Dune too
My obsession with the film Dune (1984) continues. These days if I’m asked to name my favorite film I don’t hesitate to say, emphatically, Dune. Is Dune a bad film? Yes, it is. I am a bad man. I like bad films. Many refer to Dune as a failure, both financially and artistically. It was supposed to be a “sci-fi epic.” The meaning of this I am not sure of, but what comes to my mind is 2001: A Space Odyssey. Most probably think Star Wars. (Even the titles should give away the comparative artistic merit of those two films.) As to the “epics” of the latter kind, for me, these are artistic failures. Action/adventure/SF film produced by the Hollywood studio system are nearly all shit. It would take the connoisseur’s eye of the scatological pervert to prefer one over another. Dune’s artistic deficiencies illuminate the perpetual artistic failure of other action/adventure/SF films. Dune is the mirror. This is what you are. Your plot does not make sense. Your characters are absurd cliches. I’ve detailed all this in previous blog posts (sorry, not currently linkable).
What we are left with is a series of images. A psychedelic postwhatever pastiche which causes us to ask, like all D. Lynch films, are you serious? The answer is yes and no. Dune is my favorite film. Dune is what happnes when an idiosyncratic autear like Lynch shoots a silo of footage and then the bureaucrats of secret power try to mold it into a prefab nugget they could magick sell. It’s like a drop of poison thrown in the well. I’m not sure though who represents the well and who represents the poison. I’ve lived with Lynch long enough to know that he is a bloated fucking pig and someone needs to stick a skewer in his gut let the gas out. The plot disjunctions present in Dune all reappear in Lost Highway, Mulhollannd Drive, and Inland Empire. Like I said, I’m repeating myself.
We are left with images. Follow the final link to a series of images from the film which I think showcase its off-kilter ambient beauty. These are just shots that tickled my fancy. Some have commentary. I’ve left out some really iconic scenes, I was trying to capture the film’s mood - to show the little nooks and crannies. Yes, the art direction on Dune was shuttering beautiful. The film itself is actually very dark and grainy. This makes for a unique look, almost Jarman-esque. (You can read about how that look came about in Ed Naha’s The Making of Dune.) In these stills you can see Lynch’s touchstones: Fellini, Kubrick, and Jodorowsky (who originally had the project). As one studio exec screamed at Dino de Laurentis after the first private screening, “Why do you keep making this shit!”
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I’m thinking of doing similiar photo essays with other of my fave films. Lemme know what you think. I await my DMCA take downs.
