A Holy Sci-Fi Mountain of Staggering Possibilities

JODOROWSKY'S DUNE (2013)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There are many "what if" films - films that never came to fruition for one reason or another. David Lean never got around to filming the epic Joseph Conrad novel "Nostromo," for example. Stanley Kubrick never got around to his version of "Napoleon." Orson Welles has one too many films that never got beyond the writing stage - never mind the films he never completed. What is indelibly fascinating about Alejandro Jodorowsky's "Dune" is that we see the blueprints for a phantasmagoric, spellbinding, absolutely beautiful and mystical sci-fi film that could have changed the genre forever, that could have shown filmgoers that "2001: A Space Odyssey" was a mere footprint in what could be accomplished visually with science-fiction. It never happened but this riveting documentary shows what might have been.

Frank Herbert's epic 1965 book, "Dune," was floating around the Hollywood barn, optioned by one producer who died before it lifted off. In the early 1970's, Alejandro Jodorowsky bought the rights to it, sensing a film that would approach the level and visual sensation of hallucinogens (much like the drug of choice in the book, the fictional "spice"). Jodorowsky makes it clear that he hoped to transport audiences to something truly out-of-this-world and transcendent and, in fact, we do see illustrations of what might have been in a thick book he keeps in his office. The colors look psychedelic (lots of pink), the erratically designed ships look like something out of a heavy metal cover album, the characters look otherworldly - in short, I am not sure any actual sci-fi films since look anything like Jodorowsky's vision. I can go further and say nobody else made films that look anything like Jodorowsky's actual films whether it is his most famous film, the most bizarre, religiously symbolic western ever made,"El Topo," or his hallucinatory "The Holy Mountain." They are films made by a, for lack of a better phrase, eccentric genius or simply a genius stuck in a drug-fueled state of his own mind.

The hope for the Chilean visionary was to cast people like Orson Welles as the obese Baron Harkonnen, Mick Jagger, David Carradine, and Salvador Dali as the Emperor (who had wanted to be paid $100,000 a minute so that he could be the highest paid actor in history). Dali, by the way, also requested a burning giraffe be on the set (now that sounds like a Jodorowsky invention). The hopes of this most ambitious artist were dashed when the executives liked what they saw in terms of pre-production and extraordinarily visual detail but did not see dollar signs in terms of box-office, especially if it was to be 15 hours long! Jodorowsky didn't understand why the financiers backed out, and why Dino DeLaurentiis bought the rights and instead made a hideously boring "Dune" in 1984 with director David Lynch at the helm.

There is a strong case here to be made that those visuals, meticulously drawn and detail-oriented by supreme talents like H. R. Giger, Chris Foss, and Jean Giraud, were the inspiration for similar shots in films such as  "Star Wars," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Prometheus," etc. Most telling is Jodorowsky's description of the opening shot of the film, an unbroken take through the universe and its cosmos (Robert Zemeckis' "Contact" opens with such a similarly splendid sequence). Director Frank Pavich gives us a strong, healthy, ripe for rediscovery, 84-year-old Alejandro whose vision had to be that of a madman - the implied message that only a madman could make "Dune." It is sad to note that we never got that madness on screen.