Subject: Retrospective: Dune (1984)

From: "Dragan Antulov" <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Oct 1998 04:23:56 GMT

DUNE
A Film Review
Copyright Dragan Antulov 1998

When Frank Herbert's DUNE becomes a topic, the author of
this review tends to get a little bit sentimental. There are
two reasons for that. First, the Frank Herbert's
masterpiece, although not the first science fiction novel I
have read in my life, happened to be the first one which
blew me away. And, second, the movie based on a novel
happened to be the subject of the very first article I wrote
for a local fanzine. When I decided to write the review of
the film, I was contemplating a simple adaptation of the
original fanzine article. However, the reason prevailed over
sentimentality and I decided to write completely new piece.

As I said before, Frank Herbert's DUNE was the first piece
of science fiction that blew me away. But even then, when I
was engrossed in a beautiful, mystical and fantastic world
of planet Arrakis, I was imagining how would all those pages
translate into major motion picture. I didn't have as much
insight into film-making business as I have today, yet I saw
two great problems. The first one was the fact that the
detailed yet very alien Herbert's vision of distant futures
and worlds beyond our imagination required a huge, perhaps
even unthinkably high budget for film-makers. And, even if
some brave producer and director would somehow acquire such
great sums of money, they would be faced with another
problem. The hundreds and hundreds of pages of text, full of
detailed and elaborated scenes, numerous sub-plots and
interesting characters were, to say the least, very unlikely
to be squeezed into the regular feature film format.

When I began thinking about it, little did I know that
someone in the world was really faced with such problems.
That person was Dino de Laurentiis, respected Italian
producer who had a relatively good record with
science-fiction and fantasy genre, thanks to his previous
commercial and critical successes like FLASH GORDON and
CONAN THE BARBARIAN. For almost two decades, many people
were contemplating the cinematic adaptation of DUNE, yet de
Laurentiis was the first with the will and resources for
such endeavour. His choice for a director was, though,
somewhat risky; David Lynch was director who brought
attention with unusual visual styles and strictly personal
tendencies towards bizarre in THE ELEPHANT MAN, his first
mainstream picture, as well as with his experimental movie
debut and future cult classic, ERASERHEAD. Choice of Lynch
was a mix blessing for de Laurentiis; on the other hand,
Lynch would deliver science fiction spectacle very different
than usual genre products of those times, like STAR WARS or
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA; on the other hand, his unconventional
cinematic style was liability in terms of box-office
success.

Unlike many other adaptations of popular fiction, and
despite the fact that the Herbert himself had his own script
version rejected, the movie plot was unusually faithful to
the novel. It was set in a very distant future, some 25,000
years from now, when the humanity managed to conquer vast
distances between the stars and settle on numerous worlds.
The entire known universe is ruled by Padisha Emperor Shadam
IV (Jose Ferrer) whose Empire contains areas controlled by
different, and often feuding noble Houses. One of them is
House of Atreides, led by Duke Leto (Juergen Pruchnow),
whose charisma and popularity could be threat to the
Emperor's supremacy. So the Emperor plots a complicated
scheme, using the mortal feud between the Duke and rival
House of Harkonnen, led by evil and sadistic Baron Vladimir
(Kenneth MacMillan). He orders the Duke to occupy Arrakis,
desolate and desert planet also known as Dune, previously
controlled by Harkonnens. The planet is also rich with spice
melange, substance essential for the interstellar travel,
and of extreme importance for the powerful Guild of Space
Navigators. Soon after the arrival, Duke's 15-year old son
Paul (Kyle MacLachlan) begins discovering the planet's
mysteries. One of them is an existence of Fremen, local
people whose legends and prophesies speak of the Messiah
that would lead them to freedom.

Both those who like and who don't like the movie can agree
that David Lynch's DUNE stands out as a very original piece
of science fiction cinema. Lynch, together with the cast and
crew, took a lot of effort in order to make this movie as
different from other science fiction spectacles as possible.
First there was a production design by Terry Masters and
costumes by Bob Ringwood that gave the movie certain
pseudohistorical,  yet very recognisable atmosphere. Than
there was music by pop group Toto, whose ambientalist sound,
together with new age theme by Brian Eno, made the
soundtrack very different from conventional themes by John
Williams or Jerry Goldsmith. And, finally, Lynch himself was
less interested in making spectacular scenes or special
effects attractions than to use Herbert's script for his own
visual obsessions. So, the scenes of space travel or
prophetic visions are more surreal than spectacular; the
characters, especially the bad guys like Harkonnens, are
repulsive, both by their image and by their actions. Nice
example is character of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen; he is
hideously fat man with gruesome swellings on his face, and
the senseless and brutal violence is the only thing that
could provide him orgasmic pleasure. The character of Baron,
brilliantly played by late veteran actor Kenneth MacMillan,
is one of trademarks of the entire picture.

Under the shadow of MacMillan is a small army of other, very
respected and capable actors. Main lead, Kyle MacLachlan,
was a great fan of the novel, and the role of Paul Atreides,
his great movie debut, was a task he had hoped and prepared
for throughout his entire adult life. Lynch's choice in
casting was perfect, and both artists would later continue
their co-operation in other, somewhat more successful
projects. Francesca Annis also left strong impact as Paul's
mother Jessica, with her stunning combination of mature
sexuality and commanding presence. Sadly, almost nobody else
had a real opportunity to shine, because their characters
were underdeveloped or underused.

The reason for that lies in the problem I noted above.
Originally, Lynch envisioned DUNE as four hours long epic
and tried very hard to follow novel, using only minor
changes to the story or characters. Unfortunately, the
producers were too afraid to follow suit, considering any
movie over two hours long unprofitable at the box office.
Results is a movie sliced into two distinctive halfs. First
half is very good because the plot is followed very
meticulously, with very few omissions from the original
material. Lynch worked very hard to stay loyal to the novel;
even the inner thoughts of the characters, one of the
novel's most valuable elements, are delivered to the viewer
through  voice-over, although some of them happen to be
slightly annoying as the time passes by. However, that
annoyance is nothing compared to the second half of DUNE,
when the plot gets sacrificed for the sake of smaller
length. Many events from the novel, some of them very
important, are omitted, and the rest is simply narrated
instead of being portrayed according to novel. Character of
Chani and Fremen in general don't get the attention they
deserved. The rhythm of events finally slows down at the
end, but the timing is again wrong; the ending doesn't
follow the novel, and the anti-climactic duel between Paul
and Feyd-Rauta is there only to please Sting fans, who were
expecting some more screen time for the character played by
their idol.

Such flaws became evident at the movie's initial release,
when it flopped at the box-office. Reasons were simple: the
audience, who had expected conventional science-fiction
entertainment, was confused both by complicated plot and
Lynch's original style. Despite that, David Lynch's DUNE
managed to developed its own cult following, mostly thanks
to Frank Herbert fans, hungry to see their favourite novel
on the screen, even in such less than perfect condition. The
movie became almost obligatory for all those who enjoyed
Herbert's fiction; and such audience was the only one able
to understand the picture. The cult continued to grow, later
inspired entire new sub-genre of computer games (real time
strategies), and to this very day DUNE remains a strong
impulse for many people to start reading Herbert's books.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

Review written on October 16th 1998

Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
Fido: 2:381/100
E-Mail: [email-masked]
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