To begin with, let’s make sure we have all got this straight: David Lynch doesn’t play by your rules. In the world of cinema, especially the kind of pop art house cinema that Lynch works within, many work extraordinarily hard to be seen as iconoclast, insightful, and cerebral sometimes to the point of obfuscation. Lynch does this effortlessly. He does this so well that even in a film like Dune, a massive commercial sci-fi action enterprise in which he himself claims that he “sold out,” he delivers something more striking and unusual than most artists create in their careers.
The film is a space opera following the political machinations of a large empire whose operations are tied to the production of “spice” on the planet Arrakis. The emperor believes that Duke Leto of House Atreides is becoming too popular and a possible adversary, so he attempts to maneuver a fight between House Atreides and House Harkonnen on Arrakis in which the Harkonnen will win and destroy the Atreides. What the emperor does not know is that Duke Leto’s son Paul may be the mythical Kwisatz Haderach, a savior figure that the religious sisterhood the Bene Gesserit have been trying to create through genetic manipulations between the bloodlines of the universe. Oh, and there are giant awesome sandworms.
It’s hard to believe that Lynch ever even made Dune, a movie with a massive budget that included a production crew of 1,700. Dune was only Lynch’s third feature-length film, following the head-tripping Eraserhead and The Elephant Man. Dune was to be his big commercial breakout. Instead, it was largely regarded as one of the worst films of 1984.
Lynch distanced himself from the film. He now refers to it as his only failure, the film in which he compromised himself and gave up control. The film was produced by Dino de Laurentis, a sometimes controversial film godfather. There are conflicting reports, but the general consensus seems to be that Lynch presented a very rough cut to producers that came in at around four hours. He said he was planning on cutting it down to three hours, but the film was taken over by the producers and they, with some assistance from Lynch, cut it down to two hours and 16 minutes, the length of this new Blu-ray release. There is a three-hour extended edition that Lynch disapproves of even more, as it was compiled out of bits and pieces of leftover material for syndicated television.
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Article comments
1 - sambo
I love Dune... I actually saw it the first time when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I didn't really get what was going on at the time, but I remember liking it a lot. I then saw it again in my early teens and didn't have much trouble understanding it either. I didn't read the book til a couple of years ago and I personally think Lynch did a great job with it. I would LOVE to see the 4 hour cut, but alas... I hear the extra footage was destroyed, never to be seen. BAH.
2 - Jerome Pokracki
There is so much to be said about Frank Herberts vision. A singular force of nature, that was Frank the author,visionary.
It was an interesting idea to ask David Lynch to do the film.I have a cassette tape of the two, Frank and David being interviewed on the set of the movie,sharing thoughts about the process of making the film.They get along and even cause each other to chuckle and agree about certain aspects of the film.
I believe that Dune is arguably the finest science fiction book of the twentieth century,and as such, any film treatment of it will be found lacking.Still If you love Dune the book, then you have to see Dune the movie.For all its failings,David has successfully retained the dichotomy of the main protagonists dilemna.Paul Atreides of Caladan,whom transforms into something infintely larger than his human self,is akin to a butterfly.Yet he is trapped by his coming omniscience.Seeing iinfinite possible futures,all dark, he chooses,reluctantly, the least dark of all of them,and in doing so,becomes a galactic tyrant.He hates himself while fulfilling an ancient alien prophecy of dark messianism and political oligarchy.
Get the movie,turn down the lights,turn off your cell phone,and lose yourself in this epic film.Damn the critics, what do they know anyway,right?