Sunday, May 04, 2014
"Jodorowsky's Dune": the earliest attempt to film Frank Herbert's novel died, but now is the time to try it again (David Lynch's isn't bad)
“Jodorowsky’s Dune” (directed by Frank Pavich) lets Chilian
director Alejandro Jodorowsky, along with Michel Seydoux, H. R. Giger and Dan O’Bannon,
among others, show their proposal for filming Frank Herbert’s 1965 science
fiction epic “Dune”, complete with artwork, script and storyboards, back in the
mid and late 1970s. The studios did not
buy the idea then, but in 1983 David Lynch made the film “Dune” with
distribution by Universal.
I recall that film in Dallas, as I recall reading the novel
when I was in the Army. I was interested in the setting of at least four
planets, including one that was green, another mined for oil resources, and the
main one, Dune, containing the “spice”, a kind of drug that confers paranormal
abilities, but sparsely populated. The novel included the idea of a young
messianic figure Paul (Kyle MachLachlan) helping lead the natives (the Fremen)
against evil houses trying to exploit resources. The book is supposed to provide a rough
analogy for many of the world’s political and social struggles, and is
amazingly prescient.
The original film as seen by some as homophobic, as the evil
baron was depicted as looking like someone with Kaposi’s sarcoma, but the film
was probably written before AIDS had fully materialized. I remember the scene
where the Baron bubbles to the ceiling, and another scene where the “Guild
navigators” were shown as disembodied brains floating inside a vessel. The film led to the formation of a media
production company named after the film for other sci-fi projects.
The depictions of the buildings and costumes of the
characters are fantastic (and rather operatic).
The documentary maintains that Jodorwsky’s treatment inspired many
effects common in the Star Wars and Alien franchises (including Ridley Scott’s
latest prequel, “Prometheus” (June 8, 2012)).
Jodorowsky, quite lively at 84, explains the concept of Paul
Altreides’s “resurrection”. When he is “killed”,
he lives in everyone’s consciousness, which is a concept I have been
experimenting with in my own novels (and will give more details soon in my
Wordpress media reviews blog).
Since Sony Pictures Classics distributes this documentary (official site), it’s logical to ask, why
doesn’t Columbia Pictures make a new version of “Dune” according to Jodorowsky’s
vision, with him direction? I wonder
about other ideas, such as Clive Barker’s mammoth 1991 sci-fi fantasy “Imajica”,
where the universe of planets (dominions) includes both Earth and “Heaven”. I keep hearing rumors that Lionsgate has
looked at it, and that it could be filmed in New Zealand.
I saw the film at Landmark's E Street in Washington DC on a Sunday afternoon before a nearly full small auditorium.
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