Review: Jodorowsky’s Dune
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
[Grade: A-] Following the success of his midnight movies, the art-house director pursued a formidable idea; the film adaptation of the sci-fi novel Dune.
City Paper grade: A-
In the 1970s, Alejandro Jodorowsky created films that were equally mystical and gory, confounding acid-dropping audiences and offending those who had the misfortune to be sober. (A Jesus-like thief’s excrement is turned into gold in The Holy Mountain; El Topo abounds with characters who are disfigured on-screen.) Following the success of his midnight movies, the art-house director pursued a formidable idea; the film adaptation of the sci-fi novel Dune. Like many ambitious projects, it was never finished. Frank Pavich’s documentary attempts to reveal what could have been a landmark achievement through extensive interviews and animated sequences. At 85, Jodorowsky’s eccentricities are on full display as he recalls the oft-bizarre, entirely entertaining process of acquiring his all-star collaborators, his “spiritual warriors,” as he called them: Salvador Dalí, a heavyset Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, French comic artist Moebius, screenwriter Dan O’Bannon, Alien-creator Giger, Pink Floyd -— the list goes on. While the documentary comes close to overhyping the movie-that-never-was, arguing that it could have changed the course of cinema, it substantiates its borderline-outlandish claims by overlaying shots from Jodorowsky’s unfinished movie with scenes from later sci-fi films like Star Wars and Alien. The similarities are often uncanny. Perhaps Jodorowsky’s Dune would have been spectacular, but could the special-effects technology of that time matched his vision? In the mind, where this film now resides, there are no limitations.
