Steven Spielberg
Indiana Jones - L'Ultima Crociata

Third installment of one of the most successful and famous film sagas of all time. It’s the director’s favorite: tastes are subjective. Certainly, if we discount the unsurpassable first chapter among the five, this is the best (let’s just pretend the last two don’t exist, please).

It was released in 1989, and Spielberg would invade cinemas across half the world with two films: this one, and "Always", one of his most resounding flops. The idea for a third chapter arose from the need to respond to the criticism—some of it quite justified—that bombarded the release of the second movie, "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". Maybe for us forty-somethings who grew up in the '90s, that film still stirs nostalgia and fun, but watching it now it’s really not very entertaining—unnecessarily messy, with some great action scenes and not much else. And, this is hardly debatable, it’s at least three notches (to put it mildly) below the original. So Spielberg gets an idea: why not pair Indy with another, more retro Indy—Indy’s father, why not? The first choice falls on Gregory Peck, who politely declines. Then comes Sean Connery, who also initially says no. After reading the script (written by Jeffrey Boam, who had previously worked with Joe Dante and Cronenberg), he’s convinced, and together with the director, gradually builds a character that’s essentially James Bond (who else?) set down in Indiana Jones’ world. Thus, the pragmatism of Indy’s adventures is perfectly blended with the entire "cultural" repertoire of 007, and in fact, the film often feels more skewed towards the second than the first, without the narrative tension or adventurous pathos suffering from this cinematic-lexical shift.

The two together are a blast (even though Connery, at the time, was only twelve years older than Ford) and their duets are, among other things, a tribute that Spielberg injects into the adventurous fabric—an homage to the sophisticated comedy of America’s 1950s. Witty exchanges and sharp banter are the ingredients of a film which, though not perfect, has earned its own place in history. Right from the frenetic incipit set in 1912 Utah, with a thirteen-year-old Indiana Jones at its heart. It’s the prologue to an adventurous and staccato-paced work in which (and this, upon reflection, could be a flaw) action sequences pile up at breakneck speed at the expense of narrative cohesion (the dialogs between the two leads, as I mentioned, are excellent, but when the movie slows down and the adventure pauses, it almost always seems to be gasping for air). Apart, perhaps, from a somewhat muddled and excessively rowdy finale, some scenes stand out for their visual impact: among them, it’s impossible not to mention the initial segment set in the Venetian catacombs (with the related rat assault). To set the scene, Spielberg uses the Church of San Barnaba in Venice, passing it off as an underground library (but in reality it's just an ordinary religious building—imagination rules!).

The action, just as in the best James Bond movies, moves on to Germany, then to Turkey and Jordan: we travel the world, and it’s a pleasure when so many and such varied locations are used so excellently as in this case. And Spielberg, who like all great authors has his own consistent cinematic poetics, persists—with a smile on his lips—in telling stories of absent fathers and children searching for them (almost) desperately. It’s a constant in his cinema because it’s rooted in his own childhood and adolescence, as recounted in his autobiographical "The Fabelmans" (which I wrote about here some time ago). Not to mention the many references sprinkled throughout the film to old cartoon and comic strips of the era (the film is set in 1938, but undoubtedly many strips entertained children of the 1950s as well, Spielberg’s era).

Critics praised it, though with a few dissenting opinions. There was quite a stir (in the USA) over the review penned by Hal Hinson for the Washington Post, who called the film mediocre in "almost every chase and boring exposition." Bombarded with boos and raspberries from readers who instead appreciated the film, the same newspaper felt obliged to re-review it, this time by a second critic, the more conciliatory Desson Thomson, who praised the work without reservation (perhaps too much). Middle grounds are always very rare.