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where faith and film are intertwined

Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Making it Personal #TBT

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Up until 2008, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was the final movie in the Indiana Jones saga. Some would ignore the existence of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but since I’m new to this series, I’m just going to roll with all of them. So this #tbt series isn’t done quite yet.

Released in 1989, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade provides a much deeper look into Indy’s character. The film starts with a teenaged boy (played by the late River Phoenix) fleeing from a band of what I’m calling “archaeologists for hire.” We get a fleeting glimpse of his father, clearly preoccupied with his own archaeological pursuits, and the tone is set for what turns out to be a far more personal adventure than expected.

Once Indy transforms back into the professor/archaeologist/adventurer we already know, his services are requested in the search for an item that brings the promise of eternal life: the Holy Grail. It is the cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and when one drinks from it, he/she will live forever in health and youth. As always Indy is intrigued, but he doesn’t jump at the opportunity like he did for the Ark. He dismisses the case with casual nonchalance until his recruiter Walter Donovan (Julian Glover), explains that Indy is not only being asked to locate the Grail, but the researcher that has been kidnapped in this pursuit. This missing Grail expert is none other than Indiana’s own father, Dr. Henry Jones (Sean Connery…I know right? Amazing as always).  Indy’s quest is simple: start looking for the Grail, and find his father.

I could write pages on the rest of the movie: the relationship quirks between Indy and Henry, the delightful performances by returning cast members Denholm Elliott and John Rhys-Davies (friends Marcus Brody and Sallah), the (spoiler alert) misguided betrayal of Elsa (played by Alison Doody) and the fact that once again Indiana Jones is fighting to keep a coveted artifact that possess supernatural powers out of the hands of Nazis. But since I am still getting the side eye when I say I am just watching these movies for the first time, I’m assuming you already know all of this.

Instead, I want to look again at Indy’s motivations. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy is driven by knowledge. He wants to know. Retrieval of artifacts such as the Ark of the Covenant gives Indy his purpose. He may not offer much in the ways of belief in their more mystical qualities, but he is intrigued enough to take the risk. In Temple of Doom, there is a combination of knowledge and ego pushing him, but he also is trying to return something precious to a suffering community. Again, he doesn’t give way to much belief, but I think there is still a sacrificial quality to his determination.

In The Last Crusade, Indy isn’t out for glory or knowledge; he is out to save his father. Their strained relationship doesn’t stop him from crawling through catacombs or entering into the heart of the ever-dangerous Nazi regime. And it’s not when immediate death looms over him that Indy relinquishes control of his destiny…it’s when it hovers over his father. Does anything drive us more to take leaps of faith and put our very livelihoods on the line than when someone we love is at risk or suffering? Probably not.

As I grow in my faith and my overall understanding of life, and as I connect with people very different than me, I feel compelled to revisit the category of “people I love,” and those who reside in it. There are the obvious residents: my husband, my children, our parents, our extended family, our friends and countless others. But there are some unexpected ones as well who have crept in quietly. And I didn’t know just how much I cared until they were in pain.

Last week, our church felt the impact of current events when one of our members from our Hispanic congregation was taken into custody during an ICE raid. Details are few because of the overall nature of things, but what we do know is that his family doesn’t know when or how they will bring him home. They don’t know how they will buy food without his income. The children are in danger of being placed in the care of the state. There is an aura of fear hovering over these brothers and sisters in Christ in our very midst.

This is not about politics. This is not about legality or what someone should’ve done, or anything else. This is about a hurting and suffering community. And it has hit home.

I no longer think that I have to claim any specific sort of connection with a person to call them “family.” I don’t need to know the intimate details of someone’s life in order to love them as I love myself. While those around me may view someone as “other,” I am learning that God has instructed me to call them “beloved,” and reach out my hand. It may be scary. It may be unpopular. It may be risky. It may mean walking out over a never-ending drop off with no obvious sign of a bridge. But it is required.

Because it’s personal.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Use it or Lose it #TBT

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I’ll just come out and say it: I’ve never seen the Indiana Jones series. I don’t have a good excuse either. Maybe it’s my age (I wasn’t even alive in 1981 when Raiders of the Lost Ark released) or my over-active imagination (face melting – not a fan), who knows. But I am determined to rectify such blatant neglect on my part and am embarking on a #throwbackthursday journey through temples, jungles, and old flames.

Pretty much everyone knows that Harrison Ford stars as Indiana Jones: professor, archeologist, adventurer for hire…ruggedly handsome and charming while stone-faced in the midst of danger (except when there are snakes). Raiders of the Lost Ark is the inaugural event in the series from Steven Spielberg, introducing us to Indy’s mission to hunt down and acquire the ancient Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do. Karen Allen costars as Indy’s old girlfriend Marion Ravenwood, daughter of a former acquaintance who has inherited a certain relic Indy needs.

With all the hype and nostalgia and admiration of the Spielberg classic, I was prepared to be knocked off my feet. I mean, it’s Harrison Ford in his prime, battling ancient booby traps, leveraging centuries’-old legends as guideposts through life-threatening jungles, all while maintaining a cool demeanor and reminding us just how bad Nazis are. It’s a formula for unprecedented success.

Yet it left me more unsettled than enamored. The story line is great, the acting superb and the visuals delightful (for the 80s). So I watched it again, thinking maybe I was missing a key element of enjoyment. While I still wasn’t blown away, I did realize it wasn’t the movie as a whole that bothered me. It was the situational pursuit of the Ark.

Walk with me.

There are three groups pursuing this ancient source of mystery and power: the Nazis, the American government, and Indiana Jones (technically on the behalf of the Americans).

Obviously, the Nazis want the Ark for its power. To them it is a super weapon that can wipe out hordes of people without resistance. With the Ark preceding any military force, their quest for domination would be uncontested.

Since the Nazis want it for its power, the American government wants to get to it first. They hire Indy to locate it, only to (spoiler alert) hide it away in a giant warehouse of classified government artifacts. If no one knows where it is, no one can use it incorrectly.

Then there is Indiana Jones. Now Indy wants to keep it away from the Germans, but he is also entranced by its historical significance. The Ark of the Covenant is an artifact from an ancient culture that has been wiped away by the sands of time. He doesn’t want to use it, he wants to study it. And all three mindsets bother me. Why?

As a seminary student, a Christian servant in the local church, and as human being, I am irritated when someone has an incredible resource and they knowingly misuse it, don’t use it, or even use it halfway. Power and privilege and influence can be agents of incredible change. And they are things we all have in unique, personal iterations.

Instead, many people use these gifts and means of influence to gain control over others. To hurt, to ridicule, to demean. Or, we don’t use them at all. We know they’re there, and we know we have a voice and opportunity, but we sit in stillness and silence. We lock them up and hide them away.

Or we only go but so far. We identify our areas of influence and our strengths. We use them at our jobs, or once a week at church, maybe during a mission trip. But we don’t take risk. We don’t go outside of what we know.  We use them in “safe” places where we can be congratulated and edified for doing a good job.

The task of the global Church of Christ-followers is to make disciples – people who grab hold of the Gospel of salvation and share it to the ends of the earth. But if we use our gifts like the Nazis wanted to use the Ark – if we use tradition and Holy words to elevate a certain people group at the expense of the other, we are not creating those Disciples.

If we don’t use any gifts at all – like the American government who locks up the Ark in a nondescript box and wheels it into a labyrinth of hundreds of other nondescript boxes – and instead horde the goodness and the compassion and the grace of God out of personal triumph or fear, we are not creating disciples.

And even if we act like Indy – if we limit what those gifts can do by only using them in a safe capacity – if we hold them only to intellectual expectation and avoid the possibility of divine intervention, we are not creating disciples.

Yes, I know that by using the Ark, the Nazis obliterated themselves. Yes, Indiana Jones was the hero. And yes, a key takeaway is that misuse of great power emanating from ancient archeological totems results in annihilation. But when we gaze beyond the theatrical veil, I think we can see that we must use the tools and gifts bestowed upon us with bold conviction and confidence.

Why I Don’t Want To See The Force Awakens

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forceawakens3I remember seeing The Return of the Jedi as a seven year old. Sure, I’d seen A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. I couldn’t wait for the good guys to bust in and reclaim Han (remember, we didn’t know for sure he could be rescued but we hoped), and for the evil Empire to be destroyed. In those days (the early 1980s), Darth Vader was definitively evil, Ewoks were cute and not too annoying, and Luke was on the rise. The film itself was remarkable, spellbinding, mind-blowing, and without comparison – those boring Star Trek movies with all of their witty banter weren’t even on my radar.

My friends and I ran around the playground battling unseen evil. I was Luke because I was blonde, and he was good; my darker haired friend Jeff was Han; our tall friend was Chewbacca. We had a friend named Leia on whom I had a crush (ironically destroyed by the acknowledgment that Luke and Leia were, gasp, related) but she would only periodically move into the sphere of our imagined Tattoine and Dagobah. We could swing from the monkey bars, careen down the slides, slashing our sticks like sabers and riding our imaginary speeders.

Life was good, and Star Wars was even grander in our collective imaginations, before the war of G.I. Joe and the hassles of the real world (in middle school) crashed in. We didn’t care if Han shot first (of course, he had then) or if Jabba walked (he was a slug, not a lizard); the complexities of life and the disappointments of Jar-Jar Binks had not yet invaded the sphere of our imaginations.

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In many ways, that’s the way I want to remember Star Wars. Before the awareness of how Anakin turned bad, and then was redeemed again. Before the world taught us that the rebellion in one galaxy is the ‘right’ in another. Before Jar-Jar and Disney crashed into the simpler model of what it meant to be part of the Force. [I’ll bet you that I hate BB-8.]

That’s why part of me doesn’t want to go to see The Force Awakens.

It’s the part of me that doesn’t want to see my heroes older and fatter. It’s the part of me that thinks Indiana Jones should forever end with Harrison Ford and Sean Connery riding off into the sunset (in Last Crusade, for the uninitiated, before Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) and Mark Hamill should stick to voiceovers.

It’s the part of me that doubts that CGI and grander special effects can top the moments on the playground. It’s the part of me that has only rewatched the original trilogy a half-dozen times, and why I’ve avoided rewatching the terrible first three episodes. [Haters, bring it.] It’s the part of me that doesn’t want complicated politics or a sliding scale of morality to invade the grand, Lewisian-like (or is it Tolkien) epic that says that the good guys are on a redemptive arc and that ultimately, with great sacrifice, they will overcome.

It’s the part of me that has said, quite loudly, if Luke is Kylo Ren, that I’ll start a bonfire of Star Wars memorabilia that will be seen for miles. [No, I won’t raid Target; that’ll just be my own collection.] It’s the part of me that thinks, quite grumpily, that the genius of J.J. Abrams and his Alias, Lost, etc. back catalogue still can’t quite be ready to be canonical.

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But then I remember the spring of 1984, walking into that theater knowing that Luke will destroy, annihilate, kill his father who is pure evil. And how the grace-filled redemption of Vader unlocked something in my heart that reminded me that love and forgiveness could be for everyone.

And that spark, some might call it the Force, burns brighter again in my heart.

There’s nothing that could keep me from seeing The Force Awakens, is there?

Do or do not, there is no try.

Has Steven Spielberg Forgotten His First Love?

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What happens when creativity gets replaced by redundancy and reiterations? With the impending arrival of Jurassic World, following years of exec producing the terrible Michael Bay Transformers films, has Steven Spielberg finally given up on telling original stories that transport us to other worlds? Is he no longer interested in taking us there so he can turn us back to see ourselves without pretense here?

Before we come to any real conclusions, let us quickly (if possible) recap the forty-year career of one of the greatest cinematic minds of all time. Briefly.

Steven Spielberg has generated 8.5 billion dollars worldwide with the pursuit of his art, netting a solid 3 billion plus himself (per Forbes). The writer, director, and producer made a name for himself by directing Roy Schneider, Richard Dreyfuss, and a mechanical depiction of a shark around in Jaws (1975). He stormed out of the gate in the sci-fi department with an extended, remade version of his independent film, Firelight, remastered with Dreyfuss as the star in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

close-encounters-of-the-third-kind-original11In 1981, Spielberg teamed up with his Star Wars buddy, George Lucas, and Lucas’ star, Harrison Ford, to direct Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). A year later, he returned to the science fiction with E.T. the Extraterrestrial (the same year he wrote and produced the original Poltergeist which he ‘technically’ didn’t direct).The two sequels to Raiders sandwiched his producer role on Back to the Future (and the sequel), a writing role on The Goonies, and directing The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, and Always. He delivered the Robin Williams-led fantasy, Hook (1991), and the first Jurassic Park (1993) to cement his place in the science fiction/fantasy Hall of Fame.

Schindlers-ListSoon, Spielberg was diving into more practical, realistic material like 1993’s Schindlers List that saw him win an Academy Award for Director. Amistad (1997) and Saving Private Ryan (another Academy Award in 1998) soon followed. Average human fair like Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), and Munich (2005) consistently provided some degree of entertainment, but certainly at a lower level than what we’d come to expect from the bearded savant. Yes, Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002), and War of the Worlds (2005) broke up the realistic monotony, but the trend had turned. Following his failed attempt to meld Indy with his sci-fi love (the dreadful Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), he directed War Horse (2011) and Lincoln (2012) to critical acclaim (and produced The Hundred Foot Journey for good measure).

But Jurassic World, the film which looks to follow on the commercial (but not necessarily critical) success of the previous Jurassic Park films, looms on the horizon like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It’s been a decade since Spielberg tackled a science fiction film (I refuse to count the absurd result of Indy’s latest adventure) even though I believe that sci-fi is the one, true love of Mr. Spielberg. The passion of the outsider included when their true value is revealed plays well in stories concerning artificial intelligence (A.I.) and aliens (Close Encounters, E.T.) Those stories resonate in the heart of a man who grew up as the bullied son of Orthodox Jews, who captured stories over and over again that remind us of the deeper things in life.

Jurassic WorldThere’s a freedom in science fiction that you can’t find when you’re telling a historical story. You can’t find it when you’re basing it in reality in the midst of the world the way it really is. It’s much easier to take those truths, those beliefs about the world in its best and worst, and wrap them up in an entertaining tale that takes the personal out of it and lets people consider them. Your audience no longer realizes you’re critiquing them, at least not until it’s too late.

In the long run, I think Spielberg is more sci-fi prophet than historian. I think he uses science fiction the way that Jesus used parables about an agrarian lifestyle. In the long run, I think that’s what makes Spielberg the consummate storyteller. It’s why others want him to executive producer their horribly botched, overloaded CGI insults of film. We want to know truth the way Spielberg sees it: to know with conviction that we’re not alone, that we’re not as bad as we sometimes think we are, that one day the world will be made right again when we recognize that we’re all in this together.

If we can survive the dinosaur attack.