INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

It was the great poet Jerry Elderberry (1202-1222) who once wrote “With thine eyes, Would I rather barf”. Sometimes, complexity is a necessary evil. Sometimes, you just want to pleasure yourself unhindered by plot or chronological uber-montage. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a failed attempt at a cinematic treatise on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being & Nothingness, veiled as comic caper of caustic soda proportions. Sartre maintained “I think therefore I was” in the same way that this film thinks it’s a film therefore it’s not. Nowhere is this better illustrated in the multi-layered nature of the dialogue, which instead of conveying a sense of purpose and communication is fixated on what Sartre called the temporality of existence. So that when Indiana Jones says, “Get outta here!” what he’s really saying is “You don’t exist, neither do I, you would like to leave but you and I aren’t here anyway so where is this script going?” Or as Sartre would have put it, “The past is no longer; the future is not yet; and the instantaneous present does not exist.” With not even any decent fornication on offer here, the possibilities of temporary transcendence from the linearity of time are scarce. At the end, one is numb with missed meetings and what Martin Buber would have called “the basic word I-Thou”. But this Thou is neither I nor Thou or Thou-I. Perhaps if Harrison Ford had worn less tight trousers things might have turned out better. Unfortunately, not an existential wet dream in sight.

(five squid shits)

Hey, only kidding! This film is GREAT. Go see it. If for nothing else to see Harrison Ford land on his balls and pretend it doesn't hurt. Nice!