“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is a movie of two minds, marked with hints of the hero’s mortality—“Everything hurts,” he says near the end—and yet determined to convince itself, and us, that he is the exception to the rule of universal entropy.
New York, 1969. Asleep in a chair, Indiana Jones is awoken not by an explosion, or by gunfire, but by a blast of “Magical Mystery Tour” from a nearby apartment. As he rises to remonstrate, he is shown naked to the waist, visibly worn, and stripped of both mystery and magic. The years have taken their usual withering revenge. Having spent his life hunting antiquities, Jones is at risk of becoming one himself.
Every quest needs a whatchamacallit, be it the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, and the latest object of desire is the Dial of Destiny—also known as the Antikythera or, as Jones calls it, “an ancient hunk of gears.” Devised long ago by Archimedes, we are told, it comes in two parts, which, once meshed together, enable the user to scoot through time. The dial was an obsession for Basil Shaw , an Oxford professor, and his daughter, Helena, has inherited the craving.
But no. It’s Nazis. Here they come again. The baddest is Dr. Voller , who, in the wake of the war, has reinvented himself as a mastermind of the U.S. space program. Shades of Wernher von Braun, although I doubt whether von Braun would have remarked to an American waiter, as Voller does, “You didn’t win the war. Hitler lost it.” Sure that he can improve on the Führer’s feeble efforts, Voller needs only the dial to bring his plans to fruition.
All of Mel Eslyn’s début movie, “Biosphere,” takes place in what might be called the Dome of Destiny. It’s a cozy sphere, sealed and self-sustaining, in which a former Republican President of the United States, Billy , and one of his senior advisers, Ray , eke out what remains of their lives. They share the space with tomato plants, copies of Shakespeare , and a pond stocked with nutritious fish, named for characters from “Cheers.
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