'Jodorowsky's Dune' A Review

Jodorowsky's Dune is a documentary about Alejandro Jodorowky's impassioned attempt to adapt the book Dune to the silver screen in the 1970's. The film is told through a series of interviews with actors, producers, artists, and Jodorowsky himself interspersed with footage from his films as well as photographs and art stills. We get a basic somewhat limited idea of Jodorowsky and his films, most of the film unpacks and describes the process and the conceit of the unmade Dune and it's influence, ending with a brief explanation of what Jodorowsky did after the project was shut down.

The ingenuity, beauty, and revolutionary thinking(both in the visual construction and in the narrative ambition) involved in the Dune project is fascinating but what is more seductive is Jodorowsky himself. At 84 he still maintains whatever powerful magnetic quality lured such a diverse group of creative people that worked on the Dune project 40 years ago. He is petulant and poetic, passionate and powerful, determined and inspired. Recounting the story of his unmade Dune his creative fire blazes as if no time had passed.

The story of how Dune almost came together ten years before David Lynch's version is compelling. It is cinematically interesting how the treatment had such influence in later years in science fiction and cinema at large. What is more interesting and the reason to watch is Jodorowsky.

A poet, a leader, an artist. You understand easily why people followed him. You want to yourself.

See It.