Our Hero Is Old

Is it John Williams or Harrison Ford...

It’s hard not to feel old. My birthday just passed, and if media depictions were correct, I should have purchased either a convertible sports car or a motorcycle, neither of which sit in my price range. What I did receive, along with some model kits and LEGO, is a great sense of ennui. I feel old. Worn out. Beyond my use.

It’s hard not to feel the same after seeing the 81-year-old Harrison Ford return for one last adventure in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Not that he’s that worse for wear at that age; Jesus, he looks better than me at nearly half that. Anyway, one of my friends messaged me at the end of June to ask if I was going to be writing about John Williams’ score to the film. My reply was sketchy - while I wanted to see it, I didn’t know when I was going to, and while I often write about soundtracks before seeing the movie, for this one I wanted to see the picture before I made any judgement on the music.

It turns out it took longer than I would have liked to see it, and it coincided with not being terribly well and also being super-busy. In any case, I saw the film and enjoyed it, it was pretty good. But there seems to be a bit of a controversy around the score, at least according to people in the know (i.e. social media). I tend to avoid the usual places on the web where people talk about film music, not least because they attract a lot of men and many of those men are unpleasant assholes, at least when it comes to posting on a message board. But I saw a post about the supposed controversy, and decided it’s probably time to gather my thoughts. Hey, I’m fashionably late.

So let’s start broad. I think it’s an excellent score, but I understand why some may not think so. Before going into the reasons why, I’ll just say I’ve listened to it a lot and it really speaks to me. Yes, it’s not perfect, yes there are probably too many top-mandated reprisals of moments from previous scores (like there were in 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”), but man, Helena’s Theme is just a knock-out, and it’s surprisingly dense, maybe more than we’re used to for a score like this.

One reason why some might not be a huge fan is that the album assembly of the score is not amazing. As usual, there are a fair amount of highlights in the full score that aren’t on the soundtrack, and anyone who knows even a little bit about this business is that there are myriad reasons why music doesn’t make it onto the album. The lead times for merchandise for these things are ridiculous, and especially so in the way Indy’s new owners Disney like to keep things super close to the chest, as they did with their new “Star Wars” movies where the toy manufacturer didn’t actually know who was the main hero of “The Force Awakens.” So with that in mind and the way that filmmakers often go straight to the score when they have a test screening or something where they think the movie doesn’t work, getting out a perfect soundtrack with the material you want is never easy or possible. Also, John Williams is always very specific about how he likes the albums to be sequenced, and he’s John Williams, so who is going to argue with him? It’s no doubt a contractual thing too.

Interestingly, it is a better listen when it’s put into as much of a film order as it can be without using editing software. If you’re interested, at the bottom of this is the order I found from people on the JWFan forums. They’re like forensic scientists when it comes to this kind of thing.*

Another reason is that Indiana Jones is fucking old. Harrison Ford is old. John Williams is old. Hell, I’m nowhere near their age and I’m still experiencing existential crises about mortality and fate and what lies beyond, so who knows what they’re going through. And one of the strengths of “Dial of Destiny” is that it allows our hero - Indiana Jones - to be old. One complaint I saw about the film is Disney’s apparent agenda to “wokify” male heroes like Indy and Han Solo and make them have interpersonal problems with family and the like in their elderly years. And you know what, that’s right. People get old and family life gets complicated, especially when you’re trying to reach each other across generations, let alone a huge galaxy. Also, anyone who uses the term “woke” in a negative context is a dick and should be treated as such. Indiana Jones punches Nazis and he’s a role model for that.

“Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” tried to look at Indy’s advancing years through the POV of fatherhood - that complicated relationship as stated in the previous paragraph. It was admirable, but it didn’t work that well with everything else that was going on, and Indy was still essentially doing what he did in the previous few things, just with a little more confusion. In “Dial of Destiny,” his age and the age of those around him is staring us in the face to the point where it needs confronting. Hence the character of Helena, who isn’t really taking the torch from Indy but more affording us an alternative perspective of our hero and who he was, but more importantly, who he is now.

Appropriately, John Williams’ score is a bit more laconic than before, but it’s also incredibly reflective. It’s often very beautiful, and the action sequences aren’t really as pounding and exhilarating as they previously were, because Indy isn’t the same person. I wonder if that is the reason there’s a quote of ‘The Flying Wing’ from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” to remind us that this how is how Indy was, but it’s not how he is now. There are still exciting moments to be sure (some of which are omitted from the album), but there’s also a genteelness present. And it’s lovely. There’s a sense of rose-tinted glasses, but also of glasses filled with rosé, paying tribute to our hero getting a fitting end, not just for his cinematic legacy, but for he is as the film ends.

And like Indy, John Williams has changed. Anyone who looks at his scores across the eras will notice the way his music has changed stylistically - just look at the scores for the “Star Wars” prequels versus the original trilogy. His work at the turn of the millennium, with music for films such as “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and “War of the Worlds.” He has a fondness for reflecting himself, and has spent a great deal of time in recent years revisiting and revising previous themes and suites, often with his newfound muse in the guise of the wonderful German violinist Anne Sophie-Mutter. Williams has found new approaches to older pieces such as ‘Across the Stars’ from “Attack of the Clones” and ‘Han Solo and the Princess’ from “The Empire Strikes Back,” and in these new versions there is a keen sense of rumination, perhaps even a sense of melancholy.

In a way, though, “The Empire Strikes Back” is the problem. The basics is that Williams’ score to the 1980 sequel is a work of sheer genius, a masterful operatic work with a sense of excitement and delight matched only by its emotional heft, a score that would be described as capturing lightning in a bottle had Williams not consistently produced scores of similar quality. But, like the film itself, which is by far and away the most popular of the “Star Wars” franchise, we cling to it as the apex. Many enthusiasts call it the best score ever composed, and I am often in agreement (it depends which day it is if I believe it’s “Empire” or Jerry Goldsmith’s similarly incredible “Star Trek - The Motion Picture.” But while that is a truth, it’s something that I realise as not a good approach to art. I feel confident in the opinion because several decades have passed that have allowed “Empire” to be considered in the context of scores composed before and after, but we rarely allow new art - new scores, new films - that consideration.

Nostalgia is often seen as a curse because it is used cynically by corporations to repackage what we previously loved and sell it to us again and again, whether it’s a 50th anniversary 4K Blu-ray box-set or a new TV show featuring beloved characters or a legacy sequel movie that follows the previous successful instalments beat by beat. You can barely move on the internet without being offered T-shirts homaging “The Goonies” or “Knight Rider,” or expensive LEGO sets of “Friends” and “The Office.” And on the other hand, Kylo Ren of the aforementioned “Star Wars” sequel trilogy - who himself is a genuine in-universe stan of Darth Vader - tells us that we should “let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.” But as with everything in life, there’s a balance to be struck, and with that, there’s another Disney character worth quoting here, the food critic Anton Ego: “There are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.”

As audiences who have seen “Dial of Destiny” will know, the film visits the past literally, allowing Indiana Jones to meet his own hero in the guise of Archimedes. Physically and mentally exhausted, he asks Helena to leave him in the past to die, but she doesn’t because she knows he doesn’t belong there. Not in ancient Greece or six feet under. He’s who he is, and he’s old, and he’s battered and bruised. But he’s also a father figure and he’s a husband. We’re often told in movies that characters want to grow old with each other, but we very rarely see it, especially in franchises like this. Studios are far more likely to use technology to bring characters - and their actors -back. It doesn’t matter if they’re old, they can make them young again, and they do with Indy in “Dial of Destiny.”

The film - and Indy’s screen adventures - end with a nostalgic throwback to be sure, but it’s like seeing a stained-glass representation, or a lenticular image. We remember Indy and Marion as they were, the tough adventurer and the even tougher broad, but seeing them now in a new light feels like a book closing, but with another to be written.

To steal from another Disney film, perhaps the book will be named “the spirit of adventure.” Which doesn’t mean more obtaining of rare antiquities, but just growing old together.

Which is okay.

And of course, John Williams is closing his own book, only to go on to another, and another, and another. He returns to Marion’s Theme for that final sequence, as of course he should, and as always ends with The Raiders March, our exit music for the film and the character. It’s such a great piece of music that it transcends notions of nostalgia - yes, our synapses will instantly think of all of Indy’s adventures when we hear it, but more than that, it’s a theme for our own exploits, a musical fountain of youth where we can imagine ourselves as Indiana Jones on whatever adventure we want to go on.

No matter our age.

*as promised:

Helena’s Theme for violin

Germany, 1944

Voller Returns

To Morocco

Auction at Hotel L’Atlantique

Tuk Tuk in Tangiers

To Athens

Perils of the Deep

Water Ballet

Polybius Cipher

The Grafikos

Archimedes’ Tomb

The Airport

Battle of Syracuse

Centuries Join Hands

New York, 1969

Helena’s Theme

Prologue