My father took me to see David Lynch's Dune in December of 1984 when I was 7 years old. To say that it had a profound impact on me would be both accurate and an understatement. I watched the bluray (which is breathtaking) the other night and I'm frankly astounded I haven't spent the last 27 years suffering recurring nightmares of Kenneth McMillan floating above me and hawking loogie's on my face. There has never been before, nor will there ever be again, a big budget attempt at starting up a tentpole franchise that is as languid, bewildering or stomach churning as Dune. The film starts off with Virginia Madsen dreamily reading cue cards of cobbled together exposition while Lynch inexplicably fades her image in and out against a backdrop of twinkling stars fixed in endless blackness. It's the cinematic equivalent of taking 4 Tylenol PM's after ingesting a Cheesy Gordita Crunch and washing it all down with a sixer of Rolling Rock. He verily dares the audience to stay awake right out of the gate!
Then we're treated to a baffling conversation between Jose Ferrer's Emperor Shaddam the 4th and a laughably lovable Carlo Rambaldi creation called a Third Stage Guild Navigator that is basically a 46 foot long turd with a noxious-gas spewing vagina for a mouth and tiny, adorable T-Rex arms. "I just folded space from Ix" the turd says in a resonant, menacing voice, "many machines on Ix. New Machines. Better than those on Richess." There is a lengthy, pregnant pause before the Emperor responds with a bewildered, "Oh?" And for a couple of seconds there, you begin to imagine that perhaps these two characters have no idea who each other is, why they are talking, or if they are even supposed to be in the same movie. It's a scene so gloriously bizarre and off-putting, it could have only come from David Lynch. As a child though, I was transfixed and my unformed brain gave tacit approval to this ill-explained hooey. To my 7 year old self, this all made perfect sense and I was hanging on the revolting puppet's every word as if he were a trusted family friend. This is what is commonly referred to in the biz as suspension of disbelief and I was far more freely giving of it in my youth.
As the film progresses and we're introduced to character upon character, each with more ridiculous hair and eyebrows than the last, the story begins to take a lumpy, serviceable shape. Something about some sort of royal family made up of an English Mother, a Russian father and a Canadian son taking over mining the all important, yet never adequately explained Spice Melange on a distant planet named Arrakis. There's a bunch of Hare-Krishna-by-way-of-HR Giger looking space nuns searching for the supreme being, also known as the Kwisatz Haderach, who will bring balance, but maybe also destroy everything? The villains of the piece are a disgusting, incestuous family of gingers called The Harkonnen's who are a pre-cog stand-in for the Bush Administration. They are led by an obese, leprous monster who floats around on clearly visible wires screaming and spitting all his dialog and occasionally gifting cats that need to be milked. Did I mention the creepy ass desert people with post production enhanced (but sometimes not) blue eyes who are led by legendary late 20th century creep Everett McGill? They ride around on sand worms the length of a football field and wear stylish suits that turn their crap and urine into food and water? How about the weirding module? It's a weapon that turns, silly, indistinguishable noises into pulse blasts. And Max Von Sydow and Linda Hunt show up for no reason and die 5 minutes later (spoiler alert). You get the idea, it's pretty fucking weird.
Describing the film Dune is like jumping rope with a Honda Civic. It's simply not possible. One must bear witness to it to fully attest to the efficacy of its incomprehensibility. It staggers the mind that with only Eraserhead and The Elephant Man under his belt, Lynch was given the reigns to this sprawling, Sci-Fi epic. The only comparable scenario I can imagine would be if Warner Brothers decided to hand over the Batman Franchise to Lars Von Trier after Nolan completes his troika. You know what, that's not a half bad idea. I'd be acutely interested to see what sort of unexplored thematic and sub textual context could be brought to the surface on the exhausted genre of the summer blockbuster when put in hands that weren't afraid to get dirty. I want Gaspar Noe to direct The Avengers. I want Shinya Tsukamoto given 250 million dollars and put in charge of the third Tron movie. I want Pascal Laugier to helm the next catastrophe-porn or alien invasion movie. I want film makers who can't be trusted to handle the projects usually reserved for bankable craftsmen like Spielberg, Bay and Scott. I'm not the least bit interested in watching no-budget, faux failures from no talent losers like Birdemic and The Room, I want high priced, high minded failures from certifiable madmen. The kind that bankrupt studios and become a warning sign for generations to come. I want movies to be dangerous and interesting again!
Or we can go see Thor in a couple weeks.
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