Dune (1984)
(Second or Third Viewing, On Blu Ray, September 2019) At least two generations of Science Fiction fans have now commented at length on David Lynch’s Dune, and it’s easy to take cheap shots at the result. As an adaptation to one of the most widely read, widely known best-selling SF novels of all time, this is a film that sets itself up for failure: There’s no way a mere two-hours-and-seventeen-minute film could do justice to a densely packed 500-page novel that launched a mythology that barely fits on a single shelf. That holds even true considering how inwardly focused the novel can be, with complex conspiracies, duelling factions, sweeping galactic events and subtleties on top of subtleties. In fact, considering the nature of the source material, I’d say that Lynch’s version does quite well with what it brings to the screen. The special effects are not particularly good by today’s standards (and there are a lot of them), but the set design and costumes remain effective, and the sheer ambition of the film does create some amount of sympathy. Of course, I’m not exactly looking at Dune without a healthy dose of nostalgic wonder—I watched the film once or twice as a teenager and I credit it with what was necessary to read the novel. (It’s a great novel, one of my favourites, but it’s not a bad idea to have pictures in your mind to understand who’s who and what’s what.) If the film seems a bit crazy and over-the-top as a middle-aged adult, it’s a good kind of crazy and over-the-top. Even when it doesn’t quite succeed, when it looks silly, when it clearly bites off more than it can chew, it’s still wonderfully ambitious. The cast is an amazing mixture of generations of actors (I mean: super-young Virginia Madsen alongside super-old José Ferrer, with various pop-culture icons such as Sting, Patrick Stewart, Sean Young, Kyle MacLachlan and Linda Hunt? That’s wild.) That remains interesting even when the film gets caught up in the mechanics of the plot and gadgets it shows on-screen. Dune escapes the question of whether it’s good or bad—it’s a good thing that it exists, flaws and all.