Indie: fortune and glory.

The brightest memory of my first visit to the Bloody Island is commemorated in a photo of myself aged 8 with a knight Templar in Mme Tussaud's. And one of myself 10 minutes later with a running Harrisson Ford. I'd post them here, were my past not packed in cardboard boxes in various cellars and atticks. Unwitting child that I was, I'd not read the omen verbatim nor foreseen this change of career plans.
Last night the puzzle came together.

I won't talk about growing up, I've got better plans: my life's gonna be an Indie movie - it starts in the unhealthy soil of the 1980s and will run through the 21st century implausible, crap and shallow, with amoral heroes for leads but immensly entertaining, with a catchy tune and beautiful lighting! I'll be chasing extraterrestrials chased by KGB agents, diving in waterfalls with amphibious jeeps, speaking ancient Mayan ... and I shall have a whip and never forget my hat!!

Now on a serious note, why the story of Dr. Jones deserves all the superlatives on Earth, in space and in the space between spaces.

On the craft: impeccable, simply beautiful visually, not overdone effects, never boring stunts. And how the hell did they film the car chasing?

On the script: many accused it of being implausible and simplistic. I think it was brilliantly thought through, to the smallest detail and if someone doesn't like it it is because of it's delightful taste of raw symbolism, to which we have grown immune with either extremely violent or extremely subtle films.

- Heroes are amoral by definition. It (θυμος) is in the guts.
Go to your locus classicus where Achilles pierces a rope through Hector's heel tendons and drags Mr Nice Family Guy around town to close the sacred space with a blood-boundry higher than any city wall.

- Still, they have a soft spot. Usually for some honorable woman who gets treated horribly, bears their children so the hero is revived even when it's time for him to retire and symbolically die. His name remains immortal, reproduced in his offspring. Doctor Jones changes social status to associate dean and getting married, which is his way of joining the ancestors' spirits.

- Dr Jones, the modern hero is more complex than that. The hat he never forgets stands for his intellectual self, for quickly regaining self-control because that's what nature meant him to be like in order to put him to her tests. (cf Hercules' deeds). He never wears the hat in lectures though - because a knight never wears his helmet in his castle.

- Irina is what women heroes must not be if they want to persist through eternity. Mad and manly. Her rapira clearly is a phallic symbol. In opposition to Indiana's whip however it is stiff and can be used to one purpose only - to harm. On the other hand the whip can both harm and help. It reflects Indiana's flexible nature, occasional compassion and the deic ability to hold both life and death, punishment and reward in his hand.

Why do you need to be all of those things to be an archaeologist?
Because you don't need morals - they distance you from what you study. But you need a heart and you need to know the way back to your morals once the beautiful discovery crumbles down under the weight of hubris.
You have to have good reasons for hubris. Better than your own survival, which not many Bulgarian archaeologists have I'm afraid. Certain Drs dig out prolific amounts of gold from tombs on a weekly basis in season... for no higher cause than their survival and short-lived fame of a discoverer. That's not enough. Digging out is not discovering. It's destroying the jigsaw. Solving it with patience and persistence, discovering the beauty of its fragile patterns - that's a noble deed. ... You also need to be partly childish and partly maniac to enjoy solving puzzles and riddles, poke around and try in order to discover. You have to let fate lead you rather than go metal-scanning.

In brief, never intended to write a film review or a statement of purpose for archaeology. I wanted to express my excitement by a legendary piece of cinema and make a point that it is legitimate to make heroic films about the past, to exaggerate and simplify for myth-making purposes. Because there is much heroism and myth we need yet to learn from.
But it must be done by careful myth-masters, which I'm afraid did not quite happen in our Indiana-Jonesy documentary on Thrace last summer. I'd be curious to see the final product in August or whenever it makes it to TV. Will brag-blog here.

Now I should go and read my Gordon Childe, as Dr Jones advised.