Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
Not too much earlier we had gone to see the
"stupendous" wrap up of the Star Wars saga, RETURN OF THE JEDI and
gone away immensely disappointed. This is all you've got, George Lucas? Ewoks?
Something named Sy Snoodles in the credits? Jabba the Hutt's got a
piano-playing blue elephant? And instead of blowing up a Death Star at the
end...you just blew up a bigger Death Star? Really? That's what we paid our $4
for? (sob)
Exiting that disappointment (not nearly the letdown that
THE PHANTOM MENACE was going to be in 1999, but at least I got paid to cover that
one) I told my shattered family don't worry, there's going to be a tremendous,
wonderful, spectacular celluloid version of Dune coming out next year. But o my
brothers, when we came to the theater for the big DUNE rollout (which, yes, is
an obscure sci-fi pun; shoutout to Judy Ditky), I saw the ushers handing out
those flimsy sheets of paper. And when I read one, some little piece of me,
like Obi-Wan Kenobi, had a baaaad feeling about this.
For those sheets of paper were glossaries. Glossaries,
dammit Jim! Mass-produced by Universal Pictures to clarify for the moviegoers,
presumably unfamiliar with Frank Herbert's books, what exactly a Bene Gesserit
was, or "melange," or a Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV. That's how
desperate the producers were, aware that mere mortal muggles of the
ticket-buying public would have little chance otherwise of figuring out was
going on from the weird, lumpy adaptation of Herbert's saga that Lynch had
delivered.
I'll try to summarize: in the far future of Year 10,191,
spacegoing humanity, somewhat resembling Islam, has a feudal-style culture
(shaped especially by a religious-law ban on nearly all computer/data
technology, a big deal in the novels that the movie doesn't make at all clear).
One of the ruling class' most noble clans, the Atreides, have been ordered by
the Emperor to relocate to the desert world Arakis. Ostensibly it's a
promotion, because Arakis, AKA Dune, possesses a unique ecosystem that
generates the "spice" drug melange, the most precious
substance anywhere because it allows advanced mental techniques and the
biological ability to send ships traveling across the universe via mere
thought. But it's excreted by monstrous, almost godlike worms, miles long and
very, very, dangerous to harvest.
In reality, though, the big palace move is a
behind-the-scenes strategy by the Atreides' mortal enemies, the perverse and
sadistic Harkonnens, to maneuver the Atreides and their family army into
terrain where they can be more easily attacked and wiped out. But there's a
conspiracy-behind-the-conspiracy aimed at the chosen-one figure of noble scion Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan). Only on Arakis, among the deep desert-dwelling
natives (think Bedouin Arabs) can he attain his secret destiny as a prophesied
messiah.
Some time later, in 2000, the Sci Fi Channel - before it
would become SyFy and air stuff in the nature of "Sandworm vs.
Tarantulazilla" - transformed Herbert's early Dune novels into a
miniseries. I never saw it and can only assume that the luxury of a longer
run-time (not to mention CGI f/x a bit beyond the iffy modelwork-miniatures of
1984) rendered the narrative more lucid. As for David Lynch, he stumbled out of
the gate, in my opinion, but having much expository stuff (and even lots of
non-expository stuff) written as voiceover-narration and interior monologues,
over the impassive/bewildered faces of international actors like Max Von Sydow,
Dean Stockwell, Jose Ferrer, Sean Young, Sylvana Mangano, Francesca Annis and
Linda Hunt, all playing two-dimensional characters who never engage us, even
though they've got fresco-like visual Lynch-appeal all right (Sting flexing his
wiry, whiplike body as evil prince Feyd Rautha).
Word is that Lynch brought in an original cut running
five hours. Universal's vise-squeezed theatrical release ran 135 minutes, and
premiered to near-universal (hah) pans, from critics and fans (and my parents)
alike, for its shambling pace, fake-looking sandworms and utterly baffling
finale. So much for glossaries. In the sci-fi heavy 1980s, the David Lynch DUNE
sank like a stone; maybe only HOWARD THE DUCK had a worse reception.
The Moorish production design and costumes, more Arabian
Nights than LucasFilm (though Lucas was getting there), got the best writeups.
And it is well-known geek-historical fact that Hollywood had been intending to
do a Dune adaptation for a long while, at one point tapping cult-mystic filmmaker
Alejandro Jodorowski (EL TOPO), who wanted Orson Welles for the villainous fat
guy Baron Harkonnen. That one got as far as hiring some of the most visionary
fantasy artists of the 1970s to come up with four distinct planetary
environments; check out the published portfolios of painters Chris Foss and
H.R. Giger to see their suggestions. It would have been an eyeful all right. It
would also likely have been an unholy mess.
There's an insult-to-injury postscript to the 1984 film.
When the producers tried to recoup their investment at the end of the decade
they used Lynch's hours of discarded footage to repack DUNE for television
broadcasts, as a two-parter. I suspect there was little motivation to do right
by Frank Herbert (who died in 1986); a bigger reason might have been the sudden
ascent to stardom of a then little-known Shakespearean trouper named Patrick
Stewart, who had just toplined in the successful relaunch Star Trek: The Next Generation. Stewart
played supporting House Atreides good guy Gurney Halleck in DUNE, but many of his scenes had been scissored in
the frazzled post-production. Suddenly, presto! Here's Jean-Luc Picard, back
again. And, just by chance I'd wager, that restored a great deal of the story's
coherency (and one showstopper of a Carlo Rambaldi creature sequence showing
the "milking" of an infant sandworm). On the down side, there was a
"prologue" explaining the whys and wherefores of the mythology using
slapdash paintings (and not by Chris Foss or H.R. Giger either). Probably
cheaper than mailing out millions of glossaries, at any rate.
David Lynch, who on the whole does not count DUNE as a
good experience, was quite upset, and the Director's Guild substituted his
credit with the infamous pseudonym "Allen Smithee." You can find the
Smithee DUNE in the bootleg-video underground; check it out sometime.
Either way, what impresses me about the picture is its
sheer other-worldliness and inscrutability. It really does look like something
teleported here from an alien culture, pageant-like and addressing different
values altogether than what the main thrust of commercial SF in the Reagan Era
was - cloning STAR WARS and selling action figures. Funny thing is, DUNE mogul Dino DiLaurentiis
previously went in the same eccentric path when he produced the goofy,
retro-1980 Mike Hodges-directed FLASH GORDON. That one also kinda bombed, but
it has found a cult appreciation over the years, while DUNE is still a bit in
the loss column. Of course, FLASH GORDON had a Queen soundtrack. DUNE's is by
Toto. Hey, check out Toto's vintage B&W music-video for "Stranger in
Town," starring DUNE castmate Brad Dourif in a mini-edition of WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND. Also from 1984!. Toto rules! Toto is the Kwisach Hadrach! Yes, this is why I have no friends.
I am not alone in being sort of a DUNE-atic. John
Nichols' and John Clute's mighty Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (where I
applied to work; they never responded to my inquiry, like most others) writes
"it may be time to reappraise DUNE...Bits of this bad film are close to
masterful." And it is indeed consistent, in the David Lynch canon, with
traditional Lynchian themes of body fluids, dreams and nightmares and
non-sequitur grotesque stuff (my brother was freaked out by the Harkonnen
sphynx cat, in particular), imagery worthy of ERASERHEAD and TWIN PEAKS.
Remarkably, after this bomb, Dino DiLaurentiis went ahead and produced Lynch's
next movie, also starring Kyle MacLachlan - BLUE VELVET, which thoroughly
rehabilitated the guy's reputation.
Finally, the amazing DUNE fun fact. David Lynch, coming
off THE ELEPHANT MAN and a hot commodity, was, for a while, supposed to be the
hired-gun director George Lucas wanted for...RETURN OF THE JEDI. Yes, he was
(Richard Marquand instead got the helm). But he directed DUNE instead. Smeg,
can you imagine David Lynch wrapping up the Skywalker saga? Could have killed
the franchise right there (not an entirely bad idea...), except for Thursday-night revivals at the Cleveland
Cinematheque. I can't see David Lynch wanting to do Ewoks. Or Sy Snoodles. Or
Jar-Jar Binks. (2 1/4 out of 4 stars)
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