Jodorowsky's Dune

In Jodorowsky's Dune, documentarian Frank Pavich revisits the story of Chilean-French director Alejandro Jodorowsky's unsuccessful attempt to make the greatest science fiction movie of all time by freely adapting Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune into a mind-altering cinematic experience. Stories about this aborted potential masterpiece are legendary in film circles, especially because the 1984 Dino De Laurentiis / David Lynch movie ultimately made from the book was such an unqualified disaster.  Jodorowsky, who made and starred in the surreal, avant-garde 70s cult films El Topo and The Holy Mountain, seems to have lost none of his energy or passion for the project even though he’s now in his mid-eighties. Watching him and his amazing team of collaborators regale us with tales of the picture they all wanted to make is compelling, and certainly succeeds in communicating the power and excitement of the creative process. Jodorowsky is the kind of mad genius that most artists would kill to work with. And when we see the individuals he assembled for this production--especially Dan O'Bannon, H. R. Giger and Chris Foss (who would go on to create and design Alien)--we can see this project’s influence on the development of sci-fi cinema during its creative heyday in the late 70s and early 80s.

Of course, as fascinating as this fabled picture would have undoubtedly been, there’s no way of knowing if Jodorowsky's Dune would have actually been any good. Many people interviewed, including director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Valhalla Rising), believe that had this movie been made it might have changed the entire direction of Western cinema. But I think the odds are just as likely that it would have been as disastrous as the De Laurentiis / Lynch film. One can almost predict from watching Jodorowsky’s previous pictures and learning about his working methods through this documentary--which covers his approach to everything from writing to casting to budgeting--that it more likely would have ended up more like Terry Gillium’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York, or maybe Michael J. Paradise’s The Visitor than a successful and widely acclaimed masterpiece like 2001, Star Wars, or Alien. One can never honestly compare a film that didn’t get made with ones that did; it’s like judging a race between an athlete who is running an obstacle course and one whose dreaming that he’s running an obstacle course. Perhaps that’s why this movie doesn’t rise to the level of 1991’s Hearts of Darkness, about Francis Ford Coppola making Apocalypse Now, or even the best DVD making-of-documentaries like one that accompanies the collector's edition of Alien. Those films have rich narrative arcs that take us through a complete artistic and commercial process, where as Jodorowsky's Dune is more of a beguiling character study about a fascinating individual and his dream project. Still, there is always more poetry in failure than in success, and Jodorowsky's journey resonates with any of us who have dreamed big.