I’m not trying to change anyone’s minds on the ending so don’t take this as an attempt to, but the different perspectives got me thinking a lot on this movie.
Excuse the length but there is several things I’d like to cover: the fact Marion’s presence is felt throughout the movie, the dangers of assuming empathy from the audience, and the importance of Helena’s growth and how much it made us care.
For the Marion appearance to work we had to have felt, like Indy, that we have lost something too. It doesn’t need to be Indy’s motivation to get back to Marion (it can’t because his whole thing is avoidance) so the motivation has to be Helena’s, who comes to it by her development in the movie, a result of Indy’s influence on her. But also the audience’s motivation to see Marion as well. To see a bad version of this look no further than Captain America Civil War where they did no character development for Bucky Barnes, who is the source of the conflict between Cap and Iron Man, and a conflict that is undermined by Cap giving a speech that he is there for Iron Man if he just gives him a call. Like what, the conflict will be resolved that easy? Except in Dial we get the whole development with Helena that leads to letting Indy and the audience off the hook. It assumes empathy because we know Indy and Marion’s relationship. The work has already been done prior. But if you don’t care for Marion, you probably don’t also care for her appearing at the end. We have to feel her loss in the movie. And where this movie positions itself as a curtain closer, it operates a little less standalone than some of the other movies, as its in constant dialogue with them on more than one level, so assumes a lot of familiarity. Which can be a problem.
On first viewing we know that Marion and Indy’s relationship is in question because of the divorce papers. Indy covers her photo up on the fridge. He’s drawn to the bottle just like he was in Raiders after her assumed death. Later, Sallah tells him to call Marion but Indy says she doesn’t want to talk to him. We already know that one of his problems is he doesn’t just run from boulders but also from responsibility and emotional problems. And we get this suggestion he’s not wanting to call Marion or look at her photo because he would rather avoid than confront. We don’t know what Sallah knows so we might even take Indy’s word that she doesn’t want to talk to him. But like the whip and jacket he stuffed under his bed, so has he done the same with his troubles. Tellingly Sallah has to retrieve his iconic outfit. This is not the first instance that without the people around him he’d be lost. “I like to be alone,” might by his first words of the movie but it wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.
We then find out in a flashback that the relationship between Indy and Basil grew tense, and we can see in the embodiment of Helena that Indy hasn’t lived up to his title of Godfather or friend to Basil. Again, avoiding rather than confronting. Helena has become a sort of shadow of his younger self, like we’ve seen before in Elsa, what he might have been had he sought only for his own gain. Except here we return to the Last Crusade territory of valuing family as a moral choice, only Helena has to choose, whose actions later are reactions to Indy being threatened and kidnapped. She like Indy before, becomes motivated by family, and not fortune and glory. Personal relationships become a source of meaning and morality, just as we saw in the Last Crusade and KotCS. In a way, Indy having developed in TLC is what he can impart to her.
As a side note, KotCS abstracts the supporting characters like the returning Marion, their purpose is mostly just to move the plot forward but not really encouraging any adaption or development on the part of Indy. Dial corrects this in a big way.
The brutal killing of Ronaldo is important because it leads to Indy scolding her after their escape, a moment that makes her take on the value of other people’s lives. We start to see her facade begin to crumble.
All the while Marion remains a presence, if not a physical one. We learn from Indy on the boat that he was incapable of consoling Marion. This is the biggest insight to what we can deduce about their relationship. She left him because he wasn’t capable of being emotionally open to her. And this is backed up by the many suggestions we get by his character, that he pushes away rather than confronts. We might not think about it in the moment, but Sallah’s question to Indy about giving her a call might just be the very thing he needs to do, but is incapable of doing. It would seem the biggest obstacle is himself.
When Helena punches Indy (in a deliberate echo to the one Marion gave him in Raiders) and brings him back to 1969, there is a brief moment where Indy still asks who he is back for. “For who?” You can see this pains Helena, and doubt is communicated through her expression. Indy might not still see that he has value, but it’s about to be put to the test. For as a consequence of all that he did for Helena she is in turn rewarding him with an opportunity he couldn’t do for himself. She called Marion.
Marion enters and her question, “Are you back, Indy?” is filled with doubt. Is he back? Can he be emotionally open to her? And the answer finally is yes.
So here we reach the crux. A lot of this hinges on how much we felt Marion’s loss in the story, and how much we wanted them to get back together. The movie assumes empathy because those characters and the meaning has already been established prior. So it delivers the audience to the place it assumes we want to be with them consoling but the character work with Helena had to have worked, and the audience had to have got on board. I think the decision for the prologue, to remind us of the past as well as work as a table setter, is just as much a kind of re-establishing. It’s a movie that is in dialogue with the audience’s history with this franchise as well as the characters within it. Ultimately, the strength and weakness of the movie are entwined. It both does the real work (integrates Helena’s growth, Indy overcoming his inability to confront emotions, mortality, finding purpose in a changing world, change and loss into theme) but also assumes a certain amount of empathy from the audience, and there are dangers to that.
