Indiana Jones and the genius of the past

By Andrew Miller Culture editor The Economist. Risky business, re-watching old movies. You may decide that a film you loved in your youth is dross—and that your youthful self was a dolt. Worse, it might seem offensive, which all those years ago you failed to notice. Happily, that wasn’t my experience with “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”, the finale of the franchise, is released this week, and I tease out the saga’s hidden meanings in my Back Story column (concluding that Indy is more like us than he appears). “Raiders” remains a great, great movie: a stunt and gag a minute, a hero brilliantly conceived from whip to theme-tune, and a star, Harrison Ford, in his rugged pomp. The latest adventure has enough creepy-crawlies and cadavers to satisfy the faithful. Besides regret and affection, reconsidering classics can yield fresh insights. The optimism of the original “Top Gun” contrasts tellingly with the nostalgia of its sequel. Today the avoidable calamity in “Titanic” feels to me like a parable of climate change. Dive into early James Bond and you realise how much he has evolved; radically recasting 007 might only be in character. Beneath its screwball antics, meanwhile, “Some Like it Hot”, my favourite film, now seems way ahead of its time.