Frank Herbert

MOVIE REVIEW: Jodorowsky’s Dune (2014)

JODOROWSKY’S DUNE (2014 Sony Pictures)

Directed by Frank Pavich

What do Alien, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Flash Gordon, Masters of the Universe, The Terminator, and Blade Runner all have in common? They all bear the imprint of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to make a film version of Frank Herbert’s Dune in the mid-70s. 2001: A Space Odyssey was the definitive space movie, and Star Wars was just a gleam in Lucas’ eye.  Dune, considered by many to be unfilmable, was perfect for Jodorowsky.  The Chillean-French director was considered a madman, albeit one with a sky-high imagination.  Of Dune, he sought to give the audience a druggy trip without the drugs.  But he also sought to make so much more – “a prophet”, he described it.  Something that would change the consciousness of the audience, and the future of movies.  Free the imagination, the mind, the soul.  He saw it as something much bigger than making a film, and so he assembled a team of “spiritual warriors” to join him in making his vision real.

His warriors included the Swiss genius H.R. Giger, known for his biomechanical style. Comic artists Chris Foss and Jean “Mœbius” Giraud were on board.  (Ian Gillan fans will recognize Foss’ style from the cover of his Clear Air Turbulence album.) Special effects genius Dan O’Bannon sold all his possessions and moved to France to work with the team. Pink Floyd and Magma were assigned to do music for specific planetary settings. Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, David Carradine and Udo Kier signed on, with Welles to play the grotesque Baron Harkonnen. Jodorowsky convinced him by offering to hire his favourite French chef for his catering.  As the key character of Paul Atreides, the messiah of Dune, who could he cast but his own son Brontis?  The boy went through gruelling physical and mental training for  the role.

The team assembled what is now known as the Dune book, an incredibly detailed shot-by-shot storyboard, several inches thick, and filled with images that found full motion and sound later on in the aforementioned films.  Giger’s designs are especially recognizable, including one that foreshadows his famous Alien Xenomorph.

Jodorowsky used Herbert’s Dune as the basis for his own, but began to drastically change the storyline.  Some of his original ideas were brilliant, but his ending is completely baffling.  In an “I am Spartacus!” moment, Paul dies, which does not happen in the book.  Suddenly his consciousness transfers to the people of planet Arrakis, who all proclaim to be Paul.  The planet comes back to life, with green jungles and blue oceans appearing.  Arrakis then breaks orbit, and shoots through space to share its new joined consciousness with the universe.  Heady stuff perhaps, but a sharp change in direction to Herbert’s more serious science fiction style.  Jodorowsky believed in his story, with an unbelievable passion.  He is visibly angered at what comes next.

When movie executives told him that the film had to come in at 90 minutes, it was the beginning of the end.  No, he said.  Eight hours, or 20 hours, he would make the movie he needed to make!  Studio executives don’t like hearing such things, and fearing budget overruns, cancelled the Jodorowsky version of Dune.  His team scattered, with many such as Giger, O’Bannon and Foss meeting soon again on Ridley Scott’s Alien.  The Dune project was handed to David Lynch, who Jodorowsky believed was the only other person who could have realized the movie the right way.  It filled him with feelings of dread that soon turned to glee when he saw just how bad Lynch’s Dune turned out.  Yet he knew, it had to be the movie executives who ruined it.

This is the story of Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary film by Frank Pavich.  You will be stunned by the images that this team created, and by Alejandro’s deep passion for making his art.  This is your own chance to see what might have been.  Blu-ray recommended.

4.5/5 stars

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Blu-ray REVIEW: Dune (1984) by Holen MaGroin

Guest review by Holen MaGroin

DUNE (1984 Universal)

Directed by David Lynch

Frank Herbert’s seminal Dune is one of the most beloved and influential works of science fiction ever committed to paper. Despite its convoluted plot, world specific dialogue, and the presence of enough supporting characters to fill a football arena, readers have been captivated by the tale of lost humanity and political turmoil for over half a century.* The book’s epic length gave it the time it needed to develop compelling three-dimensional characters. Adapting such a complex story into a feature film proved to be so challenging that Arthur P. Jacobs, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Ridley Scott all tried and failed to bring the book to the big screen. After three misfires, American surrealist director David Lynch was hired to helm the project in 1981. The film took three challenging years to produce, and upon completion, was a substantial critical and commercial failure.

In the years since its release in 1984, the film has developed a cult following, and for good reason. While it’s not everything a fan of the book would hope for, it’s certainly not as bad as it was made out to be upon its release. For people new to the series, the sheer amount of characters, alliances, and jargon can be overwhelming. Especially when Lynch was only given two hours with which to tell a five-hundred page novel. This is easily the weakest aspect of the movie. Much of the exposition is crammed in at the beginning of the film, and its delivery can best be described as clunky. The scene in which Emperor Shaddam IV explains his plan to destroy House Atreides to the Spacing Guild is so poorly written that it calls to mind a moment from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs in which the evil Lord Helmet turns to the camera after excessive exposition and asks the audience if they caught it all.

The sloppy exposition is exacerbated by the literal interpretation of Frank Herbert’s use of internal dialogue. Lynch’s decision to literally adapt the book’s internal dialogue by having the actors narrate each character’s thoughts and motivations is belligerent and awkward. The film too often relies on this internal dialogue that robs the movie of surprise and subtlety for the sake of clarity that it ironically fails to bring. Much of the dialogue is used to further the plot, as opposed to developing the characters. Certain characters are simplified out of necessity due to the relatively brief runtime, such as the formidable Harkonnens of the novel being turned into the disgusting cartoonish characters seen in this film. However, at only one-hundred thirty-seven minutes, the story could have been much more incoherent and disjointed than it ultimately was, but that doesn’t excuse it from being an underdeveloped mess.

While the story falters somewhat in comparison to the novel, it works surprisingly well taken on its own. Many of the theological questions of the book remain unexplored in the film adaptation, but the complex themes of political strife, globalism, and corruption are all addressed in the conflicts between the many groups gifted with power.  Each entity mistrusts the other, but must form uneasy alliances to stay afloat or to destroy common enemies covertly. The film balances these relationships remarkably well. Every group’s selfish motivation is made abundantly clear, yet each motivation prompts thought over their individual plans within plans.

Another area that the movie excels at is its tone. The novel had a very regal atmosphere, which the film captures in strides. It does a remarkable job at humanizing the bombast of the occasion. In a society where humans are trained more and more to act and perform like machines, the protagonist Paul Atreides triumphs with his innate sense of human morality and communal bonds with the Fremen. Kyle MacLachlan perfectly captures the innocence, the exuberance, and the pride of the character in the novel. Dune has a rich supporting cast including Max von Sydow, Patrick Stewart, and José Ferrer that help to elevate the material and capture its humanity.

Part of the film’s emotional success can be credited to the excellent score, contributed by Toto with one beautiful piece by Brian Eno. Toto fused orchestral arrangements with their instrumental rock prowess to create a hybrid score that is surprisingly exciting. It frames the most overblown scenes in a way that seems triumphant instead of pompous, and prevents the quiet emotional moments from buckling under the weight of the jargon. At the heart of all this technical jargon and political strife is a story about human characters, filled with human virtue, human emotions, and human desires. This score pulsates with humanity, and is something that Toto and Brian Eno should look at with pride.

The film also succeeds in its unique visual aesthetic that perfectly brings the spiritual and transcendental aspects of the novel to the screen with style. Thanks to the surrealistic tendencies of its director, this film is full of striking visual moments, particularly those that depict Paul’s prescient visions. The scene in which Paul takes the water of life in the desert and unlocks his full mental potential is especially breathtaking. It lacks the narrative depth of the novel, but makes up for it by explaining visually what the film’s clunky dialogue often failed to clarify on its own.

Dune is by no means a great film, and it doesn’t live up to the timeless reputation of the novel it’s based on. It is a cult classic from a decade known for producing its fair share of cult cinema. While many fans of the book and members of the general public look at this movie with disdain, I always walk away from it having been entertained, if left yearning for a better adaptation. We may get this adaptation now that Dennis Villeneuve is directing a new version of the film set to release in 2020. This 1984 version is flawed, and even its director calls it his worst film (I disagree; I think 1990’s Wild at Heart would take that position). The fact that I originally sought out the Dune novel because I was such a big David Lynch fan and wanted to read the book before seeing the film may paint me as a biased source, but I consider the positive attributes of the film Dune to (just barely) counteract the many negatives.

3/5 Sandworms

Author’s Note: Get the Blu-Ray if you’re going to watch it. It is a substantial improvement over any other version of the film. Dune was always a bit of an ugly duckling, but this Blu-Ray edition has gone the distance to clean up the visuals to present what is by far the best looking version of this film ever released. And whatever you do stay away from the 3 hour extended/T.V. cut that is so bad the director removed his name from the credits. It’s a butchered mess that mixes up the musical cues and needlessly edits material back in from the cutting room floor. The theatrical cut is the only version available on Blu-Ray, so it shouldn’t be too hard to avoid the bastardized extended version.

 

* Because of its generous detail and epic world-building – LeBrain