Jodorowsky’s Dune all about bigger picture
Jodorowsky’s Dune ½ Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Michel Seydoux, H.R. Giger, Nicolas Winding Refn,
Diane O’Bannon Directed by: Frank Pavich Running time: 90 minutes
Film geeks, rejoice. Jodorowsky’s Dune isn’t just a movie about an aborted adaptation of a cult science-fiction novel, it’s a documentary that offers the missing link between modern sci-fi spectacle and the drug-induced psychedelia of the 1960s. Structured more like a biopic than a procedural exposé, Frank Pavich’s non-fiction film begins at the moment Alejandro Jodorowsky decided to option the rights to Frank Herbert’s book about a powerful drug called “spice” and a planet inhabited by giant sandworms.
It was the early 1970s, and the French-Chilean director was riding a wave of cult celebrity as a result of his original art-film western El Topo and his taboo-smashing Holy Mountain.
Producer Michel Seydoux was sitting atop a pile of profit and asked Jodorowsky what he wanted to do next. Without much reflection or even having read the book, Jodorowsky answered “Dune.”
What happens next handily fills 90 minutes of screen time as we hear Jodorowsky and his surviving recruits — including Swiss artist and Alien creator H.R. Giger — tell us about the movie they would have made.
Strip it down to the studs and this is a story of failure because Jodorowsky never did make Dune. He could not convince Hollywood producers to finance his lavish production. Yet there’s something inspiring about this movie because it still affirms the essential power of the human imagination, and the energy derived from having a dream.
Jodorowsky’s presence is proof of that power. The director is in his 80s as he addresses the camera, but he’s got the twinkle and spark of a child as he takes us through his vision of Herbert’s book, and the limited-edition storyboards he created in the hopes of finding financial backing.
It’s really the dream that proves most seductive because it reminds us how much of history is based on ideas instead of direct action. Jodorowsky changed the movie industry by changing the way people think about making movies.