The Futile Cycle

I just went and saw the new Indiana Jones movie. I guess I got what I expected, but still. Despite the signs in the earlier films of George Lucas’ insistent, steady drive to transform Indiana Jones from an engaging, hapless archaeologist and treasure hunter to a flat, boring superhero, a small part of me still had harbored a tiny flame of hope. What a bucket of cold water.

The movie is best seen while shouting at the screen, making fun of the camp dialogue, and generally taking it as a very good parody of the Indiana Jones series. Like any good parody, it comes complete with extraordinarily campy dialogue, over-the-top in-jokes, trite characters, mindless plot, and a John Williams score. It has to be on purpose. There’s no way that the movie would have been this much of a parody by accident.

Either that or it will be a movie that years down the line will be shown as a shining example of what happens when mediocre movie-makers get to make exactly the kinds of films they want, without the good taste that editorial oversight and budget constraints provide.

Well, at least I’ve seen it now. And I got popcorn.

The film adaptation of No Country for Old Men is the Coen Brothers at their finest.

It reminds me of Harold Bloom’s reaction to Blood Meridian: he started reading, threw it across the room because he was so angry at how violent it was, picked up, finished, and proclaimed it the greatest modern American novel.

“No Country” was one of the most brilliant, but also one of the most sickening, films I’ve ever seen. When the credits started rolling, I felt tired, overwhelmed, and wrung out. The film reminds me of the end of The Mission, where Father Gabriel tells Rodrigo that he isn’t strong enough to live in a world in which violence is the right answer. Except in this case, there is no question, there is just violence. Though the film did have its black humor interludes, one only laughed because, as the sheriff says at one point, what else can you do? The humor here is blacker than Fargo; in fact, the tone of the film is really Fargo with all the happiness sucked out of it. No happiness and no relief.

(spoilers follow)
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