Ever since I saw the episodes that make up Oganga, The Giver and Taker of Life, back in the 1990s (German East Africa, December 1916 and Congo, January 1917 for the trainspotters), I have always held a soft spot for the story. Indeed, it’s one I should try and watch more often. While it gut punches you about half a dozen times, mercilessly, it also leaves you with a reverence for life and a desire to be a better person.
That’s a big call for an old TV series that has a bunch of ropey episodes, I know, so let’s get into it.
First, the movie is one of the more successful ones, having a narrative that flows pretty seamlessly between episodes and justifies being presented as a feature. I particularly like the way Indy and his men see the subject of the 1917 episode – the German doctor, Albert Schweitzer – earlier in the 1916 episode, giving some overlap between the two stories that many of these movies just don’t have, aside from any new bridging material specially filmed later on to paper over the cracks between episodes.
Second, both of the episodes are strong. German East Africa, December 1916 has fighting on-par with the Somme, Early August 1916 episode used in Trenches of Hell. At one stage, Indy gets on a captured German machine gun and kills literally dozens of enemy soldiers. This is a turning point for the character, I feel, who has killed in the series before, but in quite sparing ways. Then Congo, January 1917, comes along and has a beautiful storyline where Indy, driven almost to madness by illness and the loss of so many men on a foolhardy mission across the Congo, spends some time with the aforementioned Schweitzer, who turns his worldview upside down. And a German, no less! Isn’t he meant to be the enemy? A lot of this is left unsaid in the story, but is there for any audience member to reach up and grab if they see it.
And then there are the gut punches. In German East Africa, December 1916 it’s largely centred around a Ubangi boy that Sergeant Barthélèmy brings along on the mission, despite strict orders to leave him to die in the smallpox ravaged camp where the Belgian troops found him. This causes a number of scenes – from a near-mutiny by the unit over not leaving the boy behind, to Barthélèmy’s wounding, to his later death – that can bring a tear to the eye. In Congo, January 1917, it’s Schweitzer’s world-view that is worthwhile of meditation, along with lines from a local chief who clearly can’t conceive of 10 men being killed in a battle while Schweitzer and Indy talk of 30,000 men being lost in a day in some Western Front battles. The whole futility of WW1 is brought into sharp focus and I think the audience starts to go on a journey with Indy’s own thoughts; wondering just what he’s doing in the middle of this war that is so destructive. Coming hot on the heels of him machine gunning so many men earlier, it’s sobering.
Towards the end of the story, when Schweitzer and his wife have been arrested by the French and taken away from their hospital (for being Germans in French territory), the scene of the Schweitzer’s piano playing in their deserted home while shutters flap in the wind and his patients walk away into the jungle at night is just… I don’t have a word for it. A man, trying to do good, has been taken away, and the patients are melting away – ghost-like – into the night. It’s really quite symbolic and beautifully sad.
I told you there was a lot going on in this one, didn’t I? It’s a cut above most of the Young Indy movies.
As always, the location filming, costuming, and cinematography also look superb. And this feels like a genuine movie for a change, with a proper beginning, middle, and end. Indeed, it’s hard to fault Oganga, The Giver and Taker of Life at all, so I’m giving it the highest score of the series so far – a well deserved 9.5/10 – just shading Trenches of Hell precisely due to the fact it has that beginning, middle, and end. Even Trenches doesn’t have that, feeling more like a Western Front episode with one ensemble cast, and a German castle escape episode with a completely different ensemble cast. As such, this is the second movie from the box sets that I would hand to someone with little to no idea about the series and say, this is the best of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, period. If you’ve never seen it, please, seek it out.