Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Annotation for KRRR! 2014 by Radomír D. Kokeš

So this year at the Krnov festival we finally get to see the third Indiana Jones, which many fans consider the best of the entire series. What's more, it has become a model for them of what a true "Jones" should look like. The irony is that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade from 1989 still represents a precisely crafted example of perfectly executed Hollywood style and storytelling, but it actually deviates the most fundamentally from the initial concept of all existing parts... and this is especially because it is such a precisely crafted example of perfectly executed Hollywood style and storytelling. The first, second and even the fourth Jones represent a certain revolt against contemporary aesthetic norms, as they openly played with the possibilities of (a) "jumpy" episodic storytelling, (b) the aesthetics of junk and (c) imitation of the conventions of popular culture of the thirties and forties of the twentieth century. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, however, does not aim for these goals, and on the contrary, it offers a smooth and concise narrative. Jones has not much of his rogue "bastardness" left, he is trying above all to reconcile his relations with his father and this time he is hunting for a rare artifact only in order to find his kidnapped father and help fulfill his dream of finding the Holy Grail.

(Footnote: This time, unlike the first two films, Henry Jones senior also appears in the story, which is why poor Professor Marcus Brody has logically lost the status of paternal authority in relation to Indiana. He does appear in the film, but he has turned from a respectable scientist into a caricature of a scientist who, for example, does not drink water because fish urinate in it.)

Of course, none of this is an attack - thank Hitchcock - on the qualities of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a film work. In terms of the demands for a tightly-knit Hollywood work with a mathematically calculated rhythm of alternating tension, action, romance and humor, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, on the other hand, is one of Steven Spielberg's most polished films. What makes it unforgettable is the charming acting interplay between Harrison Ford (Jones Jr.) and Sean Connery (Jones Sr.), who work together to play out absurdly comic, explosive and family-friendly situations. It is said that the Hollywood big-budget film of the 1990s did not come up with too many new ideas, unlike previous decades, but chose (and not only) the best from its own history and polished them into a precise combination of invisibly cooperating procedures for constructing immersive entertainment. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Spielberg not only used this "90s" principle in 1989, but also reached a level that few others in the following decade were able to approach. Therefore, in the end, we can't blame him for the fact that in terms of filmmaking subversion and playing with the odds, he is perhaps the least "Jonesian" Indiana Jones of all.