BEWARE THE SPOILERS OF DESTINY
“Leia doesn’t want to see me,” says Han Solo to Maz Kanata in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, about General Leia Organa.
“She doesn’t want to talk to me,” says Indiana Jones to Sallah in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, about Marion Ravenwood.
Both of the fantasy heroes that Harrison Ford embodies in the public consciousness come, in the end, to the same place. They are estranged, separated, and mourning the loss of a son. These coincidental parallel journeys are fitting for the ultimate movie star of the Baby Boom.
While Indiana Jones isn’t a Baby Boomer (that would have been Mutt), Ford himself is a part of the generation that, basically, popularized divorce. So, be it in a galaxy far, far away, or a fantasy New York City 1969, Ford’s characters reflect a painful, poignant reality. American men in their 80s are more likely to have undergone at least a sputter in their marriage than their parents or their children.
They’re also the most likely to be terminally lonely. Indiana Jones, in this fifth installment of the series, has moved to the Big Apple to teach at (unlike fictional Marshall, very real) Hunter and finish his career. Despite being surrounded by co-workers and students, he seems isolated and unseen. (This is what you might call highly relatable content for many New Yorkers, feeling alone while awash in other human beings.) His first words in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, even de-aged and saving history from a train full of idiot Nazis? “I like to be alone.”
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the only film in the series I would describe as powered by pathos. Where Steven Spielberg’s instincts in the preceding four movies are comedic and crowd-pleasing, director and self-professed pinch-hitter James Mangold grounds his work in a different place. This is the director of Heavy, Cop Land and Logan, films about men carrying the weight of the world on their slumped shoulders. His storytelling interests shine though in Dial, the best moments built around a hero who feels so lost that he’s literally ready to be history.
Reading the above, you might get the impression that Dial of Destiny is, well, sad, which it isn’t. Dial of Destiny is incredibly fun, fast-paced, globe-trotting, punchy. The audiences I watched it with cheered and applauded, the movie is a blast, a whirring, relentless popcorn flick.
But it’s also moving. At its center is a man in personal crisis, having gained and then immediately lost a son. He drinks at eight-thirty in the morning. (I mean, is Indy a highly functional alcoholic? Because he takes a drink to steady himself quite a lot in the movie!) He goes on an adventure with a god daughter who he hasn’t seen in almost twenty years. That doesn’t detract from the chase through Manhattan on Moon Day, or the classic Tuk-tuk chase through the streets of Tangier, or the deep sea diving expedition in the Aegean. It just gives all this old-fashioned action a new flavor, distinguishes it from the films that came before it.
Because Dr. Jones is no longer an instinctive swashbuckler (who would be his age?) the film finds a suitable stand-in for the spirit of fun: Helena Shaw. Shaw, as performed by, holy shit, actual movie star Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is untrustworthy and shrewd and having a ball. Her swagger provides the zip that has been the series’ hidden treasure.
She saves Indiana Jones, over and over again. She rescues him physically, outsmarting the villainous trio on their trail with sleight-of-hand, and even grabbing Indy out of the jaws of snapping eels. She races down a rainy runway to daringly leap from a motorcyle onto an airplane containing her wounded god father. She’s serves as his antogonist and protector. You know, like family.
She also rescues him emotionally. The finale of the picture, which is incredible, lands so well because it’s grounded in honest-to-God great acting and expertly written dialogue. Even with a spoiler warning, I’m not going to describe the ending, I mean, I just don’t think it should be spoiled even in this context, but when Indiana Jones and Helena Shaw have their showdown on the beach, standing in the impossible, it’s Waller-Bridge’s layered, funny, desperate acting builds the scene to its emotional knockout punch.
If they made her the star of her own films, I would sign right up tomorrow. Just please, let’s not put those stories on Disney Plus. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a reminder of the pleasure to be found in a spectacular Hollywood movie. All the money is up on the screen. One of the best parts of watching it (I’ve seen it five times at this writing) is how much of a movie it is. From subways to oceans to the sky to caverns, we truly are taken all over the world. Movies, you know? There’s nothing like them.
I know that cinemas are covered head-to-toe in blockbusters, so one might read the above and wonder if I’d eaten a few bad dates. I think there’s a difference between the current crop of ever-extending cinematic universes and movies like this one, meant to be a showstopper that plays to the widest possible audience. Indiana Jones movies are a peculiar alchemical blend of genre, nostalgia, star power and grandiosity. It’s why I suspect they’re so hard to write and why it feels so special to see this last one the silver screen.
It really does feel like an ending. The final scene is heartfelt, quiet and restrained: Indiana Jones coming to rest. This series has been with me for almost my entire life, from childhood to middle age, so there’s a special resonance I felt watching this that I’m sure many of you share.
There’s another resonance. My father is Harrison Ford’s age. Like Harrison Ford, my father seems far younger than he is, he can almost fool you into forgetting how much life he’s lived. He’s in incredible health, so much life ahead, but still, there’s a lot to reconcile, to confront, to get to a point of peace with, things to be proud of, and things to let go. His first, and for now only, grandchild was born this past year. He’s got two sons by his second marriage, one son passed away, three children from the first, my brother and sister and me. He’ll undoubtedly read this, he really likes the newsletter, because he’s a fan of serials (I think he still frequents Serial Squadron) and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I wonder how he, and the men of his generation feel watching Harrison Ford reach the coda, not just here, but in all his cinematic expressions. It feels, somehow, like watching all our fathers deal with the loss of all their sons, whatever that might mean for them.
By the time you reach a certain point in life, losses accumulate. One hopes so do friends and comforts. There’s just more of everything, from triumphs to trip-ups. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny carries the flag for all these men of a certain generation, who raised us, maybe let us down, maybe lifted us up, promised to do things they didn’t do, and kept their promises, too. How beautiful to think that no matter how far you go, there’s still time for another adventure, still time to get rescued, and still time to unearth a buried, hidden, happy ending.