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Shot in France, England, Switzerland and the United States, this documentary covers director Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre) and his 1974 Quixotic attempt to adapt the seminal sci-fi novel Dune into a feature film. After spending 2 years and millions of dollars, the massive undertaking eventually fell apart, but the artists Jodorowsky assembled for the legendary project continued to work together. This group of artists, or his “warriors” as Jodorowsky named them, went on to define modern sci-fi cinema with such films as Alien, Blade Runner, Star Wars and Total Recall.
曠世奇片之死, SCAN'14: Jodorowsky'o kopa, Дюна Ходоровского, 佐杜洛夫斯基的沙丘, Dune a lui Jodorowsky, חולית: הסרט שלא היה, Duna de Jodorowsky, 조도로브스키의 듄, „Дюн“ на Ходоровски, Jodorowsky’s Dune, "Дюна" Ходоровського, ホドロフスキーのDUNE, Jodorowsky'o kopa, Hành Tinh Cát (Bản của Jodorowsky), Jodorowskyn Dyyni
Watching this I was initially intrigued and a little amused, but then became quickly and thoroughly pissed off. What little worth this documentary has as a showcase for Moebius and Christopher Foss's concept art just makes me wish I'd read a coffee table book instead; the rest of the doc, meanwhile, is devoted to telling us how brilliant, how ambitious, and how eccentric an artist Alejandro Jodorowsky really is. I swear, the filmmakers giving him a blow job would've been faster and certainly much cheaper. After 90 minutes of his pontificating, supplemented by hagiographic interviews with fans and collaborators, this supposed Great Visionary of Our Time just sounds like a self-aggrandizing blowhard asshole.
I might be this movie's biggest fan. Looking over my colleagues' ratings and reviews on Letterboxd, I see a lot of unimpressed folks, and a fair number who downright hated this thing, and hated Jodorowsky. I find Jodorowsky an absolutely delightful storyteller (the Keith Carradine anecdote! Vitamin E!), but to each his own. Some critics I've read are particularly offended by the documentary's claims that his unfinished DUNE in some way inspired many great movies that followed, like ALIEN and the original STAR WARS. The film makes bogus claims and therefore cannot be trusted.
Jodorowsky's elaborate storyboard and concept art book may or may not have found its way into the hands of the creators of later movies. Either way,…
I remain an enormous fan of the movie, and rewatching it I think I’ve pinpointed what resonates with me: It is a joyful film about failure. Rather than complain about what didn’t happened with Dune, Jodorowsky celebrates every moment that did. And that is beautiful.
certainly the film being described in this highly enjoyable documentary would have been a hell of a thing. and while the design work and adaptation details on display are tantalizing, as a chronicle of the development process this isn't particularly enlightening. great, Dan O'Bannon meets Jodo, gets pretty ripped on his "special marijuana", and signs on to the project. or "I asked Mick Jagger to be in my movie and he said OK."
now, i would not dispute Jodorowsky's imaginative genius if you paid me, but on the other hand i'm not sure we can be too surprised that American studios didn't want to pony up millions to a guy who'd never dealt with something on such a massive scale…
If this movie came out, it would have bombed harder than Heaven's Gate, Star Wars would have never come out and the Hollywood blockbuster probably wouldn't exist
In other words the world would have been a better place.
I could go on a long angry rant about how much I hate how biased and delusional this was but I’ll just say this: I’m sure Denis wanted to make a 10 hour version of Dune too, but he lives on planet Earth and doesn’t think he’s God, so he got to make the best Dune adaptation yet and Jodorowsky got a pretentious documentary
There are so many incredible stories that are a part of this but one of the best is Jodo convincing Orson Welles to do the film by saying he’d hire the chef of the restaurant they were sitting in to feed him on set.
I'm dubious that the reality of Jodorowsky's Dune would have been anything as transcendent as the concept of it, despite all the talent involved and the preparation. But it's certainly fun to imagine. Or as fun to imagine as a film lined with sex-pest talking heads can be.
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