Jodorowsky worked in an era when cinema had the power to cause riots; an era when cinema could effect real and lasting change, and when human consciousness was all but ready to be taken to the next plane of existence. And he was one of that era's true creative prophets. Even before I set eyes on his cinematic gospels, I was intrigued. I prefaced my impending journey by noting my fascination with one of the director's legendary unrealised film projects:
Most of all though, I am interested in seeing the films of a man who, when approached to adapt Frank Herbert’s 'Dune' (pre David Lynch), enlisted the services of Pink Floyd, H.R. Giger, and planned a cast that included Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles and Gloria Swanson. This guy thinks big.I say legendary because when a production as large as the one Jodorowsky had planned for 'Dune' doesn't come about, speculation about what might have been tends to gain a life of its own. In Dune's case it lived on and on. It turns out, according to Frank Pavich's documentary, Jodorowsky's Dune, that there's a very good reason for that and with the help of a number of the key players, including Jodorowsky himself, Pavich brings the vision to life.
Jodorowsky's Dune takes a reasonably linear approach to the production's development. After a brief swoon from Jodorowsky acolyte, Nicholas Winding Refn, Pavich goes into an overview of the director's works, taking in some of the director's more bizarre creations (though unfortunately he steers clear of The Holy Mountain's lactating leopard tits) before starting down the path that led to his meeting film producer Michel Seydoux. From that point on, Dune becomes a monumentally madcap adventure, a clusterfuck of happenstance that snowballs into a conglomeration of creative luminaries, each more brilliant than the last.
At 80 years old, Jodorowsky shows no signs of slowing down. Pavich's documentary works, in part, because his subject blurts anecdotes as if they happened only yesterday. His vitality and enthusiasm is infectious enough to keep the film buoyant despite the reliance on talking heads and animated still photography, storyboards and design sketches. That's not to downplay the beauty of all that work, it is awe-inspiring in its comprehensiveness and its beautiful, multi-coloured detail, but it is Jodorowsky who gives the whole adventure perspective and brings the production to life.
There's a certain degree of heartache to Jodorowsky's Dune. The pang of what might have been is never far from mind, yet there is also a real sense that the effects of Jodorowsky's passion and the effort put into the film's pre-production by creatives that would go on to be heavyweights in their own right, hasn't died. Pavich reels off a litany of films that draw inspiration on Dune's extensive planning: Star Wars, Blade Runner, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Terminator, Prometheus, The Fifth Element (that last production Jodorowsky even sued, unsuccessfully, which was a bit rich seeing as his storyboard artist and longtime collaborator, Jean "Mœbius" Giraud, was production designer on the film). Such profligate influence should be expected when you drop almost a thousand pages of intellectual property into every major Hollywood studio.
To Jodorowsky devotees, the Dune legend has never died. Its wonder, its audacity and its vision lives on in ways we will probably never fully understand. Whether or not Pavich overstates the industry changing power of the film is ultimately moot. It is satisfying just to look back and dream of the alternate film industry that could have evolved from Jodorowsky's messianic creation. All that, and it's satisfying to watch Alejandro laugh down David Lynch's take on the same material. You never know, if things had turned out differently, it could have been him on the end of that ridicule.
★★★★
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