the lost ark it was originally titled raiders of the lost ark but
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they built a franchise around it and added in the indiana jones moniker uh 1980
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it was preceded by two films from spielberg that were wildly successful jaws and close
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encounters of the third kind which mark and i have also talked to and are very worth analyzing
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um it also included spielberg's notable flop um he's he's had some flops late in life i guess but
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when he was a up-and-coming director a flop was probably more damaging that was 1941 which is
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kind of a forgotten film hardly ever gets discussed i actually have not seen it
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um and then he produced this with the uh characters imagined by george lucas and uh the story by george
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lucas and uh he was the director and then i i think the key figure in writing this film was
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lawrence kasdan who is probably uh even more famous for writing the empire strikes back
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and he actually deserves a tremendous amount of credit for the empire strikes back um george lucas
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lengths to imagine that you know he had this i don't know nine film saga in his mind or something and
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he could only do little parts of it at a time and and all of that is uh uh delusional or or just
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outright lie he was lucas was making it up as he went along and kasdan was very important in
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creating the empire strikes back as it is with uh vader being revealed as luke's father with the uh
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severing of luke's hand with meeting his father in the cave and seeing his own face behind the mask
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that kind of freudian element you could say was definitely added by kasdan i do think that george
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lucas came up with the idea of um combining different characters and making darth vader luke's father but
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i i still would almost give kasdan credit he he deepened what could have been a kind of comic book
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serial type film which raiders of the lost ark is as well uh so lawrence kasdan is a a brilliant guy
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and i i think mark would second me in saying that he is extremely rem or gem aware that is racial
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esoteric esoteric moralization or jewish esoteric moralization and this is a deeply symbolic work
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i could imagine george lucas because he was such a fan of these saturday afternoon serials and
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making films that were you know meet immediately accessible to an audience that remind us of comic
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books or pulp fiction or i think it's republic pictures films stuff from his childhood that
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was pulpy and that he loved and kind of bringing that to a audience in the late 70s and 80s i i think
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this could have just been that and that's of course good enough um it's a very fun film it's highly
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successful highly watchable everything about it holds up um even you know 40 years on i i don't think
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there are very many moments that make you cringe or anything like that and uh it's fast it's always
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moving forward it's action-packed um but i do think that kasdan and spielberg were probably more
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important than lucas in terms of imbuing the work with symbolism and meaning that maybe was dormant
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in lucas's mind but which they really brought out to the fore um so anyway that's just a basic
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introduction i would just say i never got to see this film in theaters i don't think i've ever seen
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it in a theater i i would like to uh i was born in 1978 this came out when i was very young um i i think
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i might i i definitely saw the last crusade in theaters but by the mid to late 80s this was the time
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of vhs it was also even before that there was much more of a routine of replaying classic films
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in the theater and so i maybe i did see it in the theater that way but i certainly would watch it and
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re-watch it over again on vhs and uh indiana jones was hugely important my childhood when i was
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i don't know how old i was seven or eight or something i would always dress up like indiana jones
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um at all for all occasions not just halloween so uh it definitely influenced me tremendously in that
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way um mark you you're older than i much older in fact um just joking maybe i did yeah i saw it when
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i was very young in a theater okay interesting and i loved it actually when i was a kid my favorite movie
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um in fact it made much more of an impact on me than uh star wars uh which i liked but i think that um
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i think i liked because i was a kid i liked more like um return of the jedi like i i like the sort of
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the bad films of the star wars though i guess uh there's a lot of bad films in the uh in the star wars
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yeah return of the jedi is looking like a masterpiece after uh yeah yeah uh after the last three when i
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was a kid i was you know i really went for the uh uh the built-in marketing for that um film with the
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ewoks right yes which is formerly the ewoks were supposed to be these um uh chewbacca a race of
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chewbacca's so like a kind of a fairly like badass race but turned them into these uh these teddy bears
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who were killing uh stormtroopers kind of making a mockery though though i mean i guess there's a lot
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of um a lot of the kind of combat in star wars has always been kind of ridiculous um with the
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stormtroopers never really able to hit anyone right um but yeah uh so but i liked um writers the lost
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arc more and i think it's it remains one of the best action films that's ever been made
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yes and a lot of it has to do with the pacing of the film it has this kind of perfect pace um it
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never like slows down and it um i don't know maybe people you know younger people on the call have a
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different sense of that because uh you know the pacing has accelerated in with films uh in some
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ways i suppose but uh it it has uh it's with um radios of lost arc though it's more of a kind of
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you know it's not just it's not just the action it's the kind of tempo of the plot um yeah i i think
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that it's true that movies are more complicated but i i maybe don't have the right words to describe
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this but the the just push forward in the pacing is really remarkable and it's it's it's it's it's
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created some kind of i guess you could say mysteries or just continuity errors like how does he get to
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the island of crete on the submarine you know after when they've been captured by pirates how did he do
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that um there actually is a cut scene i looked this up that explains it but i i think it just
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works you just kind of sit back and take it in and there there is very yeah very fast tempo and just
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this like push linear push towards one goal which just makes it a very exciting and really well crafted
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movie i'm just gonna play this scene because um it's not the most action-packed scene but i think
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it brings up a lot of important things worth talking about
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i had it marcus i had it in my hand what happened yes
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huh belluck you want to hear about it not at all i'm sure everything you do for the museum
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conforms to the international treaty for the protection of antiquity it's beautiful marcus
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i can get it i got it all figured out there's nothing place you can sell it marrakech i need
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two thousand dollars listen to me i brought some people to see you look i got these pieces they're
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good pieces marcus look indiana yes the museum will buy them as usual no questions asked yes they
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are nice they're worth at least the price of a ticket to marrakech but the people i brought
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are important and they're waiting what people the army intelligence i knew you were coming before i did
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see them know everything quickly tell me what they want what do i want to see them for what am i in
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trouble and dr jones we've heard a great deal about you have you professor of archaeology expert on the
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occult and uh how does one to say it obtainer of rare antiquities one way of saying it why don't you
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sit down you'll be more comfortable thank you yes you're a man of many talents you studied under
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professor ravenwood at the university of chicago yes i did you have no idea of his present whereabouts
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uh just rumors really somewhere in asia i think i haven't really spoken to him for 10 years we were
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friends but uh did a bit of a falling out i'm afraid dr jones now you must understand that this
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is all strictly confidential right i understand uh yesterday afternoon our european sections
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intercepted a german communique that was sent from cairo to berlin now you see over the last two years
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the nazis have had teams of archaeologists running around the world looking for all kinds of religious
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artifacts hitler's a nut on the subject he's crazy he's obsessed with the occult and right now
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apparently there's some kind of german archaeological dig going on in the desert outside of cairo now we've
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got some information here but we can't make anything out of it and maybe you can tannis development
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proceeding acquire headpiece staff of ra abner ravenwood u.s nazis have discovered tannis
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just what does that mean to you uh tannis well the city of tannis is one of the possible resting
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places of the lost ark the lost ark yeah the ark of the covenant the chest the hebrews used to carry
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around the ten commandments what do you mean commandment you're talking about the ten
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commandments yes the actual ten commandments the original stone tablets that moses brought down
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out of mont hara have been smashed if you believe in that sort of thing any guys ever go to sunday
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school well oh look the hebrews took the broken pieces and put them in the ark when they settled
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in canaan they put the ark in a place called the temple of solomon in jerusalem where it stayed for
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many years until all of a sudden whoosh is gone where well nobody knows where or when however an
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egyptian pharaoh yes invaded the city of jerusalem run about 980 bc and he may have taken the ark back
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to the city of tannis and hidden it in a secret chamber called the well of souls secret chamber
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however about a year after the pharaoh had returned to egypt the city of tannis was consumed by the
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desert in a sandstorm which lasted a whole year wiped clean by the wrath of god
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obviously we've come to the right man now you seem to know uh all about this tannis
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no no not really ravenwood is the real expert abner did the first serious work on tannis collected
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some of its relics was his obsession really but he never found the city frankly we're somewhat
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suspicious of mr ravenwood american being mentioned so prominently in a secret nazi cable oh rubbish
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ravenwood's no nazi well what are the nazis wanting for then well obviously the nazis are
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looking for the headpiece to the staff of ra and they think abner's got it what exactly is a headpiece
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to the staff of ra well the staff is just a stick i don't know about this big nobody really knows for
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sure how high it's it's uh it's a cap with an elaborate headpiece in the shape of the sun with a
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crystal in the center and what you did was you take the staff to a special room in tannis
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a map room with a miniature of the city all laid out on the floor and if you put the staff in a
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certain place at a certain time of day the sun shone through here and made a beam that came down
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on the floor here and gave you the exact location of the well of the souls where the ark of the
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covenant was kept right which is exactly what the nazis are looking for what does this ark look like
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good god yes that's just what the hebrews thought
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uh now what's that supposed to be coming out of there lightning fire power of god or something
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you don't understand hitler's interest in this oh yes the bible speaks of the ark leveling
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mountains and laying waste to entire regions an army which carries the ark before it
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is invincible okay um that is an exposition scene it's um not the most exciting one uh we we will
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watch some more uh exciting ones together but i i thought this was good because it laid out
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a number of important things and it would just kind of remind you of the uh the film so it is very
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true that hitler was obsessed with the occult and um i i think himler might have been more obsessed
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there there from what we know and i i'm by no means an expert in these matters but but what we know
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there there was interesting there was serious interest um by the national socialist and um uh
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ice theory searching for thor's hammer and the holy grail now they never searched for the ark of the
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covenant um but they were searching for artifacts and i'm sure reports about that there there have been
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some recent books written on this i'm sure they're actually fun reads um but uh by the time this movie
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is being written i'm sure there was some discussion that's going on there might have been some books as
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well and um this got the minds working of lucas and kazan and spielberg and they they created something
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rather interesting and unusual and it's and it's even referenced in the film itself there's there's one
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point where one of the german soldiers said um uh you know uh you know i am very uncomfortable with
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these jewish rituals and there is something there's this thing in indiana jones where you know indiana
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jones he's a scholar and he doesn't believe in hocus pocus but then you kind of the supernatural
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enters the world of the film and and you in some ways believe in what's happening um but there's also
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this interesting aspect of why would the nazis want to get their hands on the ark of the covenant
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if we believe that they are uh anti-semites to say the least or or kind of um uh crypto pagans
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the very least um convert conversos but to uh catholicism in hitler's case and uh german protestant
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protestantism and others but people who are a regime that's much more interested in paganism if
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anything much like the soviet union was um uh i guess kind of esoterically atheistic but uh in many
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cases exoterically uh orthodox why would they want to get their hands on this and would it work is that
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is this going to be an invincible army i mean just you know the image is it's really provocative and
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it and it gets the plot going it raises the stakes for the film but the notion of nazis marching around
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with the ark of the covenant you know shooting light beams uh from the 10 commandments destroying
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armies i mean it's a it's a rather ridiculous image when you think about it and it seems to get at a
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basic discontinuity or or maybe that's not the right word a basic kind of conflation of very
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different things going on here but the stakes are as set out in the scene that we don't want
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to allow the nazis to get their hands on judaism and that's important to the plot but i think it's also
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extremely important in how we understand this film uh mark do you want to jump in in terms of
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anything that i just said or or also like tanis the staff of raw which is egyptian they're going
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you know they're going to be in cairo for a third of the film etc um you can pick up on anything
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yeah no i mean there's a lot that's kind of revealing about the film that i think says a lot
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about you know the screenwriter and and the director of the film and kind of an understanding
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of um you know i think some things that um the gentile audiences may not pick up on as readily or
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as quickly like there's you know basically we have these jewish filmmakers and it seems like there is a
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kind of they're revealing a kind of deeper sense of history um essentially uh held by jews than
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gentiles and i mean that this is sort of i i think that jones at least in his original conception is a
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kind of um intended as a crypto jewish figure um and there's a number of reasons to believe that but
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in someone um i think kurt actually was making the observation it's like part of the esotericism of the
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film is the fact that um indiana jones kind of knows more than everyone else right he understands
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the topic better than everyone else um and that that almost is itself a kind of esoteric dimension
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of the film where if we understand him as a crypto jewish figure he he has more uh sort of gnostic
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wisdom as it were um or just has a better instinct uh for understanding the archaeology um and there's
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the metaphor of the metaphor of archaeology equaling religion is kind of made explicitly in the film
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um he has a rival uh named uh belloc this the his french uh sort of antagonist in the film
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who he who's his kind of uh rival as an archaeologist uh but he even says explicitly in the film
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archaeology is our religion right so we have an understanding that
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uh archaeology in the film uh archaeology in the film becomes a metaphor i would argue for religion
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and it's even sort of stated somewhat explicitly in the film as a kind of clue uh to that subtext
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and um the character belloc is in my mind he's evidently a reference to uh uh hillard belloc
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right um who was a um a uh a french uh english french uh historian um writer um who was uh you know he
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essentially had some anti-semitic tracks or what would be considered anti-semitic tracks um in his
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writing in his uh thinking um uh you know certainly they would be considered that now but i think at the
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time he was when he was writing he was more of an ambivalent figure so he wouldn't be like a
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a pro-nazi figure and he and he would be against the sort of racialism of uh you know nazism and we
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know the type but he's he's basically a catholic anti-semit um and that was um now again was he an
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anti-semit it becomes it it some of the things he said were kind of philo-semitic so we could
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understand him as a kind of ambivalent figure and i think that that's sort of intended with this his
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um standing in the film uh uh i think his name is uh emil belloc is the name of the character in the
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film um let's actually just watch that scene since you brought it up because it's a it's a good scene
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and he it's one of those you know where the villain goes the protagonist says you're not we're not so
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different to you and i he i think he literally says that actually um you can think of austin powers
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but there's actually much more in there because he it's it's also revealed that both belloc and
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indiana jones are atheist on on some level and it's let me play it i don't want to take words out of its
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how odd that it should end this way for us after so many stimulating encounters almost regret it
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when shall i find a new adversary so close to my own level try the local sewer
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you and i are very much alike archaeology is our religion yet we have both fallen from the pure faith
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our methods have not differed as much as you pretend i am a shadowy reflection of you
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don't take only a nudge to make you like me to push you out of the light now you're getting nasty
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you know it's true how nice look at this it's worthless ten dollars from a vendor in the street
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but i take it i buried in the sand for a thousand years it becomes priceless
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like the ark men will kill for it men like you and me what about your boss
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the fuhrer i thought he was waiting to take possession all in good time when i'm finished with
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it jones do you realize what the ark is it's a transmitter it's a radio for speaking
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to god and it's within my reach you want to talk to god let's go see him together
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all right yeah so i mean i guess that um just just to further my point um so uh and belloc
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um is evidently you know he also i guess he um uh he's considered as well a reference to another
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figure who was a uh kind of more explicitly a pro-nazi of the period uh jacques de mailloux
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i think his pronunciation i'll put his name in the chat um after i'm done speaking but
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jacques jacques de mailloux i think is the name but he was a catholic nationalist um but he was also
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an esotericist and he was interested in the idea that um you know the uh one of the reasons it's
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argued that um you know that that early scene takes place uh in south america is because he was
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interested in arguments suggesting for example um you know that uh that nordic races founded uh the
00:24:58.060
aztec civilization and this sort of thing um or that the vikings had traveled to south america
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at an early period um you know so it was that so he's a reference to that sort of figure a kind
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of esotericist in a a an occultist but also evidently in my mind a reference to a uh hillar
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belloc um who again is is one of these um uh you could say he's ambivalent he was ambivalent for his
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period but we can class him you know from uh spielberg's perspective as a kind of a catholic
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anti-semite essentially and and i think that's probably a kind of fair characterization of the
00:25:37.780
guy actually um but so he um is represented in this film by this archaeologist um or he you know
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the archaeologist we can understand is a kind of composite character who includes a kind of
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reference to this real historical figure um but what does that real historical figure represent he
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represents the catholic ultimately so what i would argue is what we're seeing is the kind of rivalry
00:26:05.700
between a jew um and a catholic in that scene now um there uh as far as well why is indiana jones a jew
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i mean i think there are clues in the film that point to this um you know one is i guess you could
00:26:24.320
one is you could argue is his sort of better understanding of the archaeology right so he's
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understood kind of implicitly as a better archaeologist than his catholic rival who has a poor understanding
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of um you know the archaeology uh specific to the ark and also you know in in the famous scene at the
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end um uh indiana jones uh is familiar with the lore so he knows that you don't look into the ark or
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or you'll be killed for example and this is this is information that um uh belloc is is lacking
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right so that might be one clue uh you know again in uh gem names are of of massive significance um
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so names are a kind of important symbol that's used to convey meaning uh and often names uh indicate
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ethnicity but here the trick here is that often it's in most commonly um almost always it's
00:27:23.240
the name meaning that's significant as opposed to you know i mean jones is obviously a kind of
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english name a kind of waspy name so we wouldn't suspect indiana jones to be a jewish character
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based on his name um if if we were just basing it on sort of the origin or the seeming origin of the
00:27:40.720
name which appears to be wasp english um but the name jones means um son of john and son of john
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the baptist in particular and there's reasons to believe you know looking at the symbolism of the
00:27:54.520
new testament he's the um son of uh elizabeth and he might also be the son i argue of of the angel
00:28:03.180
through a kind of visitation she has with an angel um but i argue that he's essentially a kind of jewish
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character and this is the character that baptizes jesus christ um and so that that name might be a jewish
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identifier uh but there are other other kind of aspects to the film where it seems like there's a
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kind of bride competition going on between a clearly gentile figure in belloc and indiana june jones
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they're vying for uh marion ravenwood right so that would be another indication and and there are also
00:28:38.700
indications in the names um you know with marion ravenwood often raven for example becomes a symbol