Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Pt 6: 'Papers, Please!'

This is the sixth of a 10-part section by section analysis of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. You can find links to the other nine parts at the end of this piece.

Before this moment, Indy and Henry have not had chance to stop for breath, following their escape from the castle and diversion into Berlin. In looking to escape Germany, they finally get the opportunity to sit down and talk, or at least face each other, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at last gets the opportunity to begin adding flesh to the bones of characterisation between these two men. It just isn’t a conversation that goes down the way Indy might have liked.

A brief moment, ahead of looking at what Indy and Henry say to one another, to discuss writers. Throughout this series, I’ve referred to Jeffrey Boam as the major architect of the eventual film, and his treatment was indeed the one used enough for him to be given the screenplay credit by the Writers Guild of America. Last Crusade always had another key player in the mix, however, a name you probably won’t recognise: Barry Watson. Otherwise known by a name you might know: Tom Stoppard.

A celebrated English playwright, best known for the comedy Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, he was drafted by Steven Spielberg to take a final pass at the script in 1988 not long before filming. Though he doesn’t get a screen credit, Stoppard’s work remains one of the signature screenplay ghost-writing examples in Hollywood. Much of the dialogue in Last Crusade comes from him, as do key narrative beats; the man in the Panama Hat, characterisation of Donovan, the final Path of God to find the Grail sequence, the list goes on…

So when confronted with a scene such as the one on the zeppelin as Indy and Henry attempt to leave Germany, you feel in little doubt that Stoppard is the one behind the typewriter making the words come alive. Spielberg takes what’s on the page and skilfully manages to make what could have been a menacing moment, as Vogel boards the vessel and begins searching for Henry by showing his photograph, into a broader comic beat as Indy dons another disguise, that of a ticket collector, as a means of heading the Nazis off.

One moment really well played for that blend of menace and humour, both in terms of direction and via John Williams’ score, is Vogel using his cane to lower the newspaper Henry is buried in and reveal his prey. He looks positively gleeful, Henry spooked. Then comes the comedy. Indy asks him for a ticket and punches Vogel, throwing him out of the airplane. Michael Byrne’s expression here is priceless; somewhere between shock at seeing Indy and perhaps genuinely amused by the scene they’re playing. I’ve never quite been able to figure out which.

Honestly, I can only imagine the roar of laughter in cinemas watching this film for the first time when Harrison Ford, deadpan as you like, dropped the “no ticket” line to the rest of the passengers. Glorious. A wonderful punchline to some excellent physical comedy that prefigures a character scene and ultimately a major action set piece. That’s a great example of why Last Crusade will always be my favourite Indiana Jones film. It threads that needle exceptionally.

To the central conversation here on the zeppelin, because in just a short scene it illuminates and contextualises so much of the relationship between Jones Sr and “Junior!” Crucially, Henry spends most of Indy’s reminiscences about his childhood with his nose in the Grail diary, as dismissive now as he was then. Both immediately revert to the roles they’ve always played. Indy slips into a child mindset: “do you remember the last time we had a quiet drink? I had a milkshake,” Henry edges back toward the brusque patrician father he is at the desk.

That’s what’s fascinating about these two. Even Henry is a little wild eyed and impressed at Indy the action hero, at which point later in this sequence—when they’re crashing planes and escaping in cars—he reverts to the submissive one, the child. When dealing with academia, when at a desk, the roles flip. Henry is in command. He’s also oblivious to the damage he caused Indy being the kind of distant, work-focused father we saw in the prologue. “I was a wonderful father,” he professes, which Indy scoffs at.

Henry then boasts about not making Indy undergo all of the childhood rituals his absent mother—who had died of illness when Indy was younger—would have enforced: regular bedtimes and meal times, washing, brushing teeth. “I respected your privacy and I taught you self-reliance.” (Or from Sean Connery, “shelf reliansh") Indy quite rightly brings him to task on this, making him aware of how lonely and unimportant he made Indy feel as a parent. Henry ends up passively aggressively spinning it around, trying to make Indy sound irrational.

The dynamics flowing back and forth between these characters in just this scene are marvellously done. Indy tries to use this as an opportunity to make Henry understand why he left, why he got away from a man that in no small part he ended up trying to become, but Henry instead spins it back to where his interest lies: his obsession. The Grail. Indy is just forced to capitulate, sucked back into Henry’s work which is now both of their passions. Again, it speaks to the position of Henry in charge of anything bookish, and Indy anything where they are at risk.

Once the zeppelin begins turning back around to Germany, forcing their escape in the plane, we end up with a barrage of wonderful action beats, from “fly? yes… land? no”; through to Henry not understanding how to fire the machine gun rotor “what happens at eleven o’clock?”; and then Henry lying to Indy about accidentally blasting off their tail causing them to crash. Connery plays this brilliantly, a casual bluff claiming the Nazis did it, but it’s all in his goofy expressions. The fact Indy never knows what we do makes it all the more fun.

The sequence in the car is equally brilliantly done. Henry’s incredulous “Those people are trying to kill us!” and later “well, they don’t come any closer than that!” before a missile explodes next to them are just glorious comic beats which Connery, again, plays to perfection. These action beats would have worked well with Indy and, say, Elsa, but goodness everything is just elevated thanks to Henry as the ‘damsel in distress’, incredulous at what’s happening and even lightly critical of his son at points even in these circumstances. It is some of the finest blending of action and comedy in adventure cinema.

This sequence ends with a moment that, oddly, always makes me emotional. On the beach, where Henry’s eccentricity comes fully into play and he chases a flock of seagulls so they collide with and take down a Nazi gunner, we get a moment of pure stardust. Henry, pleased as punch at his gambit, unfurls his umbrella and wanders off happily “I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne, “let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky”” Indy just looks on, as Williams’ theme rolls in, with a sense of pride and love. This is the father he missed. The father he always wished showed himself to him.

I think it chokes me up slightly because for a long time, I didn’t have my Dad in my life. I do now, thankfully, but I’ve always had a weakness for stories about absent fathers and fractured father/son dynamics, and in truth I think I love Last Crusade so much because it has my favourite two actors of all time playing the dynamic that strikes such a chord with me. Last Crusade wouldn’t have that personal or emotional effect on everyone but it does me. I love this film for many reasons but that scene, crystallising Indy’s desire to know and love his father, might just be the greatest.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Pt 8 - The Word, Breath and Path of God

Pt 9 - That’s the Cup of a Carpenter

Pt 10 - Into the Sunset

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