In
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, there is a scene near the end in which, when the whole place is crumbling, the knight who was the guardian of the Holy Grail salutes Indy through the falling debris and dust.
I wept when I saw that scene in the theater in 1989. I like that. I was 21.
I could list a whole bunch of other films, books, poems and works of art that made me get all emotional. (I do that.) To me, it is the highest effect art can have: to move someone to tears, to chills or to laughter. No, I'm not a fan of empty sentimentality; I am a seeker of the sublime. The sublime can only exist when the wind of intellect blows through the aeolian harp of emotion. (I know -- I'm getting all Coleridgean.)
Anyway, if I listed those works that "moved" me, some would be no surprise: "Afternoon of a Faun," by Debussy;
The Pines of Rome, by Respighi; Miller's
The Crucible and
Death of a Salesman; Hemingway's
The Old Man and the Sea; Ravel's
Mother Goose suite... I could do this all day.
But...Indiana Jones?
