Jodorowsky’s Dune

Jodorowskys Dune 1
Jodorowsky's Dune

Format: Cinema (US)

Release date: 21 March 2014

Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Director: Frank Pavich

USA 2013

90 mins

If we imagine a world without Star Wars, we can imagine a world where cinema was not dying as it is now. If we imagine a world where Alejandro (El Topo) Jodorowsky beat Star Wars to the punch with his planned film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune, we can imagine him laying the groundwork for a new and different kind of film spectacle, rather than the empty state-of-the-art 1980s blockbusters that spawned endless rollercoaster rides masquerading as movies.

Read Virginie Sélavy’s interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Frank Pavich’s feature documentary is as close as we’re ever going to get to seeing what might have been one of the great movies of the late 20th century. A mere five-million-dollars short of becoming a reality, the film was to star Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali and Orson Welles. Seeing this doc is to indulge in the creative excitement that went into every second of preparing this epic motion picture. We experience Jodorowsky’s pride (albeit with a tinge of melancholy) at planting seeds for the future greatness of others from a movie that was never made. The films exists only in a massive frame-by-frame storyboard book with the screenplay and Jodorowsky’s notes – a document used to raise additional financing in Hollywood, but which was instead passed around to one filmmaker after another. Hollywood accepted the genius, but rejected the artist and, sadly, his film.

This review was first published as part of our 2013 LFF coverage.

Greg Klymkiw

Watch the trailer: