‘When there was wonder in the world’: why Raiders of the Lost Ark is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers paying tribute to their go-to comfort films celebrates Steven Spielberg’s escapist globe-trotting adventure The ancient Greek philosopher Lucretius writes in his epic poem On the Nature of Things: “It is comforting, when winds are whipping up the waters of the vast sea, to watch from land the severe trials of another person … it is comforting to see from what troubles you yourself are exempt.” This feeling of living dangerously by proxy is exactly why I fin...

By James McClellan