RadixJournal - Movie Night： Raiders of the Lost Ark

00:00:00.000 indiana jones and the raiders of the lost ark it was originally titled raiders of the lost ark but

00:00:06.800 they built a franchise around it and added in the indiana jones moniker uh 1980

00:00:14.460 it was preceded by two films from spielberg that were wildly successful jaws and close

00:00:25.820 encounters of the third kind which mark and i have also talked to and are very worth analyzing

00:00:32.460 um it also included spielberg's notable flop um he's he's had some flops late in life i guess but

00:00:44.300 when he was a up-and-coming director a flop was probably more damaging that was 1941 which is

00:00:51.740 kind of a forgotten film hardly ever gets discussed i actually have not seen it

00:00:56.160 um and then he produced this with the uh characters imagined by george lucas and uh the story by george

00:01:06.580 lucas and uh he was the director and then i i think the key figure in writing this film was

00:01:13.320 lawrence kasdan who is probably uh even more famous for writing the empire strikes back

00:01:24.020 and he actually deserves a tremendous amount of credit for the empire strikes back um george lucas

00:01:32.960 lengths to imagine that you know he had this i don't know nine film saga in his mind or something and

00:01:40.260 he could only do little parts of it at a time and and all of that is uh uh delusional or or just

00:01:48.060 outright lie he was lucas was making it up as he went along and kasdan was very important in

00:01:57.580 creating the empire strikes back as it is with uh vader being revealed as luke's father with the uh

00:02:07.660 severing of luke's hand with meeting his father in the cave and seeing his own face behind the mask

00:02:13.120 that kind of freudian element you could say was definitely added by kasdan i do think that george

00:02:21.840 lucas came up with the idea of um combining different characters and making darth vader luke's father but

00:02:28.740 i i still would almost give kasdan credit he he deepened what could have been a kind of comic book

00:02:36.960 serial type film which raiders of the lost ark is as well uh so lawrence kasdan is a a brilliant guy

00:02:46.360 and i i think mark would second me in saying that he is extremely rem or gem aware that is racial

00:02:57.340 esoteric esoteric moralization or jewish esoteric moralization and this is a deeply symbolic work

00:03:06.800 i could imagine george lucas because he was such a fan of these saturday afternoon serials and

00:03:14.200 making films that were you know meet immediately accessible to an audience that remind us of comic

00:03:23.600 books or pulp fiction or i think it's republic pictures films stuff from his childhood that

00:03:30.720 was pulpy and that he loved and kind of bringing that to a audience in the late 70s and 80s i i think

00:03:40.180 this could have just been that and that's of course good enough um it's a very fun film it's highly

00:03:48.340 successful highly watchable everything about it holds up um even you know 40 years on i i don't think

00:03:56.500 there are very many moments that make you cringe or anything like that and uh it's fast it's always

00:04:04.520 moving forward it's action-packed um but i do think that kasdan and spielberg were probably more

00:04:12.860 important than lucas in terms of imbuing the work with symbolism and meaning that maybe was dormant

00:04:24.960 in lucas's mind but which they really brought out to the fore um so anyway that's just a basic

00:04:32.660 introduction i would just say i never got to see this film in theaters i don't think i've ever seen

00:04:37.740 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

00:04:47.300 i might i i definitely saw the last crusade in theaters but by the mid to late 80s this was the time

00:04:54.700 of vhs it was also even before that there was much more of a routine of replaying classic films

00:05:02.520 in the theater and so i maybe i did see it in the theater that way but i certainly would watch it and

00:05:08.940 re-watch it over again on vhs and uh indiana jones was hugely important my childhood when i was

00:05:17.260 i don't know how old i was seven or eight or something i would always dress up like indiana jones

00:05:22.400 um at all for all occasions not just halloween so uh it definitely influenced me tremendously in that

00:05:32.960 way um mark you you're older than i much older in fact um just joking maybe i did yeah i saw it when

00:05:43.280 i was very young in a theater okay interesting and i loved it actually when i was a kid my favorite movie

00:05:49.100 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

00:05:57.400 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

00:06:04.900 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

00:06:11.160 yeah return of the jedi is looking like a masterpiece after uh yeah yeah uh after the last three when i

00:06:17.440 was a kid i was you know i really went for the uh uh the built-in marketing for that um film with the

00:06:25.020 ewoks right yes which is formerly the ewoks were supposed to be these um uh chewbacca a race of 1.00

00:06:31.420 chewbacca's so like a kind of a fairly like badass race but turned them into these uh these teddy bears 0.99

00:06:39.100 who were killing uh stormtroopers kind of making a mockery though though i mean i guess there's a lot

00:06:45.520 of um a lot of the kind of combat in star wars has always been kind of ridiculous um with the

00:06:51.660 stormtroopers never really able to hit anyone right um but yeah uh so but i liked um writers the lost

00:07:02.320 arc more and i think it's it remains one of the best action films that's ever been made

00:07:08.140 yes and a lot of it has to do with the pacing of the film it has this kind of perfect pace um it

00:07:16.320 never like slows down and it um i don't know maybe people you know younger people on the call have a

00:07:23.100 different sense of that because uh you know the pacing has accelerated in with films uh in some

00:07:30.660 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

00:07:37.180 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

00:07:44.900 that it's true that movies are more complicated but i i maybe don't have the right words to describe

00:07:53.360 this but the the just push forward in the pacing is really remarkable and it's it's it's it's it's

00:08:03.000 created some kind of i guess you could say mysteries or just continuity errors like how does he get to

00:08:10.660 the island of crete on the submarine you know after when they've been captured by pirates how did he do

00:08:17.160 that um there actually is a cut scene i looked this up that explains it but i i think it just

00:08:24.780 works you just kind of sit back and take it in and there there is very yeah very fast tempo and just

00:08:31.400 this like push linear push towards one goal which just makes it a very exciting and really well crafted

00:08:39.160 movie i'm just gonna play this scene because um it's not the most action-packed scene but i think

00:08:44.800 it brings up a lot of important things worth talking about

00:08:49.040 i had it marcus i had it in my hand what happened yes

00:09:01.000 huh belluck you want to hear about it not at all i'm sure everything you do for the museum

00:09:08.680 conforms to the international treaty for the protection of antiquity it's beautiful marcus

00:09:12.920 i can get it i got it all figured out there's nothing place you can sell it marrakech i need

00:09:17.080 two thousand dollars listen to me i brought some people to see you look i got these pieces they're

00:09:22.780 good pieces marcus look indiana yes the museum will buy them as usual no questions asked yes they

00:09:29.300 are nice they're worth at least the price of a ticket to marrakech but the people i brought

00:09:32.380 are important and they're waiting what people the army intelligence i knew you were coming before i did

00:09:38.220 see them know everything quickly tell me what they want what do i want to see them for what am i in

00:09:44.280 trouble and dr jones we've heard a great deal about you have you professor of archaeology expert on the

00:09:52.880 occult and uh how does one to say it obtainer of rare antiquities one way of saying it why don't you

00:09:59.460 sit down you'll be more comfortable thank you yes you're a man of many talents you studied under

00:10:06.420 professor ravenwood at the university of chicago yes i did you have no idea of his present whereabouts

00:10:13.920 uh just rumors really somewhere in asia i think i haven't really spoken to him for 10 years we were

00:10:21.000 friends but uh did a bit of a falling out i'm afraid dr jones now you must understand that this

00:10:29.600 is all strictly confidential right i understand uh yesterday afternoon our european sections

00:10:38.760 intercepted a german communique that was sent from cairo to berlin now you see over the last two years

00:10:46.120 the nazis have had teams of archaeologists running around the world looking for all kinds of religious

00:10:50.840 artifacts hitler's a nut on the subject he's crazy he's obsessed with the occult and right now

00:10:57.700 apparently there's some kind of german archaeological dig going on in the desert outside of cairo now we've

00:11:03.080 got some information here but we can't make anything out of it and maybe you can tannis development

00:11:09.380 proceeding acquire headpiece staff of ra abner ravenwood u.s nazis have discovered tannis

00:11:19.660 just what does that mean to you uh tannis well the city of tannis is one of the possible resting

00:11:25.760 places of the lost ark the lost ark yeah the ark of the covenant the chest the hebrews used to carry 0.99

00:11:31.420 around the ten commandments what do you mean commandment you're talking about the ten

00:11:34.600 commandments yes the actual ten commandments the original stone tablets that moses brought down

00:11:39.780 out of mont hara have been smashed if you believe in that sort of thing any guys ever go to sunday

00:11:44.940 school well oh look the hebrews took the broken pieces and put them in the ark when they settled 0.99

00:11:50.560 in canaan they put the ark in a place called the temple of solomon in jerusalem where it stayed for

00:11:55.720 many years until all of a sudden whoosh is gone where well nobody knows where or when however an

00:12:02.580 egyptian pharaoh yes invaded the city of jerusalem run about 980 bc and he may have taken the ark back

00:12:08.980 to the city of tannis and hidden it in a secret chamber called the well of souls secret chamber

00:12:15.100 however about a year after the pharaoh had returned to egypt the city of tannis was consumed by the

00:12:21.740 desert in a sandstorm which lasted a whole year wiped clean by the wrath of god

00:12:27.360 obviously we've come to the right man now you seem to know uh all about this tannis

00:12:35.740 no no not really ravenwood is the real expert abner did the first serious work on tannis collected

00:12:41.920 some of its relics was his obsession really but he never found the city frankly we're somewhat 0.95

00:12:49.320 suspicious of mr ravenwood american being mentioned so prominently in a secret nazi cable oh rubbish 0.82

00:12:55.900 ravenwood's no nazi well what are the nazis wanting for then well obviously the nazis are

00:13:01.640 looking for the headpiece to the staff of ra and they think abner's got it what exactly is a headpiece

00:13:07.360 to the staff of ra well the staff is just a stick i don't know about this big nobody really knows for

00:13:12.440 sure how high it's it's uh it's a cap with an elaborate headpiece in the shape of the sun with a

00:13:20.060 crystal in the center and what you did was you take the staff to a special room in tannis

00:13:25.680 a map room with a miniature of the city all laid out on the floor and if you put the staff in a

00:13:30.000 certain place at a certain time of day the sun shone through here and made a beam that came down

00:13:34.960 on the floor here and gave you the exact location of the well of the souls where the ark of the

00:13:41.360 covenant was kept right which is exactly what the nazis are looking for what does this ark look like

00:13:46.060 was a picture of it right here that's it

00:13:55.660 good god yes that's just what the hebrews thought

00:14:06.680 uh now what's that supposed to be coming out of there lightning fire power of god or something

00:14:15.380 you don't understand hitler's interest in this oh yes the bible speaks of the ark leveling

00:14:23.460 mountains and laying waste to entire regions an army which carries the ark before it 1.00

00:14:29.760 is invincible okay um that is an exposition scene it's um not the most exciting one uh we we will

00:14:44.520 watch some more uh exciting ones together but i i thought this was good because it laid out

00:14:51.760 a number of important things and it would just kind of remind you of the uh the film so it is very

00:15:00.860 true that hitler was obsessed with the occult and um i i think himler might have been more obsessed

00:15:09.820 there there from what we know and i i'm by no means an expert in these matters but but what we know

00:15:16.280 there there was interesting there was serious interest um by the national socialist and um uh

00:15:24.020 ice theory searching for thor's hammer and the holy grail now they never searched for the ark of the

00:15:31.520 covenant um but they were searching for artifacts and i'm sure reports about that there there have been

00:15:39.060 some recent books written on this i'm sure they're actually fun reads um but uh by the time this movie

00:15:47.500 is being written i'm sure there was some discussion that's going on there might have been some books as

00:15:51.400 well and um this got the minds working of lucas and kazan and spielberg and they they created something

00:16:00.620 rather interesting and unusual and it's and it's even referenced in the film itself there's there's one

00:16:06.340 point where one of the german soldiers said um uh you know uh you know i am very uncomfortable with

00:16:13.460 these jewish rituals and there is something there's this thing in indiana jones where you know indiana

00:16:21.920 jones he's a scholar and he doesn't believe in hocus pocus but then you kind of the supernatural

00:16:27.340 enters the world of the film and and you in some ways believe in what's happening um but there's also

00:16:35.760 this interesting aspect of why would the nazis want to get their hands on the ark of the covenant

00:16:43.180 if we believe that they are uh anti-semites to say the least or or kind of um uh crypto pagans

00:16:53.600 the very least um convert conversos but to uh catholicism in hitler's case and uh german protestant

00:17:02.680 protestantism and others but people who are a regime that's much more interested in paganism if

00:17:08.560 anything much like the soviet union was um uh i guess kind of esoterically atheistic but uh in many

00:17:16.900 cases exoterically uh orthodox why would they want to get their hands on this and would it work is that

00:17:25.940 is this going to be an invincible army i mean just you know the image is it's really provocative and

00:17:32.000 it and it gets the plot going it raises the stakes for the film but the notion of nazis marching around

00:17:39.080 with the ark of the covenant you know shooting light beams uh from the 10 commandments destroying

00:17:46.240 armies i mean it's a it's a rather ridiculous image when you think about it and it seems to get at a

00:17:53.600 basic discontinuity or or maybe that's not the right word a basic kind of conflation of very

00:18:02.320 different things going on here but the stakes are as set out in the scene that we don't want

00:18:10.300 to allow the nazis to get their hands on judaism and that's important to the plot but i think it's also

00:18:19.480 extremely important in how we understand this film uh mark do you want to jump in in terms of

00:18:25.220 anything that i just said or or also like tanis the staff of raw which is egyptian they're going

00:18:32.620 you know they're going to be in cairo for a third of the film etc um you can pick up on anything

00:18:37.780 yeah no i mean there's a lot that's kind of revealing about the film that i think says a lot

00:18:44.100 about you know the screenwriter and and the director of the film and kind of an understanding

00:18:49.980 of um you know i think some things that um the gentile audiences may not pick up on as readily or

00:19:00.920 as quickly like there's you know basically we have these jewish filmmakers and it seems like there is a

00:19:06.600 kind of they're revealing a kind of deeper sense of history um essentially uh held by jews than 0.92

00:19:14.800 gentiles and i mean that this is sort of i i think that jones at least in his original conception is a

00:19:21.500 kind of um intended as a crypto jewish figure um and there's a number of reasons to believe that but

00:19:28.680 in someone um i think kurt actually was making the observation it's like part of the esotericism of the

00:19:35.660 film is the fact that um indiana jones kind of knows more than everyone else right he understands

00:19:42.100 the topic better than everyone else um and that that almost is itself a kind of esoteric dimension

00:19:49.520 of the film where if we understand him as a crypto jewish figure he he has more uh sort of gnostic

00:19:55.860 wisdom as it were um or just has a better instinct uh for understanding the archaeology um and there's

00:20:04.000 the metaphor of the metaphor of archaeology equaling religion is kind of made explicitly in the film

00:20:10.080 um he has a rival uh named uh belloc this the his french uh sort of antagonist in the film

00:20:19.440 who he who's his kind of uh rival as an archaeologist uh but he even says explicitly in the film

00:20:26.500 archaeology is our religion right so we have an understanding that

00:20:30.480 uh archaeology in the film uh archaeology in the film becomes a metaphor i would argue for religion

00:20:36.040 and it's even sort of stated somewhat explicitly in the film as a kind of clue uh to that subtext

00:20:42.760 and um the character belloc is in my mind he's evidently a reference to uh uh hillard belloc

00:20:52.880 right um who was a um a uh a french uh english french uh historian um writer um who was uh you know he

00:21:05.780 essentially had some anti-semitic tracks or what would be considered anti-semitic tracks um in his

00:21:12.820 writing in his uh thinking um uh you know certainly they would be considered that now but i think at the

00:21:20.520 time he was when he was writing he was more of an ambivalent figure so he wouldn't be like a

00:21:25.260 a pro-nazi figure and he and he would be against the sort of racialism of uh you know nazism and we

00:21:33.860 know the type but he's he's basically a catholic anti-semit um and that was um now again was he an

00:21:41.840 anti-semit it becomes it it some of the things he said were kind of philo-semitic so we could

00:21:47.440 understand him as a kind of ambivalent figure and i think that that's sort of intended with this his

00:21:52.540 um standing in the film uh uh i think his name is uh emil belloc is the name of the character in the

00:22:01.580 film um let's actually just watch that scene since you brought it up because it's a it's a good scene

00:22:07.580 and he it's one of those you know where the villain goes the protagonist says you're not we're not so

00:22:12.380 different to you and i he i think he literally says that actually um you can think of austin powers

00:22:18.080 but there's actually much more in there because he it's it's also revealed that both belloc and

00:22:24.460 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

00:22:30.080 how odd that it should end this way for us after so many stimulating encounters almost regret it

00:22:36.780 when shall i find a new adversary so close to my own level try the local sewer

00:22:41.980 you and i are very much alike archaeology is our religion yet we have both fallen from the pure faith

00:22:52.900 our methods have not differed as much as you pretend i am a shadowy reflection of you

00:23:00.140 don't take only a nudge to make you like me to push you out of the light now you're getting nasty

00:23:07.880 you know it's true how nice look at this it's worthless ten dollars from a vendor in the street

00:23:19.440 but i take it i buried in the sand for a thousand years it becomes priceless

00:23:23.720 like the ark men will kill for it men like you and me what about your boss

00:23:32.140 the fuhrer i thought he was waiting to take possession all in good time when i'm finished with

00:23:41.340 it jones do you realize what the ark is it's a transmitter it's a radio for speaking

00:23:49.300 to god and it's within my reach you want to talk to god let's go see him together

00:23:58.640 all right yeah so i mean i guess that um just just to further my point um so uh and belloc

00:24:07.980 um is evidently you know he also i guess he um uh he's considered as well a reference to another

00:24:15.180 figure who was a uh kind of more explicitly a pro-nazi of the period uh jacques de mailloux

00:24:23.780 i think his pronunciation i'll put his name in the chat um after i'm done speaking but

00:24:29.180 jacques jacques de mailloux i think is the name but he was a catholic nationalist um but he was also

00:24:37.140 an esotericist and he was interested in the idea that um you know the uh one of the reasons it's

00:24:44.140 argued that um you know that that early scene takes place uh in south america is because he was

00:24:51.020 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

00:25:04.800 at an early period um you know so it was that so he's a reference to that sort of figure a kind

00:25:11.980 of esotericist in a a an occultist but also evidently in my mind a reference to a uh hillar

00:25:19.700 belloc um who again is is one of these um uh you could say he's ambivalent he was ambivalent for his

00:25:27.220 period but we can class him you know from uh spielberg's perspective as a kind of a catholic

00:25:33.380 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

00:25:46.460 the archaeologist we can understand is a kind of composite character who includes a kind of

00:25:52.320 reference to this real historical figure um but what does that real historical figure represent he

00:25:58.920 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

00:26:17.220 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

00:26:30.080 understood kind of implicitly as a better archaeologist than his catholic rival who has a poor understanding

00:26:37.340 of um you know the archaeology uh specific to the ark and also you know in in the famous scene at the

00:26:45.340 end um uh indiana jones uh is familiar with the lore so he knows that you don't look into the ark or

00:26:53.440 or you'll be killed for example and this is this is information that um uh belloc is is lacking

00:26:59.020 right so that might be one clue uh you know again in uh gem names are of of massive significance um

00:27:07.460 so names are a kind of important symbol that's used to convey meaning uh and often names uh indicate

00:27:15.820 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

00:27:28.320 english name a kind of waspy name so we wouldn't suspect indiana jones to be a jewish character

00:27:34.060 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

00:27:49.440 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

00:28:09.860 character and this is the character that baptizes jesus christ um and so that that name might be a jewish

00:28:15.880 identifier uh but there are other other kind of aspects to the film where it seems like there's a

00:28:22.000 kind of bride competition going on between a clearly gentile figure in belloc and indiana june jones 0.96

00:28:30.680 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

00:28:45.860 of uh racial cuckoldry i argue in gem

00:28:49.140 you

RadixJournal - May 19, 2023

Movie Night： Raiders of the Lost Ark

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