Weirdly dated, but still fun.

Rating: 9/10 (30 September 1999)

There is very little, I find, more distressing than going back to films you loved as a child, and finding they weren't all that great after all. For instance, obviously THE PHANTOM MENACE was an insulting atrocity, but I watched the revered trilogy beforehand, and found it - dare I say it? - a trifle monotonous.
RAIDERS isn't that bad - Spielberg is a director, whereas Lucas quite clearly isn't - but it has insuperable flaws I didn't think possible from such a master storyteller. It sets itself up as a non-stop rollercoaster in the vein of NORTH BY NORTHWEST, but, unlike that masterpiece, it has very tedious longueurs, and lacks that film's use of plot as character study. The film's racism is also more of a problem than it might have been when I was five, although Nazi caricatures will never cease to amuse. The period detail is virtually non-existent. And the storytelling and direction seems very jerky at times. It certainly lacks the depth and power of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS or E.T.
This doesn't stop the film being a pinnacle of entertainment, offering a multitude of pleasures. It is a very canny film, as if Spielberg had read a book on Hollywood narrative conventions, and decided to joyously stretch them to parody. For example, when we first hear of Indy's old teacher and the woman he left with, we expect a classic Oedipal conflict, but minutes later we find out he's dead. The hero/villain doubling is blatantly alluded to, as if to save us the bother. The typical Hollywood reining in of an independent, resourceful woman is textbook.
The usual course of the hero, with its obstacles and goals, is royally exaggerated: we can see Spielberg, a la Hitch, sadistically piling on the opponents and life-endangering situations with a trowel, really putting Indy through it. Each new difficulty is more dangerous, more complex, more ludicrous than the last, and yet Spielberg never lets down on the tension, never patronises his audience, as if he knows what we like, and knows that we know that he knows it, and are clever enough to know better, but craving escape enough to want it.
The film has a complexity enough if we want to look for it. Indy's archaelogical plundering is mirrored by Spielberg's cinematic parasitism: the film is loaded with references to the aforementioned Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Leone, Huston, Welles, Hammer Horror and many others. There is, despite the racism, an implicit critique of Indy's activities, and the outstanding closing shot, a very brave, dispiriting ending for a Hollywood film, is as much an admission of Hollywood's conventionalising of magic.
The Mcguffin of the Ark is brilliantly worked out, despite its patent silliness, and unlike Roger O. Thornhill in NORTHWEST, Indy does not mature, does not realise that human companionship is preferable to childish, egocentric abandoning of responsibility in favour of idiotic ideals that are none of his business.
So what are we left with? Set-pieces to treasure, even though we know them inside out. A lovely, spunky heroine in Karen Allen (whatever happened to her?), that will be sorely missed in the rest of the series. Terrific visual gags and witty dialogue. That wonderful theme tune that seems to ironise rather than lionise its hero. An amazing Harrison Ford performance, gruff, comic, romantic, yet fundamentally insular and unyielding. The film's superb patterning, e.g. the fire motif, or the connection between the tarantulas on Indy's back at the beginning, and the Nazis on the back of his truck near the end. A Gilbert and Sullivan loving Arab sidekick. Worth revisiting than: I just found it a little dated.