Sunday's Lynch reference came about on account which I recently re-watched his largely dismissed (especially by him) version of Herbert Frank's epic Dune. I'd been among the first to fling fæces at it on release. But there's much to admire and enjoy, and in some ways it's superior to Villeneuve's style sheet. Mood, for one. There's a real feeling of poisoned dread, of intergalactic heaviosity, that leaks direct from Lynch's brain-stem. No amount of C.G.I. can improve on the old school art direction, set and costume design that give the movie its monumental nightmarish feel. F'rinstance - in the first scene, the entrance of the Guild Navigator (whatevs) in a kind of mobile nuclear bunker/iron lung thing is authentically scary. Compare and contrast with Villeneuve's treatment of <wtf>the same</wtf> a totally unrelated scene, which plays like a debutante's ball, with about as much threat as a dropped handkerchief.
There's a lot to regret, too. The primitive computer effects are sometimes jarring. Kyle MacLachlan's snow-plow jaw is no match for Timothée Chalamet's storm-tossed coiffure. The story ... well, the original book had trouble with that too.
A note about the various versions: avoid the so-called extended cut, so loathed by Lynch that it's credited to Alan Smithee ("A Alan Smithee Film"), and features the worst first ten minutes of any movie ever - terrible, really terrible, illustrations with an expositionary voice-over. There are fan edits out there, of course, but none is the movie we want this to be. Lynch gets closest.
Watch.
ReplyDeleteListen.
ReplyDeleteToto, I've a feeling you're not in Africa anymore.
DeleteI wonder if Lynch considered Kansas for the soundtrack?
DeleteSpice Girls?
DeleteBabs wins a late yet covetable Third Prize; this Official Disney© "Frozen©" Merchandise mouse mat!
DeleteThis comment has been withheld by its author pending contract negotiations.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been edited to conform to Woke imperatives.
DeleteI took my son to see the new one; I'd taken his non-science fiction reading mother to see the Lynch film on one of our first dates. I knew I was in trouble when they handed us a double-sided page of definitions on the way into the theater. Before you watch this film, you need to memorize the following glossary: Arrakis, Bene Gesserit, crysknife, Fremen, Geidi Prime, gom jabbar....all the way to Zensunni... Needless to say she was lost and never let me forget it (that should have been a warning, but I was young and in love, or so it seemed at the time).
ReplyDeleteAnyway...I liked the new film, as did my son He has not read the book and was not familiar with the story. But it made perfect sense to him, but he grew up in an age where science fiction wasn't an oddball geek niche but right in the cultural mainstream. You need spice to navigate space and time through the Interstellar void? Sure!
I started watching the Lynch version and got about an hour into it, and then turned it off. I want to watch it with my son, and see what he thinks of it. I liked it when I saw it back in '84/'85, but I understood why it didn't find a mass audience. If you need a crib sheet, the movie isn't sweeping you along with the story. I've never seen the "Alan Smithee version," but it sounds like they took that stupid two page glossary and inserted it into the film itself. The handout was bad enough (try reading small print with unknown words in the low light of a theater...Tleilaxu? Am I really seeing that word?)...
Anyway...my abreviated viewing was enjoyable and I'm looking forward to watching it to the end with my son. While it's not a GOOD film (I would never grab ya by the lapels and scream "YOU'VE GOT TO SEE THIS IT'S INCREDIBLE!" right into your face while little flecks of spittle splatter your Ray-bans...), it's not as bad as the critics made it out to be at the time.
Plus...Alia. I've been waiting for years to watch the fat Baron get stabbed with the Atreides gom jabbar again...I love that scene!
The main problem with "Dune" (1984) is that it is a two-hour film, edited like the three hour film that Lynch thought he had when he started filming.
ReplyDeleteThe first hour is slow and sluggish, not to mention questionably constructed (we're told in the first five minutes that the Atreides will be betrayed, then it takes almost an hour to get to that point). The second hour is then almost comically rushed, as months of development are expressed in a montage. Plus the film doesn't have a real ending. A knife fight and then...it rains?! Get outta here with that...
All that being said, I also think it's enjoyable for a number of things (like the set design that you mention) and doesn't deserve the bad rap it gets.
However, this, Farq
"F'rinstance - in the first scene, the entrance of the Guild Navigator (whatevs) in a kind of mobile nuclear bunker/iron lung thing is authentically scary. Compare and contrast with Villeneuve's treatment of the same scene, which plays like a debutante's ball, with about as much threat as a dropped handkerchief."
doesn't work as an argument. There is no such secen equivalent in the new movie, as there are neither space guilde navigators nor the Imperator to be seen. Both wise choices if you ask me. The scene in the new one that you're probably referring to (which doesn't have an equivalent in the old film) is the formal announcement of the Atreides' stewardship over Arakis.
You're right, of course. I thought there was something fallacious in my argument and thank you for putting your finger on it. But my basic point, that Lynch is capable of being unsettlingly weird and scary, where Villeneuve is not, remains watertight. And being unsettlingly weird and scary is a good thing when it comes to this material.
DeleteTrue dat. Villeneuve is too much of an intellectual director to go by his gut and go for the gut of the audience, something Lynch excells at.
DeleteIt's a trade off for coherence, though, as Lynch is simply not too concerned with that, even if he has power over his film and final cut, which of course for "Dune" he didn't.
The whole space navigator as a weird floating alien octopus thinie in an iron lung was entirely Lynch's, and the sequence itself is indeed remarkable. Unfortunately, it also undermines the rest of the film in some ways. The emepror comes off like a fuddy-duddy granddad, freaking before the arrival of the navigator guilde folks, and then the space navigator has him admit he plans on betraying the Atreides' which then just takes forever to get to.
By the way, I liked that sequence you mentioned, as it would make sense in this weird feudal system that even a done deal like that would still need to have ridiculous pomp and circumstance with a delegation of dozens to offically ask Leto whether he accepts the stewardship. That was neat in a "yeah, that makes sense" way.
ReplyDeleteI also liked the Sardukar, whose role and special place is much better explained/shown in the new version. In Lynch's film they are mentioned once or twice, but never shown specifically, so it's completely unclear why the Harkonnens would need two army units from the emperor to suceed in their coup. This is much clarer in the new one, with the Sardukar shown as these merciless killing machines.
And speaking of weird, and scary, Villeneuve has one. The first Sardukar sequence, as we see them prepare for battle by hanging people upside down on some sort of ceremonial tablets and bleeding them out, only to use the blood as war paint. It's not particularly mentioned anywhere else in the film, but that shit was pretty spooky.
Now here's a question no one has ever asked on the isle of Foam before and probably never will again:
ReplyDeleteAnyone for more Toto?
As in, I have the entire Yoto score (with about a dozen or so more cues) somewhere, so if someone's interested in that....as they say, you just can't have enough Toto in your life...
I for one would welcome a chance to hear if they're as uninteresting as I always thought they'd be. I tried downloading a torrent a couple of days ago, but trashed it because the albums aren't split into tracks, and life's too precious to waste on that process.
DeleteI like the soundtrack very much, though, which is what sent me on the hunt.
Huh. Left a comment here that didn't make it...oh well.
DeleteSo in shorter: Toto - yes, as bad as you think. Pretty unlistenable for more than two or three tracks in a row.
Holler if you want to check out the longer Dune soundtrack, though...
Love the Lynch film (which I didn't even see until circa 2006) and the magnificent score. If you'd told me Toto could pull something like that off...
ReplyDeleteCan't be arsed to go to see the new film, as the last two Villeneuve things left a distinct "meh" taste upon the gorgeous visuals.
That's the thing about Villeneuve, the visuals. He should have been a production designer/art director for a director worthy of him, but unfortunately the studio system is shot to hell, along with its attendant specialist expertise (everyone can do everything today), and there are no great directors left who can "helm" a project of this scope. Villeneuve is at best a competent director and below-average screenwriter, but an absolutely consummate, even visionary, stylist.
DeleteGood then, that other than Dune all his big movies in the last dacede have been written by other people.
DeleteFunny how people here have an issue with Villeneuve, but sing the praises of a cold stylist liker Kubrick to high heavens.
As for "Arrival" and "Blade Runner 2049" being "meh" - well, I don't know what to tell you, folks. If two of the best and certainly most intelligent genre films of, well, the last ten to fifteen years are "meh", while everything other than superhero or other IP-related tentpoles is vanishing...well. I don't take you guys for Marvel fiends, but I'm not sure what else exactly you would need from these movies...
DeleteThe other thing about Villeneuve to remember is that, unlike a pure visuul stylist like Ridley Scott, he doesn't come from a commercial background, he made small indies for fifteen years before he revealed himself to be a science fiction fan and a blockbuster director.
ReplyDeleteHell, when I watched "Maelstrom" at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival, I wouldn't have bet on that weird Canadian indie dude with the weird film with the talking fish becoming one of Hollywood's biggest commodities twenty years later...
I agree with OBG that Villeneuve consistently transcends "meh".
ReplyDelete