It’s not the years, honey. It’s the mileage. And, for a movie that turned the big 3-0 this year, Raiders of the Lost Ark still holds up pretty well.
In fact, it holds up so well that it’s tempting to forget how horrifying it was at the time. Or, at least, how horrifying it was for me.
Raiders came out when I was 12 years old, and I saw it about four times that summer of 1981. If my mom had known anything about the movie, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to see it at all.
I know this because she and I took my little sister—who was 6 at the time—to see the thing, with the blessing of my father.
“You should go!” he told my mom. “It’ll be fun!”
“It’s not too violent for her?” my mom asked, pointing to my sis.
“Nahhh,” my dad said. “It’ll be fine.”
Several face-meltings, one whirling propeller and about 16 quintillion deaths later, my mother realized that the film wasn’t “fine.” She spent a good half of the movie literally covering my sister’s eyes. I might’ve told her that it was fairly, um, intense, had she thought to ask me. Granted, I might’ve lied. A 12-year-old boy with Indiana Jones on his brain will do some mighty duplicitous things.
If Raiders came out today, it’d be a pickle of a movie to review. I mean, there’s no question the movie is “good,” aesthetically speaking. It’s great—entertaining and exciting and loaded with some surprisingly interesting messages. The film gave me a hero I could root for—a hero that, for all his whip-flinging, spent the most critical scene in the movie with his eyes squinched shut.
But there’s no question that it’s “bad,” too—what with all the cursing and drinking and face-melting going on.
And for those who think that films don’t influence us, one only need to look at my childhood. For months after seeing Raiders, I ran around the house as Indiana Jones, toting a brown bathrobe tie as a whip. For years, I longed for a brown fedora. And to this day, I still wonder whether I should’ve skipped the movie-reviewing career track and opted instead to go into “swashbuckling archaeology.”
But it gave me some serious nightmares for a bit as well. And—to send shivers down many a mom and dad’s spine—I also held mock “drinking contests” with my sister, pantomiming Marion’s famous drinking scene (replacing the hard whiskey with whole milk, naturally).
I think we all tend to excuse the content we see in our favorite movies or, as in my dad’s case, even forget it’s there. I’m always surprised when I watch some of my favorite films from yesteryear and realize they weren’t quite as innocent as I remember.
This isn’t a knock on Raiders. I may watch it again this weekend, in honor of its 30th anniversary. But it does serve as a reminder that even “great” movies aren’t necessarily “great” for everyone.
Recent Comments