Jodorowsky’s Dune delves into the greatest sci-fi film that never was

“A film that gives LSD hallucinations without LSD.” – Alejandro Jodorowsky on his vision for Dune

In 1975, two full years before Star Wars, Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky began preparing for what would be the biggest sci-fi blockbuster of all time. Jodorowsky, flush from the buzz of his psychedelic arthouse films El Topo and The Holy Mountain, turned his attention to Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic novel Dune, a massively complex political allegory about the spice-mining planet Arrakis. Not that he had ever read the novel mind you, but he had heard good things about it.

With a fierce determination bordering on the maniacal, Jodorowsky and a motley crew of artists, producers and even his pre-adolescent son – dubbed affectionately as “spiritual warriors” by Jodorowsky – spent the next two years working tirelessly to bring his sprawling vision to life, only to have their funding fall through at the last minute, shelving the project completely.

Jodorowsky’s Dune, the feature debut by Frank Pavich, traces the evolution of this would-be epic through a series of talking-head interviews with the 85 year-old Jodorowsky, and many of his former partners, including artist H.G. Giger (Alien), co-producer Michel Seydoux, and a number of younger filmmakers, including a fawning Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive).

The film posits that had the funding come through, Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Dune would have been one of the greatest films of all time. Based on the talent involved, the claim doesn’t seem that far fetched. Taking Jodorowsky’s striking visual sense and willingness to bend the traditional role of film as far as possible, coupled with a cast including Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali (!) and Orson Welles, an exclusive soundtrack by Pink Foyd, and art design by H.G. Giger and Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud, and you have the makings of a potential genre classic.

The studios however, tended to disagree. Who would put up millions for a mind-expanding sci-fi tale by a Chilean director best known for films relegated to midnight showings due to their utter insanity, set to run for an untold number of hours?

Pavich does his best to make the case for Jodorowsky here, animating segments from the infamous phonebook-sized storyboard bible created to pitch the project, in order to show the full scope of what Jodorowsky and his crew were aiming for.

And while the cosmic scope of the project is thrilling, it’s hard to evaluate what could have been. For all we know, the finished film might’ve have been less Star Wars and more Flash Gordon (both of which were directly influenced by Jodorowsky’s Dune vision, to very different ends).

While we will never know how Jodorowsky’s film would have played out, echoes of it have populated some of the most beloved sci-fi films of all time. In the most interesting section of the film, Pavich demonstrates how exact storyboarded scenes from the Dune project made their way into the original Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Prometheus.

Jodorowsky’s Dune does an admirable job of showing what could either have been a mind-blowing sci-fi epic, or an absolutely chaotic mess. Given how disastrous David Lynch’s 1985’s adaptation turned out, the latter is more likely. Either way, Pavich’s film succeeds as an inspiring example of pure artistic determination, in the face of nearly insurmountable odds.

While Jodorowsky is shown still seething with anger today at the Hollywood system that stymied his vision, the process of revisiting Dune must have awakened something deep within him, leading to a reunion with his “spiritual warrior” co-producer Michel Seydoux for 2013’s The Dance of Reality, his first directorial effort in 23 years. It seems that the creative power of his insane Dune project still has legs, nearly 40 years on.

Jodorowsky’s Dune is playing in select cities now.

See http://jodorowskysdune.com/ for screening information.