Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)

Directed by: Frank Pavich
Country: USA / France

Movie Review: Frank Pavich’s fantastic sophomore documentary, “Jodorowsky’s Dune”, is about an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune”, considered the philosophical bible of science fiction, made by the creative mind of the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, known in the avant-garde cinema for movies such as “Fando and Lis”, “The Holy Mountain”, “El Topo”, “Santa Sangre”, and more recently by his autobiographical “Dance of Reality”. Although described as a potential masterpiece by all the interveners, the film was never made due to lack of funding. Jodorowsky tells us about his huge passion and ambition for doing this movie, adapted to the cinema only once by David Lynch in 1984, with production of Raffaella de Laurentis and her father Dino de Laurentis as executive. A painful blow for Jodorowsky who had reunited a great team (later participants in “Alien”) of talented believers, including producer Michel Seydoux, designers H.R.Giger, Chris Foss and Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud, Dan O’Bannon for special effects, and an honorable cast composed by Orson Welles, David Carradine, Salvador Dali, and Mick Jagger. We learned how Jodorowsky approached them one by one, and how he discarded the visual effects' pioneer Douglas Turnbull, famous at the time for having worked in Kubrick’s “2001”, for being more technical than spiritual. The music would be created by Pink Floyd (one of my favorite rock bands) and Magma. What this documentary did to me was to increase my appetite for watching an undone film, and appreciate even more Jodorowsky for his art and principles.