DUNE
It's long, it's lame...it's Lynch!

  How many video boxes have we seen that promised that the movies contained within were "beyond time and space"?  A whole lot, but it was only with this movie that I actually noticed it consciously.  It sounds cool, and for 25 years, that must have actually worked on me, because only now do I notice that it doesn't actually mean anything at all.

Way back when this movie first came out, I saw the ads and was pretty excited.  I asked my father to take me - we lived in an area quite far removed from the city's theaters, and if I ever wanted to go see a movie I depended upon a ride from mum and/or pops.  At about the same time, I'd borrowed Frank Herbert's book from the library with the full intention of devouring it - yes, metaphorically.  Hey, if the book was half as cool as those ads for the movie, I was going to be bouncing off of the walls with joy.  I don't remember what my father said about this; either that I should probably read the book before seeing the movie, or that I should probably see the movie before reading the book.  I hope it was the former, because the latter suggests an astonishing lack of faith in my budding literacy.  (a lack of faith that was ultimately well-founded, because I gave up on the book about twenty pages in) (hey, I was nine.  Cut me some slack, I was still listening to Huey Lewis and the News, and I thought Billy Idol was sooooo heavy)

I never ended up seeing the movie until I was about 22, and I didn't much like it when I did.  I still hadn't read the book, and I found myself staring in awe at the TV at this incredible mess of narrative non-cohesion.  Memories of rumors came flooding back, like when I heard that theaters had to give viewers little fact sheets detailing who everybody was and why they were doing stuff; things you'd expect a movie to convey on its own.  Yeah, it was without much surprise that I didn't much like this widely hated, financially catastrophic movie with a small audience of fanatical adorers - movies that match that description tend to have flopped quite deservedly.  (although I thought Exorcist II wasn't bad)

It was only in the last week that I finally, FINALLY got around to reading Herbert's novel.  I still might not have done so, if not for a time in 1996 when, in a used bookstore buying binge in Nelson, B.C. with my father, he handed me a copy of this from the shelf and said "You'd better get this.  I didn't like it much myself, but you might say it's required."  And so this book languished on my bookshelf for three years before I got around to reading it.  Hey, I've owned a LOT of books I haven't read yet.  The almost complete halt I've put to buying books in the past year or so is mostly because I want to get through the ones I already own.

After having read it, I find myself scratching my head a little at the innumerable claims I've heard that this is far too vast a work to make into a feature film.  It's not like there's no filler in this book - cut the chaff, and you can easily fit the rest into a three-hour movie (or two-part miniseries).  Trimming it down to 137 minutes is not likely to be too tough.  And writer/director David Lynch dropped the ball, faithful to Herbert's book as the script is.

Dune begins with an on-screen narration from Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen), who keeps fading in and out of existence for some reason as she sets up the basic economic and political realities of the movie we're about to see.  The Spacing Guild controls all interstellar travel - and their transport abilities depend upon consumption of the spice melange.  Melange only comes from one place, the desert planet Arrakis, also known as Dune.  (it's never mentioned whether melange can be synthesized, or if anybody thought of that)  The evil red-haired Harkonnen family has controlled Arrakis for a long time, until recently, when the Emperor of the universe (Jose Ferrer, projecting all the imperial majesty of a raccoon) handed the place over to the Harkonnen's sworn enemies, the Atreides.  Now why would he do that?  We learn soon enough - he's setting the Atreides up for a fall for when Harkonnen invades and takes the planet back.  Seems that Duke Leto Atreides (Jurgen Prochnow) was getting a little big for his britches.

Anyway, back to Arrakis.  It's a ghastly little toilet of a planet, pretty much all sand, and spice mining is a pain in the ass because of the sandworms.  They don't swallow the miners whole - they swallow the whole MINE whole.  The planet is populated by spice-dependent warrior people named the Fremen, who have (surprise, surprise) a prophecy of a Chosen One to lead them out of bondage.  That Chosen One is probably Leto's son Paul (Kyle McLachlan), who (to compact a whole lotta mumbo jumbo we get from everybody around him) is extraordinarily gifted in combat and prediction.

Dune is possibly the most ambitious failure I've ever seen.  Almost every frame speaks of an enormous amount of work on behalf of FX guys, costumers, and set designers.  To the source material, the script is faithful to a fault.  Lynch (who gave up a shot at directing Return Of The Jedi for this) gives it his all, if that's a selling point to you.  And Toto does the music...yeah, Toto.  Okay, point against.

McLachlan is not really much of an actor, putting in his only really memorable performances when he finds his one note and plays it out well without expanding on it too much, such as in The Hidden.  But the casting of an adult in the role of Paul was a smart choice - fifteen years old for most of the novel, I can't think of a single actor of the appropriate age which wouldn't fall prey to the Wesley Crusher Syndrome.

Speaking of syndromes, McLachlan does, unfortunately, fall prey to the ol' Sci-Fi Actor Syndrome, where he's burdened with the task of seeming weird because dammit, this is sci-fi!  Between his strange effeminacy, cheesy pronouncements ("The worm is the spice! The spice is the worm!") and hair the size of a fully-grown panda, you just can't help but look at him as Paul, the space-weirdo, instead of a legitimate character.  The rest of the cast suffers similar fates: Freddie Jones as Paul's Mentat (that is, a man so skilled in the arts of computation that he is a "human computer") mentor Thufir Hawat, with huge, curled eyebrows and an affected voice.  Brad Dourif as the evil Mentat Piter De Vries, same eyebrows, reciting a cheesy little chant, eyes wide, overacting outrageously.  Kenneth McMillan as the Baron Harkonnen, covered in boils, shouting and spitting constantly, floating in the air half the time looking like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and about as menacing.  Worst of all is Dean Stockwell as the treacherous Dr. Yueh; this has got to be his worst performance ever, and he's got the stupidest-looking mustache I've ever seen.  The list of actors who should've looked for roles elsewhere goes on, frequent peeks into their thoughts (via whispered voice-overs) making everything all the cheesier.

No, of the cast, those to survive with their dignity intact are few.  Patrick Stewart as Paul's trainer Gurney Halleck, Max Von Sydow as the Fremen planetologist Kynes.  Somehow, Sting is pretty good as the Baron's favored badass (he was also good this year in Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels).  Everett McGill ain't half bad as the Fremen leader Stilgar, and Francesca Annis is actually quite good as Paul's mother, the only really prominent role to be carried off this well.  Not that they're asked to do much; maybe it's their limited screen time that prevents them from hanging around long enough to embarrass themselves.

Lynch allows a lot of fluff and filler to hang around in the story, making what SHOULD feel like a condensed version of the book feel like a bloated inflation of a simple story with all sorts of little complications that don't matter.  Scenes like a mostly pointless look at Paul practicing his combat abilities early in the film are excusable in a novel, which affords a leisurely pace.  In a film that's trying to cram as much of a classic novel into its minutes as possible, this should've gone out the window - to say nothing of the fact that the FX used for the full-body shields are so bad, you can barely tell what's going on.  Also take the Baron's use for a flower delivery boy - it would have been nice to actually see what the hell happened there, but I guess they were going for a PG-13.  Anything involving De Vries should've gone, as much as I like Dourif, and come to think of it, everything involving Sting is a waste of time too - the post-climactic swordfight was filler even in the book.

Yep, it's what you might call a case of being TOO faithful to the source material, its only serious departure being Paul's almost instant ascent to leader of the Fremen.  Also kept is the biggest headscratcher in the book ? if you want to get rid of a couple of enemies, do you kill them, and then dispose of them in the desert (probably with shields running to attract the worms)?  Or do you just ship them out to the desert alive and practically dump them into the laps of people who already hate you and would just love a leader?  The climactic battle wasn't looked into much in the book, but here, I swear, there isn't a single casualty on the winning side.  Not one.  We saw more Ewoks get killed in Return Of The Jedi.  And just what becomes of Hawat and Irulan, I have no idea.

There are some elaborations from the novel which I did quite like.  In the novel, melange was necessary to raise the Guild navigators to a mental state where they could plot the best route to travel between star systems.  But...well, it's space.  What the hell do they need to plot a course for, to dodge around stuff?  Here, the spice is required to "fold space", which is the means of transport between giant cylindrical Guild stations orbiting various worlds.  Most memorable is just what is required of one character to survive being introduced with a poison - the antidote comes from one source, must be taken daily, and...well, let's just say that Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth never got quite this intimate.

There's not a whit of fun or spirit in this movie, as if Lynch and company were constantly mindful that We're Adapting A Classic Novel Here!  Classic or not, what Dune is is a fairly fun and spirited book, no matter how seriously it takes itself, and what this movie captures best is the book's taking itself too seriously.  This movie is, ultimately, cheesy without really being fun.  That's actually a pretty astounding feat.

I don't know how much sense this movie would have made to me if I hadn't just read the book; it made no sense to me on my first viewing years ago, but it's not like it was holding my attention.  Seemed like it did an okay job, though, in the narrative cohesion department.  Dune comes across overall as a fascinating failure; a movie with no dramatic power at all but enough filmmaking bravado to make for an involved viewing.  Oh, it's bad all right - just last week a co-worker of mine said "Great book, great movie!" when he saw me reading this, and I couldn't help but suspect he was on crack.  But rarely has bad been this inspired.

There was also a 190-minute version shown on TV (plus any number of rumored, probably nonexistent cuts) that Lynch disowned.  I've heard conflicting reports of how good it is - detractors of the film seem to prefer it, but I've also heard that the extra footage is mostly stock footage with voice-over narration.  Yikes.  Rumors also persist of a Dune TV miniseries sometime in the next couple of years.  I'll believe it when I see it.

BACK TO MAIN PAGE BACK TO THE D's