I was recently watching a rerun of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon gets very upset because Amy points out the massive plot issue with Raiders of the Lost Ark. She remarks that nothing Indy does actually affects the outcome of events. Apologies to anyone who hadn't already heard this criticism of the film and has now had one of their childhood favourites ruined. I watched the whole fim from start to finish tonight just to check and she's right. There's still so much to like about the film though: weird Aztec booby traps, ancient treasure, scary Nazis, a cute monkey and lots of great visual jokes.
The real reason I was watching Raiders tonight, though, was in order to decide whether I could get away with showing the scary Nazi death scene at the youth weekend away. We're going to consider some stories from the life of King David, including the bit where David brings the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem, does some scantily clad dancing and earns the scorn of his missus. Before all the semi-naked dancing, however, one of the Israelites has died trying to move the ark, apparently because he failed to show proper respect to the holy artefact, and therefore to God himself. The first book of Samuel, chapter 6, tells us that half a century earlier 70 men were struck down because they looked inside the ark.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is just a story (a really good story) loosely hung on a piece of biblical history. I was interested to notice the parallels with 2 Samuel 6, however. The Nazis have been searching for the ark because Hitler believes that if his armies go into battle carrying the ark with them it will bring them victory. A very unholy motive for pursuing a sacred object. They find the ark (despite Indy's best efforts) and take it to a Greek island where an archaeologist performs ancient Jewish rites and then opens the ark, hoping to find the broken tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. They discover that these precious objects have long since turned to dust. Their quest has ended in disappointment, it seems. But although they do not find the artefacts they're after, they encounter something they were not looking for - the power of God. They are struck down, every last one (with some quite impressive face-melting which I don't think I can get away with showing 14 year olds, even if the film is a 12).
There's an interesting moment when the archaeologist - a baddie with a heart, we have learned, and someone who is passionately committed to finding the ark and its holy contents - realises that it does not contain only dust. He sees moving lights and ghostly figures and cries out "it's beautiful!" before loudly dying along with the men he's working for. But I wonder, at that final moment, did he regret it? For him, was it worth dying to come face to face with God?
Not that God is anything like a scary ghost that melts people's faces. Clearly Raiders is far from theologically correct. But he is both terrible and beautiful.
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