Indiana Jones can't beat the clock. Is that the point?

by Amar Patel in

I went to see Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny on my 44th birthday, on a whim. It was as melancholy and indifferent a visit to the cinema as I have ever had. Perhaps this was because I was on my own and pondering the passage of time a little too much. 

Or … it might be because I am tired of Hollywood studios trying to milk the public's goodwill in long-cherished movies and characters. Like most children of the 80s, I am very protective of Indy. The original trilogy seemed to say all that need to be said on screen about the irascible yet charismatic archaeologist and his swashbuckling quests for great artifacts of ancient history. 

Don't get me wrong. I was excited and willing to be swept up in the big-screen experience, whether it was built on nostalgia or new inspiration. But I just don't see the point in attempting these sequels unless the main character faces a distinct set of new challenges. Ones that ask different questions and change them irrevocably somehow.

I am thinking of what this film’s director, James Mangold, did with the Wolverine character in Logan (alongside co-screenwriters Michael Green and Scott Frank). It doesn't try to keep pace with previous films, sub in analogous action choreography or preserve the hero in time. It really presses into the flesh of his vulnerabilities, his fallibility and his … destiny. Mangold’s ensemble piece Cop Land is also a favourite of mine, presenting a different image of masculine heroism in the form of a diffident and portly Sylvester Stallone.

Now I'm sure the cast and crew of the latest installment had good intentions. I've just been reading the thoughts of visual effects supervisor Andrew Whitehurst, who remembers watching a BBC Horizon special on the making of Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom at the age of nine. That was his introduction to visual effects! Forty years later, there he was at the helm of the same department and you can sense his sincere desire to honour the legacy. Director/co-writer Mangold too, no doubt.

But something was missing. The frisson of a whip crack, a de-aged Ford in that convoluted prologue, a bespectacled Nazi villain, a thunderslap of a punch, tracing voyages on antiquated maps, a John Rhys-Davies cameo, even the glorious overture of John Williams' score… It takes more than that to summon the magic of those earlier films. 

As is often the case, writing is critical to a film's measure of suspense and conflict. I found the script leaden and a little too complex when referring to the Antikythera. On paper, the logic in choosing Archimedes' Dial to pursue is sound. Ford has endorsed going beyond religious relics to consider something even more universal like science. 

The director felt that having the chance to write the wrongs of the past could be a rich narrative. “The moment I knew the movie was about time, opportunities missed, opportunities lost, choices made, irrevocable mistakes, then the question [became], ‘What would be the only thing that would allow me to fix time itself?’” explains Mangold.” 

Being able to locate fissures in time is kind of a big deal, especially if you're trying to change history and win the war like Mads Mikkelsen's character Jurgen Voller. For me, this MacGuffin didn’t hold the same awe and fascination as the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stones or the Holy Grail. I couldn't see the same hunger in Indy's eyes, either, despite him saying, "I've been looking for this all my life".

The race to find the other half of the dial is what drives the story. But once it's completed and activated, I found their destination a little bizarre. I lost interest. Though seeing Indy plead to remain in the past, where he has roamed and dwelled for much of his life, does provide one of the film's more affecting scenes. History is his passion but in that moment it also promises relief to his anguish. Had he used the dial to try and save his son from enlisting, that could have been more compelling. A little to Back to the Future though, perhaps?

Destiny is a big part of this apparently closing chapter. I couldn't sense that level of jeopardy, could you? There's no dramatic transformation or realisation for Ford's character. His life does change but not through his own actions. If that's the purpose of the film – to remind us that our destiny is not always in our own hands – then ok, but the pay-off wasn't satisfying enough. I'm more of a riding-off-into-the-sunset kinda guy.

Nicholas Barber wrote in BBC Culture: "I'm not sure how many fans want to see Indiana Jones as a broken, helpless old man who cowers in the corner while his patronising goddaughter [a good-value Phoebe Waller-Bridge, it must be said] takes the lead, but that's what we're given, and it's as bleak as it sounds." 

Indy is a little more involved than that. but I take his point. Is this how we want to remember one of the great on-screen adventurers? Let him age, yes, but in our imaginations and comment sections. As for revealing cracks in the macho carapace of the guy Kate Capshaw's Willie Scott labelled "a conceited ape" in the second movie, most of us come to the cinema for fantasy or escapism. Not to face reality.

Vulture’s Matt Zoller Seitz has a different take in his compassionate pierce about the ravages of time and how Ford excels at playing action heroes swept away by forces larger than them. “The clock is running out for Indy, for Ford, for all of us. That’s why it’s so right that Dial of Destiny focuses on time and the yearning to roll it back and redo history, or just start again in a place where no one knows you. Even if such things could happen, the script implies, they shouldn’t. Ford is the weathered face of this truth.”

Writing also makes characters snap, crackle and pop. It provides the spark. It gives licence to actors to entertain audiences even when they are up against it – a hallmark of these films at their calamitous best. But I got more joy from that slapstick moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy drops on his arse, stunned by the power of Pat Roach's first punch, than the whole of The Dial of Destiny. 

So Barber is also right to lament the lack of exuberance and hijinks in trifling moments, like when Indy tries to get away during the Apollo 11 parade down Fifth Avenue. Or when he comes face to face with snake-like eels. You would have thought that the likes of Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem) could do better than that.

You will be entertained on this extravagant “victory lap” but it's a faint echo of Indiana Jones at its best. (An echo of an echo if you look closely at source material such as Secret of the Incas starring Charlton Heston. Was anything ever ‘original’ in this industry?) Not everything that can be made, should be made. I’m not saying he belongs in a museum. Let Indy’s legend swagger into the annals of cinema.

PS The appearance of Antonio Banderas as Indy’s sailor buddy Renaldo must be one of the most pointless cameos in movie history. He is worth so much more.



Amar Patel

Sisters were doin' it

by Amar Patel in ,

Have you watched Lisa Rovner’s documentary Sisters with Transistors? It’s every bit the revelation you would expect from this trailer. Witness the great leaps that a league of extraordinary women took in experimental music as far back as the 1950s.

As narrator Laurie Anderson says, these artists didn't just aim to make new compositions, they set out to change the way we listen, regardless of acclaim or exclusion. Largely lone explorers though kindred spirits, they used sound waves and frequencies as their malleable orchestra, transmitting new ideas and possibilities. In turn, their pieces became our transporters.

I sat there stunned, unable to fathom how this music was being made or what it was doing to me, regardless of any explanations offered. Every track, whether it was by Daphne Oram, Wendy Carlos, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel (pictured above), Delia Derbyshire, Maryanne Amacher, Bebe Barron (with husband Louis), Éliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros or Clara Rockmore still feels like drifting giddily into a strange new world. 

You may know some of these names through little flecks of recognition they have been granted. Derbyshire created the original Dr Who theme. Oram was a co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Seeing her demonstrate Oramics, where notations on 35mm film were converted into synthesised music, was magic. Show that to kids in school.

Barron co-created the score for Forbidden Planet though it was brushed off as "sonic tonalities" in the credits. Ciani was the first woman to score a Hollywood film (The Incredible Shrinking Woman) and a go-to composer in the commercials world, making a sonic signature for the Coca-Cola bottle. We see her giving Letterman a demo on his show. Spiegel worked at Bell Labs in the early 70s and went on to develop Music Mouse, which turned the Mac into a musical instrument.

Carlos was instrumental in conjuring the foreboding mood at the beginning of Kubrick's The Shining and A Clockwork Orange – you can read her memories of working with the fastidious director here – as well as Tron's virtual wonder. While her 1968 album Switched-On Bach defied the parameters of classical music and brought the Moog to the masses. 

I discovered Pauline Oliveros through her writings on sonic meditations (instructions for listening as a fully embodied experience, as deep contemplation, as healing). And yet, ask me about early electronic music before watching Sisters with Transistors, and the first names to pop out would be John Cage, Brian Eno or Raymond Scott, maybe Sun Ra. On the evidence of this documentary, that's not right.

Important to note the collaged, almost hallucinatory style of visual presentation. Archive footage of the changing times coming in and out of our field of vision as each sister has their moment. (The bit when Maryanne Archer has Thurston Moore cowering with hands on ears as she blasts him with sound is just brilliant.) This treatment certainly made me more willing to forgo expectations and hop on different wavelengths, riding its gentle pulse. You're in the hands of a director who not only knows their material. They really feel it. Bravo, Lisa.

Final thought: I would devour a series with long episodes devoted to each of these remarkable individuals. 

WATCH

Also, here’s a Curzon playlist of songs by the artists featured in the documentary.

While you’re at it, listen to Marta Solagni on the role of the sound designer in a film that’s already blessed with a galaxy of wondrous music.

And check out the Sounds Good video on Wendy Carlos. Well researched and presented.



Amar Patel

Gus Van Sant finally goes by the book

by Amar Patel in ,

Gus Van Sant is perhaps best known as the director of Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting. A crowdpleaser that focuses on the relationship between a gifted but troubled young man (Matt Damon) and his therapist (Robin Williams), and his reluctance to break free from the cocoon of small-town Southie in Boston.

But when you consider this against some of his riskier projects – Gerry with its barely speaking two-person cast wandering the desert, Elephant recalling the horror of Columbine, that shot-for-shot remake of Psycho or “forgery” as Van Sant dubs it – we get a very different picture of the filmmaker. The Art of Making Movies is as coherent and linear an appraisal of his work as you will find, and yet it also reminds us that this is someone who rarely sticks to the script or goes by the book.

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Amar Patel