No great anthology of 1980’s cinema would be complete without the megahit series jointly courtesy of Spielberg and Lucas, “Indiana Jones.” Certainly, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) is, to my mind, the best film of its birth year and one of the very best of that decade. The editing is somewhat revolutionary in the way that it encapsulates adventure serials of the 1950’s and 60’s vastly better than those serials themselves did; indeed, the two filmmakers intended initially to replicate the style of those episodic pieces before realizing that they were not nearly as good as they remembered them from their childhoods. Incidentally, one of the reasons why Spielberg is Spielberg is that he has an uncanny ability to give the wonder of childhood back to the most cynical of adults. Thus, he was the perfect choice of director for Lucas’s serial adventure, and the perfect director to rejuvenate a dead cinematic genre to such an extent that it surpassed the original material.
What I love most, though, about this series of films is the startling thematic depth that each entry strives for (and, in most cases, attains). The early 1980’s saw both Spielberg and Lucas in their primes, so that combination was a much more formidable one than it was in 2008 when we were subjected to the cinematic equivalent of afterbirth. Consequently, there is much more subtext throughout all three films than most great films of the 80’s, even though many filmgoers today tend only to think of this series as popcorn entertainment. They are quite wrong. Lucas, as is his fashion, brings the element of father-son relationships (the ultimate subject of this article) and supplies the “dark side” (pun intended) of the material. So, in all likelihood, it’s Lucas who we can thank for the delightful heart-removal scene in “Temple of Doom” (and, for that matter, the entire “Temple of Doom” film). Spielberg, on the other hand, provides the generally high-caliber filmmaking, the previously-mentioned revolutionary sequencing and storytelling mechanisms, and thematically, Indiana’s three romantic relationships which tap more into the Freudian side of things.
It’s interesting to note that Indy’s mother is absent even in “Last Crusade,” the film in which his parentage is of paramount importance. If you look closely, however, there are undoubtedly father figures and thus seductress mother figures as well. (An important aside: these relationships are examples of Carl Jung’s archetypes that Joseph Campbell expands upon in his work, most notably in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.) Indy, as a Lucas-Spielberg hero, has the two quintessential “hero’s relationships” in all three films: the father figure, typically also a villain of some kind, and the mother figure, typically seductresses with whom Indy establishes romance and who have likely also had relationships with the father figure. These relationships are a bit more vague in “Temple of Doom,” if present at all; indeed, most pragmatic film critics would lambast me for even suggesting that they exist in the second film of the series. So, instead, I will focus briefly on “Raiders” and then move onto the far more significant father-mother film, “Last Crusade.”
In “Raiders,” the most obvious father-mother analogy is with Belloq as the father. He is, in different ways, both Indy’s father and Indy himself. He is a kind of shadow-Indy, but he is also the one constantly in opposition with our hero. He is typically situated above Indy, whether it be at their first meeting, when Indy is lying down and Belloq is kneeling over him, or in the Well of Souls scene, when, more explicitly, Indy is actually dozens of feet below Belloq. This is one good reason to identify Belloq as the father-figure. Another is his relationship with Marion: after Marion is captured, he woos her and attempts to romantically ensnare her. As Jung and Campbell would tell us, the key to the child-mother-father dynamic is the child’s protectiveness of the mother. In psychology, we learn that young children view fathers as their enemies because they see them as a threat to their mothers; if nothing else, they are a robber of motherly attention and love. There is certainly, however, a sexual component to this: the child subconsciously wants to prevent his mother from being desecrated. The same is true for many myths, including this one: we are afraid that Belloq will succeed in desecrating Marion, as it were. Indy must rescue her before this can occur. Like the child of the psychological dynamic, Indy conflicts with his father because of the threat he perceives his father poses to his mother.
Undoubtedly by now all of my sane readers are wondering why any of this psychological and mythical analysis is significant; and the answer is, of course, that Indy’s character journey is only complete once he overcomes his father, rescues his mother, and returns home with boon in hand (the boon in this case being the Ark of the Covenant). Hero’s journey, complete. Roll credits.
There is quite a bit more significance to this dynamic in the third film, “The Last Crusade.” The dynamic is as simple (although reverse in one important element), but much closer to the core of the story and film. Of course, the father-figure in this case is Indy’s actual father, as portrayed by Sean Connery (or at least, one of the father-figures). Indeed, the entire film is structured around the relationship between Indy and his father, so the psychological underpinnings are pivotal to understanding the movie.
There is, however, a second father-figure in this movie, believe it or not, and we get a glimpse of him earlier in the movie than we ever get to know Dr. Jones, Sr. In the very first scene, all of the men after the cross of Coronado are known only by the hats they are wearing. Their leader, Fedora, is quite a lot like the Indiana Jones audiences came to know and love in the early 1980’s, especially in his choice of hat. Fedora does , indeed, serve as a kind of perverse father-figure to Indy. Notice, in the first scene, how Fedora is only the enemy until we meet Panama Hat (the older gentleman with a cane, seen only out of a window but identified by very ominous music). After that moment, Fedora is no longer the bad guy: he is someone for Indy to actually look up to. Fedora could even be argued to be the spark of Indy’s adventure life, as he tells him wisely, “You may have lost today, kid, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it.” Clearly, Indy and Fedora are of one mind. The significant image emphasizing this relationship is that of River Phoenix’s young Indy dawning the fedora himself, followed by a nice jump shot to the mid 1940’s, Harrison Ford-portrayed Indiana Jones. Indy, in some ways, turned into Fedora. As we will see later, Indy’s two father-figures reflect the two sides of his life. Fedora reflects the daring, adventurous, whip-cracking, treasure-raiding scallywag.
The more important relationship, though, is that of Indy with his father, Henry Jones. Here, we can start with the mother-figure and work backwards. If Marion is the mother-figure of “Raiders,” it’s easy to spot that Elsa Schneider is the mother-figure of this film. However, Elsa is very much the mother-figure gone wrong. At first, she is just like Indy’s two previous love interests: a damsel in some degree of distress who nonetheless proves her own self-worth in due time. However, for the first time in the series, there is a significant plot twist: Elsa is actually a conniving, Nazi-sympathizing seductress who has lured Indy, almost literally, into the lion’s den. This is especially important because, as we know, Indy does not have a tangible, physical conflict with his father-figure in this film as he does in “Raiders.” There must be some sort of graspable tension in the father-mother-child dynamic, and Elsa is the source of that tension here.
Elsa is undoubtedly the mother-figure, because after she sleeps with Indy, we learn that she has also slept with Indy’s dad. This comes close to turning Indy into a kind of Oedipus figure, though in this case, the mother is the enemy, not fate. However, this subtext takes secondary importance to Indy’s relationship with his father. In most depictions of the Hero’s Journey, much of the hero’s conflict is reaching or overcoming the dark father (see: “Dark Father” in Dutch: Darth Vader) and, ultimately, subconsciously or otherwise realizing that the hero actually is the father. The two are one and the same. (Remember the relationship between Indy and Fedora). Here, the dynamic is altered slightly to account for the fact that Henry Jones, Sr. is a good guy in the film. There is still conflict between Indy and his father, but it is a familial one. Consequently, Indy spends the film trying to reach his father and then, interestingly, distinguish himself from his father. That’s right: Indy does not realize that he and his father are the same; he realizes that he is his own person. He cannot be fully defined by his father-figures.
Let’s analyze some actual imagery from the film. First, take the culmination of the tank sequence, as a tank apparently carrying Indy careens over the edge of a cliff and Henry stands at the precipice, looking down at an explosion that seemingly overtakes his now dead son. However, Indy emerges, miraculously, from the depths and grapples his way back onto the cliff. First below his father, now returning to the same elevation as Henry and thus reaffirming himself in the dynamic.
A running line of dialogue through the film is Indy’s dislike of his father calling him “Junior.” Indeed, there may not be any other concrete way of attaching Indy to the person his father is and wants him to be than referring to him by this name. Fascinatingly, the moment when Henry reverts to calling him by the name he prefers—Indiana—is the climactic moment of the film when, again, we find Henry situated above Indy. Henry is holding onto Indy, preventing him from falling into the depths, and it is only by employing the nickname that Indy adopted as his own that he can convince our hero to let go of the Holy Grail. In doing so, he saves himself from plunging into the deep and suffering the same fate as the casually discarded mother-figure, Elsa.
Thus, it is with Henry’s recognition of his son’s identity that the father-son relationship is healed. It’s important to note that this story arc is a significant diversion from the traditional mythic hero’s journey. As I previously mentioned, Indy learns not that he is one with his father-figures, but rather that those figures do not define him. He has elements of both, ultimately; when he is not moonlighting as an adventurer, he is the stately, wise professor for whom “X never marks the spot.” He is better than both of his father-figures, however. He is more moralistic than Fedora, even in the first scene, and he is not as preoccupied with his own interests as Henry.
Here, we learn the true purpose of Spielberg’s and Lucas’s vision of Indiana’s complete journey: it is not about gaining self-awareness as much as it is about one generation becoming better than the one that preceded it by discovering the flaws of the latter. Indy is a more whole human being than any of his parent figures, and he does so by learning from their mistakes. He learns from his father’s poor raising of him just as he learns from Elsa’s greed; both possess the same selfishness, which Indy overcomes by placing those closest to him before himself. He is prepared to sacrifice his life to save his father, and ultimately he learns that the Holy Grail is of minimal importance compared to the other people in his life.
