Thus far, therefore, I've ignored a lot of misunderstood epics. I have Kevin Costner's Waterworld hanging about waiting for viewing, and it would be criminal of me to get through the month without taking a look at Heaven's Gate. I think about them every day, but then I usually land up picking something shorter, simpler and stupider in order to save myself an hour or two.
Yesterday, however, I decided to be brave, and turned to Dune, David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel. I hadn't been near either the film or the book since I was a kid, and my memories were hazy, but I seemed to remember a beautiful, slightly dreamy piece of science fiction packed densely with memorable characters. After several days of nonstop action, yeah, that was something I could definitely get behind.
The plot is famously complex, so let's stick to the absolute basics. It's a story that's been told countless times, most likely - a young nobleman seeks to avenge the death of his father by leading a revolt amongst the rural underclass. Of course, in this particular case it's played out on an interplanetary scale, and rural underclass refers to a race of desert-dwellers whose very body chemistry is altered by worm dust, but these are just the trappings. So long as you keep your eyes and ears open, it's not a difficult film - true, those who've read the book might be slightly more appreciative of the small details, but I don't doubt the same could be said for Chocolat or Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
The good
Coming back to Dune after more than 20 years away from it, I was astonished by how good it still looked. Sure, the sandworm puppetry was a little obvious in close up, but otherwise? For the most part, it hasn't been dated by its effects in the same way as, say, Jurassic Park. Leaving print quality and creature effects aside, it actually holds up far better than the likes of Starship Troopers. Set design is gorgeous; the indoor scenes are lush and highly detailed, while the desert itself is eerily oppressive and uses clever lighting to create a sense of queasy suffocation. The costumes, too, are glorious, providing a useful reminder of each character's background and role in a story where tribal identity plays a central part.The performances are solid, if not spectacular - make no mistake, the star of Dune is the world itself, and in the end, the actors are there primarily in service of Frank Herbert's vision. Everybody hits their marks and says their lines with the appropriate level of conviction; more than this would be unnecessary. Kyle MacLachlan makes an appropriately handsome lead, growing convincingly from pampered duke to hardened leader as the story demands. Patrick Stewart, meanwhile, deserves credit for looking and sounding exactly the same thirty years ago as he does today, which does make me wonder whether James MacAvoy's role in the X-Men franchise isn't technically slightly redundant.
And then we come to the storytelling, which seems to be the one part of the film that really drives the critics to distraction. Roger Ebert was quite vehement on the subject, calling the film '...a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time.' Now, Ebert's criticism has always been something of an inspiration to me, but when I read those words I do find myself wondering whether he ever saw anything by, say, Wim Wenders, or even some of the more badly-edited modern blockbusters.
Dune may be complex, but I genuinely don't believe it's confused, unstructured or difficult to understand. The only suggestion I can make is that the use of terminology from the book might prove offputting to some, but each new concept is explained as soon as it gets introduced. If anything, the film might merit criticism for its reliance on heavy chunks of exposition, but I suspect this is simply a consequence of trying to compress the source material into a 2-hour movie.
The bad
As I've just stated, Dune is a big, big story - if it were made today, it would probably receive the standard treatment and be made into two separate and slightly disappointing two-hour movies released at carefully-calculated intervals to maximise box office revenue. The point I'm trying to make here, however clumsily, is that even with verbal screencrawl at the start, expository dialogue throughout and a slightly desperate late-stage montage with voiceover, it still feels as though a lot has been left out. I'm not sure whether or not anything actually suffers, but it does lead to an atmosphere often described as dreamlike by people who were possibly too polite to use the term disjointed. I'd really love to know whether there's a cut out there that runs to three or four hours, as I can't help feeling it might make for an afternoon well spent.And then there's the things I really could have done without - Baron Harkonnen, for instance, at least as portrayed on screen. I can't remember off the top of my head which details were lifted directly from the book, but he's the sole fat character in the film and the only sexually ambiguous one, and he's presented as a greedy sexual predator with disgusting oozing sores and a preference for young boys. It's an unhelpful stereotype on any number of levels, and makes me feel profoundly uncomfortable.
Worse, however, is unfortunately a concept central to the story of the novel. If you have a tribe of powerful female witches, please, tell me why the leader they've been waiting for for aeons has to be male? I know, I know, it was the 80s and we were far less enlightened back then, but rubbish like this is the reason feminism is so desperately important even today.
Finally, glowy-eyed little girl speaking with big deep adult voice? I'm sorry, but that's just unnecessarily creepy.
The verdict
After several days of brightly-coloured family fun, this was a really nice change of pace - it provided the grace and elegance that yesterday's movie lacked so badly. Sure, there's a few flaws in pacing and a few new words for the audience to learn, but does this really translate to a bad movie?Only if you're a bad movie critic, I guess.
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