Tintin in Tibet

I was dipping into Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin, by Pierre Assouline (OUP, 2009). One thing Assouline says is that Tintin in Tibet is unlike any of the other books: it’s more metaphysical. Tintin doesn’t really do anything – he’s seeking someone out. Is he really seeking himself?

And maybe it almost worked. But it’s the clichéd characterisation of the Yeti that lets it down so badly – perhaps because it comes right at the end: This Yeti, gee, maybe he’s not as bad as people make out. “Now he’s alone again…” “I tell you, Tintin, from the way he took care of me, I couldn’t help wondering if, deep down, he hadn’t a human soul”. And so any metaphysical quest or message that the book has been working on is blown out by the anodyne reflections of the last two pages.

By the whiskers of Kûrvi-Tasch!

Tintin and Indiana Jones.

I was reading The Calculus Affair and watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade soon after and I realised – in style and tone they are one.

There’s a lot of travel, and there are similar kinds of action sequences: in The Calculus Affair a helicopter chases a speedboat. There’s a rescue from a fortress; a car chase and a car driven off the road; and a dash for a border in a tank, chased by gunmen on motorbikes. Action sequences are one thing – there’s the light-heartedness too. Marcus Brody is like the hapless Calculus. Captain Haddock, who provides most of the humour, is like Henry Jones (the story begins with a gag). The gags range from simple cartoon stuff (when Haddock is hit by lightening and he ends up in a chandelier) to stuff that wouldn’t be out of place in a Marx Brothers film: Tintin and Haddock hiding from a police chief – behind a curtain in an opera star’s dressing room, filching safe passes from his coat that’s been hung up between them.

In the end, Spielberg couldn’t resist.