AFI #66: Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because when I started, the damned cinemas are closed and I had to review something, and now I can't stop.

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Steven Spielberg.

Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm Elliott.

The eyes of the idol really followed you around the room.

Every Saturday, back when I was about 10 years old, my brother and I walked up the dusty dirt road we lived on to our neighbours' house, parked ourselves in front of the TV with the other kids, and watched a VHS tape of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. We did this for so many Saturdays I lost count.

This weekend ritual would be followed by all the adventures I could muster in my imagine - the hay shed became an ancient temple, a copse of trees became a perilous journey over molten lava, four-wheel motorbikes became the location for rolling battles with imaginary Nazis.

Before I understood what "cinema" was as an artform, before I understood movies, before I understood film as something to study and devour and drown in, I understood that Raiders Of The Lost Ark was the greatest movie of all time.

It's certainly my favourite movie of all time, so reviewing it is absurdly difficult. To me, it's the perfect film, and its clearly visible flaws only add to its perfection. 

But watching it for the umpteenth time, this time with my underwhelmed nine-year-old, I was struck by how beautiful it looked. 

Just look at this shot:

Or the composition and use of shadow here:

And here:

Or even this shot, in the midst of a fight scene:

This is Spielberg and his cinematographer Douglas Slocombe taking what could've been a mere pastiche of '50s adventures films and treating it like the pure cinema it deserved to be treated as. 

And then there are the scenes, each one iconic, one after the other. Screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan has said his job was basically to link the set pieces together - from the booby-trapped resting place of the fallen idol to the Nepalese bar-room brawl, from the discovery of the Ark to the escape from the snake-filled Well of Souls, from the fist fight with added propellers to going under the truck, all leading to the face-melting conclusion. It's the very definition of "rollicking adventure".

Kasdan is selling himself short though. We definitely remember the action, but the bits in between are glorious. Perhaps the best is the scene where the MacGuffin gets introduced via a careful conversation between Indy, Marcus and two military men. It's wonderfully measured at first, before it hints at something unnerving - we learn about the Staff of Ra and the Ark of the Covenant in a clinical fashion, but we get a strong sense of foreboding as they discuss Hitler and "the power of God". We also get to see another side to Indy. He's a learned scholar, with a healthy yet respectful dose of skepticism, rendered beautifully by Ford. 

Which brings us to the not-so-secret weapon of Raiders. Harrison Ford was already a star, his face on a million lunchboxes as Han Solo, but Indy made him an icon, a legend, and the goddamn GOAT. The way he effortlessly flips from lopsided smile and "I don't know - I'm making this up as I go" nonchalance to teeth-gritted glare is under-rated. Ford sells the moments of "are you seeing this shit?" dumb luck just as much as he sells complexity of his relationship with Marion (Allen). It's this ability to flick from comedy to drama at the drop of a fedora that helped make him such a star.

Allen's no slouch in this either, keeping up with Ford every step of the way. The script subverts the damsel in distress trope just as often as it leans into it, and Allen hits every moment in that complicated journey. Her star would never shine as bright again as it did in Raiders, but her imprint on this film is indelible and vital.

I could go on and on about all the things that make Raiders so incredible, but again, I realise the futility in trying to separate my critique from my own nostalgia. Watching it spirits me back to my childhood every time. It returns me to a tree-climbing innocence, when there was nothing more incredible than a stuntman sliding under a moving vehicle, and punching Nazis in the face was the right thing to do, and  Raiders was the greatest movie of all time.

And some things never change. Punching Nazis in the face is still the right thing to do, and Raiders is still the greatest movie of all time.