In the 1970s, filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky tried and failed to make a movie version Dune. Now, he has some issues with the new one.
Come this December, we’ll all be watching Denis Villeneuve’s take on Dune, Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic. Dune fans have been here before. Twin Peaks creator David Lynch adapted the story as a movie in 1984, to middling reviews. And before that, in the ’70s, Chilean filmmaker and artist Alejandro Jodorowsky famously tried and failed to adapt the story for the screen. His never-made version of Dune has since become nigh-legendary; whole documentaries are made about it:
I don’t wanna jinx it, but it looks like Villeneuve’s version might finally be the one fans have been waiting for. (SyFy also made a TV version in the 2000s that wasn’t bad but didn’t have the resources the story needed.) The trailer, at any rate, looks fantastic:
The trailer is scored with a version of Pink Floyd’s “Eclipse,” which may be a nod to Jodorowsky, who asked Pink Floyd to do the soundtrack for his movie back in the day.
So the new Dune is aware of the past Dunes. What does Jodorowsky think of it? Speaking to IndieWire, the 91-year-old filmmaker sounds like he has mixed feelings.
“I saw the trailer. It’s very well done,” Jodorowsky said. “We can see that it is industrial cinema, that there is a lot of money, and that it was very expensive. But if it was very expensive, it must pay in proportion. And that is the problem: There no surprises. The form is identical to what is done everywhere. The lighting, the acting, everything is predictable.”
"Industrial cinema is incompatible with auteur cinema. For the former, money comes before. For the second, it’s the opposite, whatever the quality of a director, whether my friend Nicolas Winding Refn or Denis Villeneuve. Industrial cinema promotes entertainment, it is a show that is not intended to change humanity or society."
Interesting take, no?
I get what Jodorowsky is saying about “industrial cinema” prizing entertainment over artistry, but honestly I’m not sure that’s entirely a bad thing. Dune can be a good movie without trying to change humanity or society.
I think it’s also a little condescending to say that the movie couldn’t be thought of as a piece of “auteur cinema.” Sure, Villeneuve has executives to answer to — that’ll happen when your movie costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make — but Villenueve has made other expensive sci-fi films that nonetheless bear his unique stamp, like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.
Plus, auteur cinema is overrated anyway; there’s nothing wrong with a little collaboration.
I know I sound a little combative, but does anyone think that Jodorowsky sounds a bit bitter that he couldn’t make the movie himself? And I completely get that — it was his dream to make this and he failed. “The first time they said it was safe to do Dune, and did it, I was ill, because it was my dream,” he said in a different interview. “They showed the picture in Paris, and my son said, ‘You need to see the picture.’ I was ill to do that. Ill. And then they start to show the picture, and step by step, I was so happy because it was a shitty picture. I realized, Dune, nobody can do it. It’s a legend.”
Lynch would probably agree with Jodorowky about his Dune being “a shitty picture,” by the way, so I don’t think that’s too shady. But still, Jodorowsky may be a bit too close to the material.
Dune will be out in theaters on December 18, coronavirus permitting.
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