Here is why I love Dune: It doesn’t work. Not as a drama. Not as a space opera. Not as a war movie. By the basic tenets of comprehensible storytelling, it’s ridiculous. Its overall failure is legendary. But taken as a whole, it’s a twisted dream, rife with spectacularly unique imagery and a baroque, Flash Gordon-like design that never fails to draw me in, even while I’m picking it apart.
But this is what happens when you hire David Lynch, that most idiosyncratic and nonlinear of directors, to adapt Frank Herbert’s dense, sci-fi classic. Lynch pares the plot of a space messiah on a desert planet past the bare essentials to a series of stunning images, tying them together with the most convoluted of narratives, goofy dialogue and aggressively uneven special effects — the first appearance of a sand worm is a classic, but the poor use of green screen would make modern Asylum mockbusters blush with shame.
Yet within Dune lie the seeds of something much greater. Watch as the Guild Space Navigator (an effects wonder) speaks through a grotesque vaginal slit. Gaze upon Baron Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan), his face swollen with boils, hovering beneath a shower of oil. Listen to the absurd rock score by Toto, which under no circumstance should work, yet does so gloriously. View the premature birth of a mutated reverend mother from the inside of the womb.
Dune, again, is ridiculous, with a game cast vastly more talented than necessary. However, by watching it, you glimpse the nightmarish vision of a director who just needed a chance to express himself outside the narrative demands of others. If nothing else, it makes you wonder what Lynch (who was approached) would have made of Return of the Jedi. I bet the Ewoks would have been far more feral, festooned with gaping wounds. —Corey Redekop
I was fortunate enough to see it on opening night. I thought it the best comic book on film I’d seen to that point.
David Lynch never made an uninteresting movie. DUNE was “re-edited” but all the versions I’ve seen have the same flaws you mention. The strong cast tries its best to keep the film from completely failing. Roger Ebert hates this film.
I won a Dune T-shirt years ago. Still have it. The book is a definite must-read; Lynch’s movie is a treasure trove of bizarre imagery that makes up for its narrative shortcomings.
I liked the book, so I too caught this on opening night. I remember the ushers handed out sheets of paper that had a glossary of names and terms on it, which I think is the only time I’ve gone to a movie and been handed a list of definitions to better enhance my viewing enjoyment.
I thought the movie was a trainwreck. I still like the book.
Funny – this is the second “defending Dune” piece I’ve read this week. Must be something in the air. I Loooooooooove this movie and watch it every few months. It never gets old. (“Is he the one?”)