This week’s Friday Film Quote is from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade – Sean Connery is the perfect foil for Harrison Ford as Henry Jones Senior. 

Released in 1989, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade is the third film Indiana Jones film. After finding the Ark of the Covenant, Indy sets off to beat the Nazis to the Holy Grail, the cup of Christ, rescuing his father, Henry, in the process.

The Holy Grail has been written about in stories for the last 1000 years – from medieval French literature to more recently by Dan Brown and “The DaVinci Code”, it is a story that continues to capture the public imagination. As Marcus Brody says in the Last Crusade, “The search for the Cup of Christ is the search for the divine in all of us.” Perhaps this explains its enduring legacy. 

This week it’s a scene I want to draw your attention to. 

At the end of the movie, there are three fiendishly difficult challenges that Indy has to best to save his father. The last of these is “the Breath of God: Only in a leap from the lion’s head, shall he prove his worth.” 

The scene is incredible – there is what appears to be a huge chasm across a canyon, with no obvious way of getting over, no way to jump across. Time is running out for Indy to save his dying father – and then he realises “it’s a leap of faith”. He literally has to have the belief to step forward into the chasm and hope he doesn’t die and somehow gets across. 

The picture in the Grail diary shows a knight templar literally floating over the chasm. Knowing this, Henry his father says “You must believe boy, you must believe.”

And Indy places his hand over his heart and takes that leap forward, the leap from the lion’s head. 

Incredibly there is a bridge across the chasm that has been brilliantly camouflaged to make it look invisible initially and once you see it, you can see it was there all the time. It’s just amazing.

And it makes me think of life – there are times when we may not be able to see the path in front of us we have to follow, where we don’t have all the information at our disposal to make a completely informed decision, where we just have to take that leap of faith, where we must believe. And we make that step, and suddenly you realise the path was there all along. You just had to look more carefully or from a different perspective.