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Jodorowsky's Dune, 2013
In the mid-1970s, following the artistic and commercial success of El Topo and Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky was offered the chance to make something big and bold, and he decided to try to adapt the novel Dune to film. Gathering a tremendous amount of talent around him, the team developed a tremendous artistic vision before running into funding issues with the major studios.
This documentary is a mix of interviews with the creative group that worked on developing Jodorowsky's Dune and interviews with other filmmakers and film critics who provide context for the significance of Jodorowsky's film and the process of trying to get it made. This includes archived interview footage from Dan O'Bannon, who was to collaborate on the world-building and effects of the film.
The most striking thing about this film is just the amount of innovation that went into the vision for this movie that never got made. This includes a pre-Alien HR Giger, as well as the fact that Salvador Dali was meant to play a role.
Jodorowsky, in this documentary, really comes off as exactly the sort of eccentric genius you'd expect from someone who made the films he has. He has an unrelenting confidence and sense of vision, and a drive to make things happen. At times, of course, this can feel a bit much, such as when it's revealed that after he decided his son, Brontis, would play Paul in the film, he hired Jean-Pierre Vignau to train Brontis in martial arts combat. The kid was 12 at the time. (Brontis, having had 40-some years to get used to being Jodorowsky's child, recounts this all with a pretty even keel).
The story in this documentary makes for such a fascinating "what if?". Jodorowsky's vision was, at the time, something really different for big-budget sci-fi. It is at once depressing and yet completely understandable that he could not find funding for what would have been a major investment. The creative team put together incredibly detailed storyboards, down to the angles and movements of the camera, and so the film sits, right there. Jodorowsky suggests that someday someone might take the storyboards and make an animated version of his film. Multiple interviewees speculate on what it must be like to have a creative project come so close to fruition and then go un-finished.
There were only two parts of this documentary that made me a bit uncomfortable. One was the amount of time that we spend with Richard Stanley, who is a talented filmmaker to be sure, but the details of his alleged abuse of his romantic partners is still kind of fresh in my mind and it was all I could think about when he was talking. The other thing that was very um, WHAT was a very unfortunate analogy from Jodorowsky about the creative process and how it's like marriage where you have to "rape the bride or else you won't get a child" and included the phrase "it was rape, but with love. With love." No, friend. No. I can think of about a billion ways to explain the idea of not adapting a book with fidelity that don't include the idea of sexually assaulting your spouse.
A few hiccups aside, this was a very engaging documentary and a really fun insight into a creative, outlandish artist.
Jodorowsky's Dune, 2013
In the mid-1970s, following the artistic and commercial success of El Topo and Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky was offered the chance to make something big and bold, and he decided to try to adapt the novel Dune to film. Gathering a tremendous amount of talent around him, the team developed a tremendous artistic vision before running into funding issues with the major studios.
This documentary is a mix of interviews with the creative group that worked on developing Jodorowsky's Dune and interviews with other filmmakers and film critics who provide context for the significance of Jodorowsky's film and the process of trying to get it made. This includes archived interview footage from Dan O'Bannon, who was to collaborate on the world-building and effects of the film.
The most striking thing about this film is just the amount of innovation that went into the vision for this movie that never got made. This includes a pre-Alien HR Giger, as well as the fact that Salvador Dali was meant to play a role.
Jodorowsky, in this documentary, really comes off as exactly the sort of eccentric genius you'd expect from someone who made the films he has. He has an unrelenting confidence and sense of vision, and a drive to make things happen. At times, of course, this can feel a bit much, such as when it's revealed that after he decided his son, Brontis, would play Paul in the film, he hired Jean-Pierre Vignau to train Brontis in martial arts combat. The kid was 12 at the time. (Brontis, having had 40-some years to get used to being Jodorowsky's child, recounts this all with a pretty even keel).
The story in this documentary makes for such a fascinating "what if?". Jodorowsky's vision was, at the time, something really different for big-budget sci-fi. It is at once depressing and yet completely understandable that he could not find funding for what would have been a major investment. The creative team put together incredibly detailed storyboards, down to the angles and movements of the camera, and so the film sits, right there. Jodorowsky suggests that someday someone might take the storyboards and make an animated version of his film. Multiple interviewees speculate on what it must be like to have a creative project come so close to fruition and then go un-finished.
There were only two parts of this documentary that made me a bit uncomfortable. One was the amount of time that we spend with Richard Stanley, who is a talented filmmaker to be sure, but the details of his alleged abuse of his romantic partners is still kind of fresh in my mind and it was all I could think about when he was talking. The other thing that was very um, WHAT was a very unfortunate analogy from Jodorowsky about the creative process and how it's like marriage where you have to "rape the bride or else you won't get a child" and included the phrase "it was rape, but with love. With love." No, friend. No. I can think of about a billion ways to explain the idea of not adapting a book with fidelity that don't include the idea of sexually assaulting your spouse.
A few hiccups aside, this was a very engaging documentary and a really fun insight into a creative, outlandish artist.