INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological*

CRUSADE is a frustrating finish to the eighties "Indiana Jones" trilogy. Whereas the first two films hewed closely to the idea of Jones as a tomb-raider who found supernatural life in the sanctums of dead memories, CRUSADE's mystic McGuffin, the Holy Grail, is a pile of inconsistent hogwash. 

On a DVD extra, director Steven Spielberg claimed that co-scripter George Lucas was fixated on the idea that the Grail-- an artifact produced by Celtic storytellers riffing on the Christian idea of communion-- ought to appear in CRUSADE. Supposedly Lucas also came up with the idea that the cup from the Last Supper could grant immortality to those who drank from it. This isn't consistent with any Grail myths I've encountered, but possibly Lucas and his collaborators could have jury-rigged some connection between the Grail's gift of immortality and some other Judeo-Christian myth, like that of the Wandering Jew. But not only did the writers of CRUSADE half-ass the concept of the Grail, they undercut the villains' reason for seeking the artifact by revealing at the climax that the bad guys could never have used the object in their quest for power in any way.

So the metaphysical value of CRUSADE is minimal at best. It's also undermined by Spielberg's conceit that the Indy-series was his take on the Cinematic James Bond, which led to a lot of mediocre sub-Bond scenes in CRUSADE (such as a tedious speedboat chase, in which a gang of killers, later revealed as "good guys," chase Indy and his female ally). The path to the Grail is entirely too easy, despite some de rigeur tomb-traps for the hero to solve, and the return of Nazis as the main villains only generates a few decent moments, both comic (Indy's encounter with Hitler) and adventurous (a decent but overlong scene with Indy fighting a tank full o' Nazis). However, the movie's saving mythopoeic grace is that it provides a psychological "origin" for Indiana Jones, in marked contrast to the first two films' silence about the hero's background.

Few heroes of adventure-serials had childhoods, but CRUSADE opens on a teen-aged Indiana (River Phoenix) on a Boy Scouts expedition in 1912 Utah. Young Indy witnesses a gang of tomb- raiders stealing a precious cross from an ancient burial site. Affronted by the theft, Indy steals the cross from the thieves and flees. The crooks, led by a whip-wielding fellow whose garments are a near-match for the later "look" of the mature Indy, give chase. The youth manages to reach the home he shares with his father, archaeologist Henry Jones (Sean Connery, though he's not "on camera" for the character's first appearance). Professor Jones is too engrossed in his intellectual obsession, the search for the Holy Grail, to listen to his son, and so does not even get involved when the villains-- who have convinced the local authorities that they are legitimate archaeologists-- reclaim the valuable cross. The leader of the robbers, billed only as "Fedora," gives Young Indy a consolation prize: his own fedora, which is implicitly the same hat that Mature Indy continues to wear throughout all later adventures. The mature hero is then seen in 1938-- the time of the film as a whole-- recovering the cross from the thieves' employer, though significantly, the roguish Fedora is not seen among the hero's 1938 opponents.

This prologue artfully encapsulates Indiana Jones' psychological dilemma without becoming over-explanatory. Though Indy shares his father's fascination with the archaic world, he also resents having been neglected by his father for the sake of research. (CRUSADE contains the only mention of Indy's unnamed mother, who has died of influenza by 1912 and whose absence presumably widens the gulf between father and son.) Since Professor Jones is, as Indy says later, a "bookworm" who never does research in the field, Indy rebels against his aloof father by becoming a globe-hopping adventurer who raids tombs rather than reading about them (though ironically in his one scene before his college class, Indy tells the students that most archaeology is done "in the library.") Indy never becomes a thief as such, though his appropriation of ancient artifacts is justified by contributing the items to academic scholarship, and he emulates Fedora as a means of forging his own identity. CRUSADE also reveals that Indy coined his own nickname after that of a prized pet dog, and this too was a way of distancing himself from his given name of "Henry Jr," and thus distancing himself from Professor Jones as well.

When 1938 Indy learns that a wealthy entrepreneur hired Professor Jones to seek the Grail in Venice (and later Turkey), the hero goes in quest of his missing father. Indy and his other father-substitute Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) journey to Italy and meet the professor's colleague Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody). After Indy and Elsa escape an assault for fanatics of a modern Grail-cult, the two of them pitch more than a little woo.

Indy and Elsa travel to Austria to rescue Professor Jones while Marcus travels to Turkey to seek the help of another RAIDERS luminary, Sallah (John Rhys-Davies). Indy learns that both Elsa and Donovan the entrepreneur are working for the Nazis. In due time the hero liberates his father from the villains, and Indy takes Professor Jones to join with their friends, and presumably to unearth the Grail before the bad guys get it.

In the many exploits that follow, Indy gets to be "the dad," shepherding his bookworm father through life-and-death situations, though once or twice Professor Jones manages to acquit himself by saving the day. Indeed, Connery plays so well against the "type" he established both before and after James Bond that Henry Jones Sr may well be Connery's best single performance, thanks to tapping his capacity for broad humor. One humorous moment is the revelation that Elsa slept with both men in her quest for information, though only Daddy Jones saw through her deception. But in the final scenes at the Temple of the Grail, both father and son get to show the depths of their feelings by rescuing one another from death, thus giving the audience the expected warm fuzzies-- though one never does learn just why Professor Jones was so obsessed with the Grail.

Though Elsa Schneider sides with the villains, she shares the Jones' obsession with archaic mysteries, making her loosely comparable with the similar figure of Rene Belloq in RAIDERS. But she also clearly falls for Indy to some extent, betraying Donovan in an end scene, though the allure for the archaic brings about her doom. One of CRUSADE's last lines has Professor Jones claims that he's achieved "illumination" as a result of his quest, but the line is so arranged that the audience knows he's referencing his newfound appreciation for his son's independence. Though both Joneses drink of the Grail's water, this incident proves the limits of the immortality-magic. Henry Sr is seen to have passed away in KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL and Henry Jr has clearly not become immortal in that film, much less in DIAL OF DESTINY, the film (as I have argued) does the most to build upon the psychological origins of Indiana Jones.