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Jodorowsky's Dune
Here's the last of my documentary reviews for now:
Frank Herbert's Dune was one of my favorite sci-fi books around the time I was in high school and college, so when Jodorowsky's Dune was released, I was intrigued by what I heard about this supposedly amazing movie version of Dune that was never made, but still managed to become a big influence on people in the industry who had read director Alejandro Jodorowsky's script.
(There are spoilers below the cut, if one can spoil the story for a movie that has never been made...)
So I watched the film, listened to Jodorowsky describe the story, and saw the many sketches of character and set designs that had been made before the project eventually fell apart for financial reasons. And well...it was a trip, is the best way that I can think of to describe it, in more than one sense of the word. The story departs radically from Herbert's book and reads like a drug-fueled dream sequence: in this version, Leto has been castrated in a bullfight (?!), but he and Jessica are still able to have a child because she takes a drop of his blood and turns it into semen. Their love is supposed to be so pure that it transcends the physical, apparently. And Paul dies at the end, but not really, because his consciousness spreads out among his followers, who one by one stand up and say, "I am Paul!" And then they set out in a spaceship to spread his message through the universe.
It could have been amazing, or it could have been a disaster--setting the story aside for a moment, I'm not sure they would have been able to pull off all the special effects Jodorowsky envisioned with the technology available at the time. But there's no doubt that he did assemble an amazing cast (including Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, David Carradine, and Mick Jagger) and crew (H.R. Giger, Chriss Foss, Jean Giraud, and Dan O'Bannon). Giger, O'Bannon, and Foss all went on to work on Alien, among other projects. (O'Bannon also worked on Star Wars.) Giraud, better known as Moebius, was a famous French comic book artist, and after the movie fell through, Jodorowsky wrote a comic book series with him, using many elements from his failed Dune script (including the one about the castrated man being able to have a child with his lover through the transformative power of true love).
One thing that puzzles me is that Jodorowsky intended to cast his 12-year-old son Brontis as main character Paul, and even put him through a grueling martial arts training regimen to prepare him for the movie's stunts. (Jodorowsky now says that he doesn't know what he was thinking, to put his son through that, but at the time, he was so obsessed with the film that he was willing to sacrifice his son for it.) Even assuming that pre-production took 2 or 3 years, he would still have been only in his early teens by the time filming took place--it's a pretty huge burden to put on a child actor to play such a complex role, and not just a supporting role but the starring one. I wonder if he really would have been capable of pulling it off? He is interviewed in the documentary, but since I haven't seen him act, it's hard to say.
One amusing anecdote Jodorowsky tells near the end of the documentary is about how he went to see David Lynch's Dune film. He was still broken-hearted that he hadn't been able to make his version and didn't want to go, but his son insisted. Given Lynch's reputation, he had expected it to be a good movie, but was relieved and cheered up when it turned out to be bad! He laughed, saying it wasn't a nice reaction, but it was a very human one.
It might be that Jodorowsky's version of Dune would have been a masterpiece, but I think that I probably wouldn't have liked it because the story I wanted to see was Frank Herbert's Dune, and Jodorowsky freely admits that he only used it loosely as inspiration for his own story. Although to be fair, it probably would have been more interesting than Lynch's version or even worse, the Sci Fi channel miniseries. (The guy who played Paul in the miniseries was just not charismatic enough to play the starring role in a series, much less one who's supposed to be a messiah.)
Frank Herbert's Dune was one of my favorite sci-fi books around the time I was in high school and college, so when Jodorowsky's Dune was released, I was intrigued by what I heard about this supposedly amazing movie version of Dune that was never made, but still managed to become a big influence on people in the industry who had read director Alejandro Jodorowsky's script.
(There are spoilers below the cut, if one can spoil the story for a movie that has never been made...)
So I watched the film, listened to Jodorowsky describe the story, and saw the many sketches of character and set designs that had been made before the project eventually fell apart for financial reasons. And well...it was a trip, is the best way that I can think of to describe it, in more than one sense of the word. The story departs radically from Herbert's book and reads like a drug-fueled dream sequence: in this version, Leto has been castrated in a bullfight (?!), but he and Jessica are still able to have a child because she takes a drop of his blood and turns it into semen. Their love is supposed to be so pure that it transcends the physical, apparently. And Paul dies at the end, but not really, because his consciousness spreads out among his followers, who one by one stand up and say, "I am Paul!" And then they set out in a spaceship to spread his message through the universe.
It could have been amazing, or it could have been a disaster--setting the story aside for a moment, I'm not sure they would have been able to pull off all the special effects Jodorowsky envisioned with the technology available at the time. But there's no doubt that he did assemble an amazing cast (including Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, David Carradine, and Mick Jagger) and crew (H.R. Giger, Chriss Foss, Jean Giraud, and Dan O'Bannon). Giger, O'Bannon, and Foss all went on to work on Alien, among other projects. (O'Bannon also worked on Star Wars.) Giraud, better known as Moebius, was a famous French comic book artist, and after the movie fell through, Jodorowsky wrote a comic book series with him, using many elements from his failed Dune script (including the one about the castrated man being able to have a child with his lover through the transformative power of true love).
One thing that puzzles me is that Jodorowsky intended to cast his 12-year-old son Brontis as main character Paul, and even put him through a grueling martial arts training regimen to prepare him for the movie's stunts. (Jodorowsky now says that he doesn't know what he was thinking, to put his son through that, but at the time, he was so obsessed with the film that he was willing to sacrifice his son for it.) Even assuming that pre-production took 2 or 3 years, he would still have been only in his early teens by the time filming took place--it's a pretty huge burden to put on a child actor to play such a complex role, and not just a supporting role but the starring one. I wonder if he really would have been capable of pulling it off? He is interviewed in the documentary, but since I haven't seen him act, it's hard to say.
One amusing anecdote Jodorowsky tells near the end of the documentary is about how he went to see David Lynch's Dune film. He was still broken-hearted that he hadn't been able to make his version and didn't want to go, but his son insisted. Given Lynch's reputation, he had expected it to be a good movie, but was relieved and cheered up when it turned out to be bad! He laughed, saying it wasn't a nice reaction, but it was a very human one.
It might be that Jodorowsky's version of Dune would have been a masterpiece, but I think that I probably wouldn't have liked it because the story I wanted to see was Frank Herbert's Dune, and Jodorowsky freely admits that he only used it loosely as inspiration for his own story. Although to be fair, it probably would have been more interesting than Lynch's version or even worse, the Sci Fi channel miniseries. (The guy who played Paul in the miniseries was just not charismatic enough to play the starring role in a series, much less one who's supposed to be a messiah.)