The other night I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, critically agreed to be the best in the Jones series. I’ve been watching this movie since childhood, originating in my Grandparents bunkhouse where I watched a taped version of it on a TV that was probably 20 years old. I’ve watched it so many times in so many places over the years that the film has developed a familiarity with me. I’ve never studied the film in a theoretically intense way, so I don’t know the film intimately in an intellectual way, but I do know it in a more personal way, I notice its characteristics, its faults, its nuances, its goodness. It hasn’t been long since I last watched the film, but this last time the film gave me a nurturing presence, a warm feeling that only an old friend or family member could give me. The experience helped me find that the movies in my life have a power that transcends its original utility as a piece of entertainment and can become a work of art that can do work in your life that you may never full fathom.
I think the strangest feeling is homesickness. I get it time to time. It’s always the little things we miss. The smell of your house. Your neighborhood. The smell of your old bathroom. Of course you miss all the people that inhabit your past home. But when you get a whiff of something that reminds you of home, a rush of nostalgia hits you, and suddenly this new place that you chose to go seems less welcoming. And the true sting to feeling homesick is that the instant you need to be back home you hopelessly cannot return, home is there, you are here. Everyone has a way of easing the pain of missing home. Mom’s cookies. That tea you always drink at home. And for me, it’s the movies.
During College, coming home for break was probably more significant than I ever understood. For four years, I always went home for all my breaks, save for a few in my senior year. Break is what you look forward to at the end of your semester; it’s what you’re working to. It’s not just the break from school for three weeks. It’s home. There’s a strange rejuvenation when you’re home. You see your family, you see your friends. But it’s being in that familiar place. Your hometown, your old house. Being in that place gives you a new energy, it heals all the stress that built up over the semester, and it empowers you to go and accomplish another term in school.
This past week has been tiring. My work week went seven days in a row. You would think an extra couple days of work wouldn’t be too much given that I just sell movie tickets. But once that seventh day just won’t end you eventually want to strangle every customer who wants to see Fright Night (I’m kidding, I would never strangle a customer, even if they were seeing Fright Night). So I was pretty exhausted by work, and in the midst of my work week, my friend Jaime broke her ankle falling down some stairs. I’m the classic worrier, think a young George Banks from Father of the Bride. So when I heard she broke her ankle I rushed to her apartment, and with other friends took her to the hospital. I was so worried that I never left her side, making the entire hospital staff think that I was her concerned husband.
So the past few days I’ve been doing what I can to help her. Buy her groceries, get her coffee. And I’m not saying in any way that I resent her for doing all this work. But subconsciously, I think I’m worried that I haven’t done enough to help her out. I love doing what I can for a friend who could use some help, it gives me peace knowing that I’ve helped her out, it makes me happy. And I don’t want to toot my own horn, and I know if I keep defending myself, the pretension will just grow-so suffice it to say, with great pleasure but with a wearied sense of duty I have been doing my best to help out a friend.
Since coming back to be a Christian, I feel that God is going to use me in a variety of ways in the city. I meet people, in random ways that don’t feel coincidental. Just a couple of nights ago I met a guy who just needed someone to talk to. He was dealing with alcoholism, and so I told him a condensed testimony of my Agnostic life and how my love of film helped me find God, and I encouraged him to pursue what he loved (and prayed it wasn’t alcohol). He said that I made an impact on his night, and he was glad he met me, I just feel so nervous that I could’ve done more. Lately, I feel like I’ve been doing a crappy job of whatever I ought to do, because I know that I want to help everyone in my life, but I know I will -and have- let them down. (I know the pretension is creeping back, just bear with me) God hasn’t given me more than I can handle, I just feel, tired.
So last night, my roommate Kelly, Sky, a new friend from work, and Jaime, all watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It was really great because we got Jaime over to our apartment, the farthest she had been from her apartment for many days. The film was exactly what I needed. It’s a fun film, filled with adventure, humor, and heart. The action scenes gave me a solid amount of catharsis. I think I’ve been so mad at the universe for all the bad luck it’s been shelling out to some people in my life that I just wanted to punch something. Indiana Jones punched for me. The film has such a thought out world. It’s not a hyper realistic portrayal of WWII-era Europe, but it’s a world that is consistent across a slew of films, and it makes for a world that I can escape into. Most films aren’t as thought out, but with Indiana Jones, there is a certain consistency that you easily can latch onto for hours.
I had a blast watching the film, and so did my friends. The film was just like home. Not to say that it emulated the power of home, but it was home. It was that familiar thing that I grew up with. If I could, I would have taken the first train home, and spend a week drinking café Ladro and hanging out with my friends and family in order to de-stress from the past week. But I couldn’t. Luckily, I had Indiana Jones. I was delivered home through the movie. The stress that had been weighing me down had left me. Like a good winter break that heals the wounds of your last semester, the film relieved the stress of the past week.
Watching Jaime watch a movie is almost as good as watching the movie itself. She interacts with the movie, she talks to it, but somehow, it’s not annoying. And I saw that she was happy, and out of her apartment, which had been her prison lately because of the damn broken ankle. I got to rest up from the past seven days of work. Maybe any other movie could have done a similar effect, but truly, watching a movie that has been so embedded in me gave me a comfort only home could give. And when it comes to my responsibility to my fellow man, well, I realized that there is only so much we can do, even Indiana Jones can stumble, and I need to let go of thinking I can solve all the problems of life, forget that I may be able to grab the cup of Christ in order to save everyone. At the end of the day, I just need to let it go.
(P.S.-Other films that I grew up with and now feel like home include the Star Wars films, the Back to the Future trilogy, and the Wayne’s World films)
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