David Lynch
Dune

“Dune” by David Lynch is undoubtedly a failure… but what a fascinating failure! Released in theaters amid great announcements (and expectations) in December 1984, it was immediately demolished by critics and left the few audiences bewildered. The film quickly gained a reputation for being an incomprehensible jumble of disturbing scenes; the trouble is that this still holds true today. Dino De Laurentiis invested about $40 million in its production (an enormous sum at the time), and discovering how such an outcome was reached at least deserves investigation.

Frank Herbert's novel of the same name was hailed as a masterpiece upon its publication (1965 in its final form) and won the Hugo and Nebula awards, the top honors in this domain; to this day, it is the best-selling science fiction book with over 12,000,000 copies sold. It is, therefore, no surprise that the novel quickly attracted the interest of the film industry, despite its complex plot, which a certain George Lucas did not hesitate to call “unfilmable.”
Set in the year 10191, after a war between humanity and artificial intelligence led to the banning of its use and development, “Dune” catapults us into a future that resembles a feudal past, with emperors, houses, and barons fighting one another for control of a desolate, completely desert planet, Dune, which uniquely harbors deposits of “spice,” a precious substance with many properties, including extending life, granting foresight, and even bending space-time, allowing one to “travel without moving.” To complicate matters, gigantic and voracious worms travel through Dune's subsoil (spice derives from their feces), and the indigenous population, the “Fremen,” are organizing a "jihād" (quite literally) against the various houses, awaiting a prophet to lead them. The fact that Herbert was a journalist in the Middle East for several years might suggest his sources of inspiration. Adding to this is the presence of a politically influential Spacing Guild, capable of issuing orders even to Galactic Emperor Shaddam IV, and a sisterhood called the Bene Gesserit, which has been orchestrating breeding programs among the most promising young of the houses for millennia to produce the "Kwisatz Haderach,” the supreme being, and this appears to be Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto and the new governor of Dune… In short, if you're getting lost, believe me, it's not entirely my fault.

Such a universe couldn't help but capture the visionary talent of Alejandro Jodorowsky who, in the mid-1970s, fresh off the success of “The Holy Mountain” (1973), assembled a cast including Gloria Swanson, Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, and Salvador Dalí, contacted Magma and Pink Floyd for the soundtrack, and had the storyboards drawn by Foss, Giger, and Moebius. Despite such magnificence, American distributors were reluctant to support such a grandiose project in the hands of a director considered “crazy”; it didn't help that Frank Herbert completely disowned Jodorowsky's screenplay, leaving the project as one of cinema's greatest “… what ifs?“ To those curious about this, the intriguing yet ill-fated attempt is well documented in Frank Pavich's “Jodorowsky’s Dune” (2013).
In the meantime, the book's rights passed to Dino De Laurentiis who, with some shrewdness, decided to propose the project to an up-and-coming director, Ridley Scott. Despite discarding Jodorowsky's screenplay, Scott began working practically with the same team; unfortunately, due to prolonged pre-production, a personal tragedy, and Herbert's disapproval of the script once again, Scott abandoned everything to move the entire team to another science fiction project with a much simpler story yet incredibly effective, “Alien” (1979). Hence, Scott's Dune remains another great “… what if?”

And here we arrive at Lynch who, at the time, had made his hallucinatory art-house debut with “Eraserhead” (1977) and the more accessible yet equally evocative “The Elephant Man” (1980), a film with 8 Oscar nominations, including Best Director.
David Lynch was the new “hot name” in Hollywood, striking with his innate ability to render dreamlike situations tangible, real, with unusual characters, even if no one seemed to grasp his strong authorship yet, a feature that would become very apparent in his films following “Dune”. A testament to this is the episode where George Lucas offered him the direction of “Return of the Jedi” (1983) to which Lynch responded, "It's your thing, it's not my thing.” In short, another great “… what if?”, and here we would have seen something else. When Dino and Raffaella De Laurentiis later contacted him, Lynch admitted feeling that “Dune” could indeed be “his thing,” plunging into it heart and soul to the point of independently developing five versions of the screenplay for a film with a planned duration of at least 3 hours.

In March 1983, filming finally began (the colossal sets had been under construction for some time), Universal secured the distribution rights, an artistic and technical first-rate cast was assembled, but a newcomer was boldly cast in the lead role, that Kyle MacLachlan who would continue to work fruitfully with Lynch in the future and who claimed to have kept Herbert's novel on his bedside table “like it was his Bible” since he was fifteen.
For economic reasons, production was based in Mexico City studios where 75 sets were built, and 2,000 people were hired to clear three square miles of desert for the outdoor shots. The filming, kept under wraps from the press, lasted six months with Max Von Sydow, Jürgen Prochnov, Silvana Mangano, Virginia Madsen, Brad Dourif, Freddie Jones, José Ferrer, Patrick Stewart, Dean Stockwell, Jake Nance, the enchanting Francesca Annis, the stunning Sean Young, even Sting, and others making appearances on set. But it will be, at least for this writer, one of the less “prominent” names to deliver the most memorable performance: the intense and unsettling Siân Phillips as Reverend Mother Mohiam. The production, employing about 1700 crew members, extended for 6 months, followed by post-production and special effects creation for a Lynch on the brink of exhaustion. Besides this and going over the budget by $4 million (compare to what Cimino had done a few years before, these were trifles), everything went smoothly until then, to the point that the De Laurentiis, thrilled with the experience, were already planning, again with Lynch, two sequels based on Herbert's novels, “Dune Messiah” and “Children of Dune”. Projects that would never see the light of day or even take the first steps, because this is when the real problems began.

After a first work print at around 4 hours, Lynch and the production arrived at what they considered the final cut, which according to the screenplay, ran around 3 hours. They presented it to Universal, which, however, contested it, arguing that their agreement was for a 2-hour film, as longer durations compromised the daily number of screenings in theaters. So, no artistic reasons, just dollars. De Laurentiis, now financially exposed, didn't feel like crossing swords with Universal (it would be Terry Gilliam's turn the following year for his “Brazil”) and agreed on a 137-minute compromise; Lynch, who didn't have the “final cut,” didn't step back, and together with Antony Gibbs, wielded the scissors, recalled Virginia Madsen for a prologue, added more voiceovers, and especially tried to work so that some of his vision still shone through. This indeed happened, but the film, complex as it was, with almost three-quarters of an hour less, became an incomprehensible mess and was distributed in this form.
Anticipating audience bewilderment, during the first weeks of release, a “cue sheet” was even provided at the box office to highlight the production effort behind the film, including plot points to facilitate viewing enjoyment. But it wasn’t enough. Watching “Dune” for the first time requires a Herculean effort: too much information bombards the audience, too many disconnected situations, too many “alien” words that are indecipherable, too many oddities that turn out to be irrelevant to the plot. You see, in making the cuts, Lynch didn't compromise on “deviances” that, as would later become clear, featured throughout his cinematography with suggestively hallucinatory moments (present in the novel as well) and disturbing if not outright repugnant visions (decaying hands and cheeks, bloody fetuses, pus-filled pustules being syringed, squashed insects for drinking their juice, literally unplugged hearts… yes, unplugged, not torn out… I'll stop here). We are thus far from what was announced as the new “Star Wars” heir; here, there is material likely to traumatize the kids. Another “Lynchian” trait, the acting is often over-the-top and in the case of the Harkonnens (the bad guys' house), it goes beyond theatrical, bordering on psychotic. Moreover, the battle scenes are crowded, yes, but they weren’t the director’s forte and were shot in a style reminiscent of the '50s; it's understood that Gibbs, a great editor on his own, did what he could with the material he had in the editing room. Aesthetically though, perhaps the biggest flaw lay in the special effects, already mostly outdated at the time of the film's release; the talents involved were prominent (Rambaldi, West, Withlock), but it seems that the overshooting of the budget during filming had compromised the investment in this area. There is also that “fake” taste on the verge of trash, also typical of Lynch’s poetic. Sublime in other films, perhaps ambiguous in this case.

So, how is it possible that we are still discussing this film almost forty years later?
Because “Dune” is still unique in its genre, thrust magically between a grindhouse-type film and an artistic installation; because Anthony Masters' set designs and Bob Ringwood's costumes wisely blend '30s telephones, the mosaics of St. Mark's Basilica, and the muscular synapses of Gray's Anatomy. Wooden environments for Caladan, the water planet; gold for Kaitain, seat of the Empire; metal for fully industrialized Giedi Prime; rock and mineral inlays for Dune. Because after the experience with Queen for the music of “Flash Gordon” (1980), De Laurentiis turned to Toto, who, without anyone expecting it, provided a memorable soundtrack (not forgetting Brian Eno's contribution, initially favored by Lynch); because “Dune” is full of images and atmospheres that stick to your brain after just one viewing; because some performances, despite their excesses, leave a mark; because despite all its flaws, it's still a film that truly transports you to an alternative universe that initially pushes you away but when it embraces you, transforms into a unique experience that invites repeat viewings and thus its current cult status. Indeed, although Lynch, hurt by what happened, never wanted to touch the footage again, various attempts have been made even recently to restore the film to its complete form. For history's sake, perhaps the most successful “restoration” is that of “Spicediver” which is available on YouTube and demonstrates how the film was originally much less disjointed than how it was presented to us; paradoxically, this is perhaps the version to watch (unfortunately not subtitled in Italian).

In conclusion, it is noteworthy that despite the film's ending absurdly distorting the novel's spirit, Frank Herbert staunchly defended the film both upon its controversial release in theaters and in subsequent years (Herbert died in February 1986).
So, what a fascinating failure “Dune” is! A film perhaps to “forgive” to rediscover its originality and boldness, as we await Denis Villeneuve's “Dune part 1,” announced, virus permitting, for December this year. Yes, the Canadian director learned the lesson and the story will wisely be divided into 2 films. Enjoy watching.