No more heroes anymore

A nothing of a film robs Indiana Jones of a decent goodbye, leaving Yaroslav Walker yearning for something more black and white.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is assistant priest at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, London.

A silouhette of an adventurer, wearing a fedora hat, stepping gingerly along a rickety bridge.

Indiana Jones searches for the exit in the twilight.

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

In a depressing sign that all creativity and originality is truly fading from the world, we are offered another India Jones film - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. We are offered a third farewell to a beloved character that robs him of all the wit, charm, charisma, and esteem he ever had. We are served a platter of mildly uninspiring nostalgia-bait cameos, CGI set-pieces, a plot thinner than a communion-wafer, and a finale that seems to be the sleep-deprived fever dream of an over-worked and over-caffeinated script writer meeting a deadline.

It opens in style, and on comfortable ground. We’re back on the Nazis. GREAT! If there’s one thing Indiana Jones can do, it is punch Nazis. A hooded figure is dragged into a soon to be bombed castle that is being looted by retreating Nazi soldiers. The hood is removed, and we see… young Harrison Ford? Not quite, but not bad. As far as de-aging technology goes it could be worse…but then the voice. There is no way to get around the fact that 80-year-old Ford sounds markedly different to 45-year-old Ford, and that just rips you straight out of the film.

The rest of the opening set-piece never recovers, and is so saturated with CGI, that it fails to engage or excite. This goes for much of the film (with the exception of quite a fun car chase through the streets of Tangier) – scenes set leagues under the sea, or miles high in the sky, are so weightless and empty as to be boring. Despite being far greater in scope, they don’t even come close to matching the rollercoaster tension of the mine-car chase in Temple, or heart-stopping wonder of the jump from the horse to the tank in Crusade, or the juvenile joy of the aborted sword-fight/shootout in Raiders. Anyway, Indy stops the Nazi train, seemingly dispatches Mads Mikkelsen’s Nazi scientist, and manages to steal the Antikythera mechanism of Archimedes. Toby Jones adds some light relief as his partner in adventure and is on screen far too little.

Pheobe Waller-Bridge... does snark and sarcasm and raised eyebrows better than most, but that isn’t a good foil for Indy. Indy is the snarky one.

Cut to 25 years later and Indy is a shadow of his former self: an alcoholic, exhausted, uninspired shell of a college professor, counting down the days to death now that he and Marion have separated. It is impossible to say who this film is for. It can’t be for fans of the original, who must be horrified to see the great Indy reduced to this. It can’t be for newcomers who have no way of understanding why this man is significant, and in what way this degeneration is meaningful. So, who is it for? People who hate the character and want him to be taken down a peg or two? This feeling seems to inspire the cameos also – don’t put Sallah and Marion in an Indiana Jones film for a combined screen time of five minutes or less!

Anyway, the plot develops and there isn’t much of it, which is fine; an Indiana Jones film is ultimately a collection of set-piece fetch quests strung together, and that can be glorious…when done right. Indy must team up with his estranged goddaughter (who’s father was Toby Jones) and a bargain-basement Short Round (what I would have done to see Ke Huy Quan properly reprise the role) to find the other half of the Antikythera mechanism before Mads Mikkelsen and his group of Nazis who are hiding-in-plain-sight. Why? Time travel. Obviously.

The performances are fine. Harrison Ford does grouch better than most, and seems to actually be putting effort in. Pheobe Waller-Bridge is…Pheobe Waller-Bridge. Being Pheobe Waller-Bridge is fine…is great! I think Fleabag is one of the best pieces of television we’ve had in the last decade (especially season two). She does snark and sarcasm and raised eyebrows better than most, but that isn’t a good foil for Indy. Indy is the snarky one, Indy is the mocking one. It isn’t Waller-Bridge’s fault, it is what she was given to work with, but it is annoying and upsetting. Mads Mikkelsen is brilliant – the one shining light in the gloom – because he is always brilliant and should be in all films.

To say one genuinely, properly positive thing: the score is lovely. If this is John Williams’ final outing, then what a way to go!

Do we have to break Indy down? Do we have to end with him so broken and pathetic that he would rather give up than fight, and who must be punched by his goddaughter for the film to be resolved?

Clearly, I’m a little upset and am ranting somewhat…but this is important. Indiana Jones is an iconic character, especially to young boys. I don’t want to get into the discourse on men refusing to relinquish control of certain protagonist archetypes, because that isn’t what I argue for. Adventurers, spies, soldier, boxers, etc…all characters that have had excellent female lead portrayals and certainly should have more, if that is what creators and audiences want. But…can we have this not at the expense of a beloved character? Do we have to break Indy down? Do we have to end with him so broken and pathetic that he would rather give up than fight, and who must be punched by his goddaughter for the film to be resolved?

Okay, let's try to take this out of a context that can lead to toxic online discourse. Let’s park the question of whether we’ve gone too far in breaking down good role models for young men (we have, and we ought to stop). Let’s just look at role-models in general. In the Church such role models are called saints. They point us to the practices and prayers that can bring us to holiness, that can bring us closer to God. We remember them for their great and mighty deeds. For some it is victory in great spiritual struggle – like St Anthony punching demons in the face. For others it is achievement in great theological study – like a St Thomas Aquinas or a Richard Hooker. Some are titans of charity – St Francis – who inspire others to set up schools and hospitals – a St John Bosco or the nuns in Call the Midwife.

We don’t slavishly worship their every waking thought or act. We know they were human; they were fallible, they were sinners! Some saints are saintly because they give us an insight into their own complexity and nuance and fallenness – St Augustine’s Confessions is a text that everyone should read every year. But we don’t linger on their faults, and foibles, and indiscretions. That is a recipe for despondency. We know the saints weren’t perfect, but we look to their great and godly example for inspiration.

It was C.S. Lewis who complained, almost a century ago, of the inability of post-war fiction to paint in black and white. I agree, and Dial is an example of this.

I’ve complained in reviews before about the fact that we seem to be unable to have proper villains. This film doesn’t fall into that trap – Mads Mikkelsen’s Jürgen Voller is just evil, a proper Nazi, the most ‘Nazi’ Nazi there is, more Nazi than Hitler! – but it doesn’t want to give us a decent hero. I think it was C. S. Lewis who complained, almost a century ago, of the inability of post-war fiction to paint in black and white. I agree, and Dial is an example of this. Sometimes we need to be reminded of good and bad, holiness and evil, and that we ought to turn to one and away from the other.

Dial of Destiny is a bit of a nothing film that robs Indy of a decent goodbye – he had a great one riding into the sunset with his father and with Sallah, and an okay one when he married Marion – but it is significant in continuing the trend we see of robbing heroes of their heroism, as other films rob villains of their villainy. It would be nice to see a return to great adventure epics showing us a bit of black-and-white. It is good for soul – it gives us something to aspire to, and something to flee from…it gives us an example to follow.

2/5 stars – just watch the original trilogy.

Review

Culture

Film & TV

Suffering

17 July 2024

5 min read

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: 20 years on

Memory and the meaning of suffering.

Beatrice Scudeler

Beatrice writes on literature, religion, the arts, and the family. Her published work can be found here.

A coupe sit on outdoor steps against a blue sky. One holds a plate and the other looks towards them.

Carrey and Winslet as Joel and Clementine.

Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came out in 2004. Twenty years on, its stubborn insistence that the memory of pain gives meaning to our lives is as relevant as ever.

I first watched Gondry’s cult classic earlier this year, in the midst of recovering from postnatal PTSD. When we are faced with heartbreak, it can be easy to wish that we could retreat from painful memories, hiding them away until the initial pang has seemingly died down. That was my experience, at least. But I quickly learnt that the traumatic memory of my daughter’s birth would continue to resurface until I processed it and accepted it as part of my life. Just so, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind teaches us that being vulnerable to suffering is a gift, that suffering itself is necessary to our moral growth, and that our ability to remember the past is an invaluable faculty of the human mind.

The film begins simply, with a meeting between its protagonists, Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski. As Joel and Clementine start making small talk, they seem immediately comfortable, almost familiar with each other, and yet the atmosphere is eerie. Soon enough, we discover that Clementine was a patient at Lacuna, a clinic which erased every memory of Joel from her mind after their two-year relationship ended in a painful breakup. When Joel finds out, he asks Dr. Howard Mierzwiak, the director of Lacuna, to do the same for him. As viewers, we now start to wonder: was that meeting we witnessed their very first, or have they met again after their memories were erased, unaware that they loved each other in a ‘past’ life?

This tone of disorientation continues throughout the film, and that’s what makes it so special. As Joel’s memories of Clementine are erased one by one, he realises that the removal of one’s painful experiences is in itself a kind of trauma; what promises to be a relief, turns out to be nothing more than loss.

We experience this sense of disorientation and loss alongside Joel as we jump through snippets of his and Clementine’s happiest and saddest moments together, trying to piece together in our minds a linear narrative of their relationship. While this is happening, the film’s subplot focuses on Stan, Patrick, and Mary, three young people working for Lacuna. As Stan and Patrick, the ‘technicians’, work on Joel’s memory removal, Mary, Lacuna’s naive receptionist, muses on the beauty of their mission. She begins quoting aloud the passage of poetry which inspires the film’s very title, taken from Alexander Pope’s verse epistle Eloisa to Abelard (1717):

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.

Mary has an idealistic vision of her work: she believes she is helping suffering people experience the kind of ‘eternal sunshine’ that only a ‘spotless mind’ can achieve. But the human mind is not so simple. Joel’s desire for forgetfulness quickly turns nightmarish. As he realises he has made a mistake, he starts fighting to retain the memory of his love for Clementine, but his is a hopeless quest. Dr. Mierzwiak’s intervention ensures that the procedure is completed.

Left alone without Stan and Patrick, Mary confesses to the married Dr. Mierzwiak that she is in love with him. It is at this point that her idealism crumbles down. He reveals that they’ve already had an affair in the past and that she agreed to let him erase its memory from her mind. Mary is devastated. She decides that what Lacuna is doing is unethical - even if Mierzwiak technically has the patients’ consent to the procedure - and releases the clinic’s files back to the patients. It is this decision which leads Clementine and Joel, just a few days after they ‘meet’ again, to discover that they’ve already loved each other in the past.

Accepting suffering and holding it in our hearts, not with bitterness, but rather with courage, requires endless patience and infinite hope.

Although the script of the film doesn’t spell it out, Mary’s story emphasises that the absence of painful memories is in itself experienced as a painful loss. What’s more, it shows that, without the memory of the suffering which we have inflicted on others, and which others have inflicted on us, we are incapable of moral growth. Thanks to the knowledge of the past, Mary is able, this time around, to resist having an affair with a married man. Just so, the final scene of the film, which sees Joel and Clementine vow to renew their relationship, is hopeful not in spite of the fact that they have regained the memory of the ways in which they hurt each other in the past, but precisely because of it.

Accepting suffering and holding it in our hearts, not with bitterness, but rather with courage, requires endless patience and infinite hope. But that is what we were made for. Each one of us is called to endure pain in imitation of Christ, and, out of that pain, to discover a greater capacity for sacrificial love. We make meaning out of pain: that’s what human beings do.

The very last lines of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind perfectly express the fruits of this Christ-like acceptance. As Joel reassures Clementine that he can’t see anything he doesn’t like about her, she expresses her doubts and anxieties: ‘But you will! But you will.’, she repeats, ‘You know, you will think of things. And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.’ Joel and Clementine look at each other, and, after a pause, they simply say to each other: ‘Okay’. Their ‘okay’ is not an indication that they are doomed to repeat old mistakes. Rather, it signals a new choice: this time, when their relationship becomes difficult, they won’t just run away; this time, they will face discomfort, heartbreak, and disappointment, armed with the knowledge that seeking a sense of permanence by loving another person completely is an inherently valuable pursuit. In accepting the most traumatic parts of our past we grow closer to God; and in bravely deciding to look ahead to the future with hope, we catch a glimpse of the unadulterated joy which we will finally experience in God’s eternity.