By the mid 70’s Jodorowsky had already lead an impossibly eccentric life. He studied mime with Marcel Marceau, became a prominent theater director, his first film (made illegally) caused riots in Mexico, but his follow ups, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, turned avant-guard surrealism into box office gold despite occasionally stomach churning content. At this point he brashly decided to adapt Dune, a book he had not even read at the time.
It proved to be a good instinct. The psychedelic narrative of the book, centering around The Spice, a coveted drug used as spaceship fuel but is also a path to enlightenment, is a perfect match for Jodorowsky even as he stated throwing large parts of it out in favor of his own, deranged vision, which quickly swelled to 10 hours and featured galaxy spanning tracking shots, women being impregnated with drops of blood and other flights of fancy I'll leave the audience to discover.
To bring that vission to life he hired only artists whom he felt had the necessary passion. French comic artist Moebius doing storyboards and a great deal of the costumes, future Alien designer H.R. Gieger designing the villain’s homeworld, and British illustrator Criss Foss painting the most amazing looking space ships ever.
The documentary unfolds mostly in the increasingly old-fashion talking head format, which can be forgiven because the primary head belongs to Jodorowsky who is outrageously fascinating as he tells how he shamed Pink Floyd into doing the soundtrack, conned Orson Wells and Salvador Dalí to play key supporting parts or put his teenage son through rigorous combat training to play the lead. His passion and optimism for the project is hypnotic he comes off as history's most affable cult leader. His sales pitch to at least one collaborator consisted of: "Sell everything you own and move to Paris."
Other interviewees include Gieger, who's voice is nearly as terrifying as his art, a smattering of critics, producers, and, for some reason, Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn. The stories don't always seem completely reliable, but they've been given just the right embellishments by Jodorowsky which are indulged by Pavich because they make such a good yarn. The documentary's best moments might be when he chooses to animate key segments from the script, including the opening shot which is so amazing I had had to remind myself to breathe.
For a time it all seems achingly possible. But the film never got the green light needed to go into production. Even in the 70's, the peak of the ambitious New Hollywood movement, no studio wanted to pony up the proposed $15 million starting budget for the film with special effects that had never been tried, might last 10 hours and would probably be explicitly violent and sexual from a director with a well founded reputation for being nuts.
Jodorowsky remains understandably bitter, in a touching moment he tears up, takes the money out of his wallet and curses it, not just for Dune but for all the other projects he's been burned on. He would eventually move on to other films of varying quality, but has mostly left cinema behind for comics were he's respected and budgets aren't an issue. Lots of his ideas for Dune ended up in a series he co-authored with Moebius, The Incal. Dune eventually did reach the screen as a different debacle helmed by David Lynch and latter as a pretty decent mini-series by John Harrison. But both of those try and take the book head on, Jodorowsky wanted to change to world with his mega budget, spiritual blockbuster and was rebuffed like many filmmakers with larger than life ambition. It's sad that his Dune had to join the parathion of other great unmade films such as Kubrick's Napoleon or Del Toro's Mountains of Madness, but it's fortunate we have Pavich's spellbinding documentary to give us just a tiny peak into a film that might have changed the world.
Grade: A
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