JODOROWSKY'S DUNE

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune would likely have been either been one of the greatest films in cinema history or one of its greatest follies. Likely it would have been both at once, so enormous and ambitious was the production, as chronicled in Frank Pavich’s enthralling documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, that it was likely destined to fail. It was simply too awesome to exist. 

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

THE IMPOSTER

Until the last five minutes Bart Layton's The Imposter had me firmly in it's grasp. This riveting true crime doc tells the story of Frédéric Bourdin, a Franco-Spaniard con artist who in 1998 successfully passed himself of as Nicolas Barclay, a young boy who had gone missing in San Antonio several years earlier.

It's a difficult deception to pull off. Frédéric is a 23 year old brunet, Nicolas would be a 15 year old bond with tattoo's. Somehow he pulls it off. Whenever Nicolas's family or the authorities has a suspicion, Frédéric finds some slick answer. Even then it's hard to believe that the family buy's it. The film has some suspicions but it appears that their need to believe really was that strong.

What's interesting is that while the film features interviews from most of the particulars, it focuses on Bourdin and ends up being narrated largely by him, making this a documentary in the loosest sense of the term and the film is conscious of that. Stylistically, Layton wants us to know right away that something is off, that this film exists partially in "Movie-land." First off, the image uses the 2.35:1 aspect ratio we associate more with thrillers and action epics than docs. The film uses music interestingly, at one point the narration literally fades away so we can have a sequence centered around a David Bowie song. The talking head interviews are professionally composed with a photographers eye that emphasis the stageiness of the whole thing. Then there's the reenactments.

Reenactments are tricky. As an audience we know that they're an unreal vision of real events, but presented in documentary context we subconsciously trust them. The best ones present themselves as sportive illustrations rather than unassailable truth. But the reenactments in Imposter go far beyond that and become full blown sequences owing more to Alfred Hitchcock than Errol Morris. As if to drive home the unreliability of the film, Layton sometimes uses an actor as Bourdin, but sometimes slyly inserts Bourdin himself into them and has him narrate within them (a la Farris Beuler).

The idea of the intentionally unreliable documentary is nothing new, Catfish and Exit Through The Gift Shop being recent notable examples. None of them do it quite as amazingly as Orison Well's F for Fake. Layton's effort is no slouch. It's best viewed less as a documentary and more as a thriller that happens to have real people in it.

As a thriller it's excellently staged and told. Bourdin's actions are deporible, but he's such an effective narrator that you almost begin to admire the skill it took to pull this thing off for as long as he did. I'm reminded James M. Cain's novel Double Indemmity which speaks of the outrageous audacity required to pull off a masterful crime. Bourdin has that audacity as does Layton in his telling of the story.

It doesn't all work. The film builds wonderfully only to unravel in the final sequence by indulging in a journalistic stunt more suited to Geraldo Rivera than an ambitious art doc. It's a gripping thriller, but by the end even Layton forgets that there is a real tragedy in here that needs a certain amount of respect.

Grade: B-

Note: The Imposter is currently streaming on Netflix Instant 

THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES

Documentaries are all about the editing. In theory the Siegel's would be the perfect hateful reality show family. The husband David, is the grumpy owner of Westgate, the world's largest Time Share company. His much younger wife, Jackie, is a former pageant queen with dubious plastic surgery, 8 potentially bratty kids, and a propensity for displaying her stuffed, dead dogs around the house. To top it all off. They've outgrown their already gigantic mansion and are in the midst of building a new one, modeled after the Palace of Versailles. Charlie Kane would blush if he saw the Siegel Versailles which, when completed, will be the largest home in North America at 90,000 square feet, with 30 bathrooms, 10 kitchens, a sushi bar, 2 tennis courts, etc. etc.. These people were tailor made for E or Bravo.

Indeed it seems like that's the initial direction of Lauren Greenfield's documentary, The Queen of Versailles. Focusing a bit on family background but unable and unwilling to ignore the families disgusting wealth and questionable business. But then the film shifts along with the family fortune as the 2008 housing bubble bursts around them. The Siegel's had never thought to save and now face real poverty as Westgate, built on sub-prime mortgages, crumbles and all their liquid capital is tied up in Versailles which remains unfinished and unsellable.

What makes Versailles work so wonderfully is that it sympathizes with everyone. With the exception of David, the more we learn about these people, the harder it is to dislike them, particularly Jackie who despite looking every inch the trophy wife stereotype, was once an engineer at IBM and genuinely cares for her family. Greenfield expands her scope to cover David's eldest son who runs Westgate day to day and finds himself being a buffer between his estranged father and thousands of angry employees who now face mass firings. We even get to know the nanny, a Filipina immigrant who's been separated from her biological children for 11 years and clings to the Siegel kids as surrogates.

This could have easily been a kitchy, one dimensional documentary, instead Greenfield's journalistic instincts flesh out all the right details. At times the film becomes an almost eerie microcosm of rescission era America. The Siegel's are ultimately a family suffering because they wanted a home they couldn't afford. The deeper irony that they made their fortune selling homes to people who coulnd't afford them isn't lost on Greenfield. I wonder if the footage that goes into the average reality show could be molded into something this special if they weren't so limited by a rigid agenda and the need to fill 10 23 minute slots every season.

Grade: A

Note: The Queen of Versailles is currently streaming on Netflix Instant

SENNA

He loved the rain. Other Formula 1 drivers dread it, but Aytron Senna did his best driving in bad weather. Even without the rain he was one of the best who ever lived. Indeed one of the Joys of Asif Kapadia's documentary Senna is watching Aytron's mastery over his machine.

Let's backtrack a little. Senna was a nice Brazillian boy from a well off family. At a young age he demonstrated skill in go-cart racing and in the mid 80's transitioned to Formula 1. During his 6th race, he pulled a great upset in Monte Calro by nearly beating Alain Prost, a world famous French champion. The two develop a fierce rivalry. Even after they become teammates they are very much against each other. Their cars collide during the '89 Japanese Grand Prix. It seems as if Prost is able to manipulate the federation into suspending Senna, but it's a little unclear. It is clear that although Senna is better than Prost. Prost is better able to play the game and use the system for his own devices.

Prost's beefs with Senna aren't without merit. The two trade accusations and it's hard to know what's true and what isn't. It's a great irony that this documentary has so much footage of Senna but so few answers as to what he was like as a person. Is he reckless or just really good? Or both? We see that he's deeply religious, gives generously to charity. He feels genuine but distant. We see him with his family and with women but we aren't told much about his relationships. This film keeps it about the driving. That the film poses larger questions and doesn't try to fill them in is at times frustrating. There are times when it seems that Kapadia is shaping the narrative in artificial ways. That important things are glossed over or just plain cut out. 


But the footage on display is tremendous. F1 is such a media sport that every event is covered from so many different angles that there are many times where it's easy to forget you're watching a documentary. There's no need to have a talking head recount how Senna felt at such-and-such pre-race meeting when we can actually see the footage of Senna storming out and what lead to that. But nothing competes with the footage from Senna's helmet camera. The speeds achieved are amazing. The car whirring under him. There are times when his engine stops sounding like a car and starts sounding like a jumbo jet. Yet Senna has such deft control over his machine as too make the whole endeavor seem effortless. There may be a lot of ambiguity about Senna's life, but there is none when it comes to why he raced. It got him closer to God.


Grade: B+


"Senna" is currently streaming on Netflix Instant

TABLOID

The new Errol Morris film Tabloid is the most lurid, off-the-wall documentary to come along in a long time. It tells the story of Wyoming PHD beauty queen, Joyce McKinney who, in the late 70's, fell in love with a flabby Mormon named Kirk Anderson. Joyce claims that his family brainwashed him into not loving her and then sent him off to London to forget about her. From there Joyce went to London, kidnapped him with chloroform and a fake gun. Drove him to a small cottage in Devon and deprogrammed him using, um... bondage sex.

From there things just get odd. After Joyce's arrest for rape and kidnapping, she becomes a media sensation meeting movie stars and rock-gods. She starts writing a book telling her story, stating that she was just an innocent girl who was trying to rescue the love of her life. She quickly enters into a rivalry with London tabloid The Daily Mirror, who disputes her "pure as the driven snow" narrative by revealing the nature of the "modeling" work she used to finance the caper, and claiming to have a plethora of nude photos as evidence.

We hear most of this story from McKinney herself. We also hear a good portion from Daily Mirror reporter Kent Gavin. McKinney claims that the stories about the time she spent in California are flat lies and that the photos are fake. Kent claims that he's seen the negatives that prove they aren't but can't produce them. Joyce also claims to have had material that would prove that they are fake. But sadly, or suspiciously, all the evidence was stolen.

It's clear that Anderson and McKinney had some sort of romantic relationship prior to all the weirdness, but it's unclear to what extent. It's unclear to what extent Anderson did or did not enjoy the "deprogramming," "You can't put a marshmellow into a parking meter," Joyce claims. It is clear that he denounced her after, perhaps out of guilt, perhaps not. The only thing that is certain is that they are not together now.

Morris weaves this tale into an extremely entertaining documentary. McKinney is a prime example of the unreliable narrator. Even if everything she said was true, she'd still come off as a self-serving obsessive at best. But Morris never demonizes her or even criticizes her, instead he sympathizes with her on a deep and real level. It's not as hard as it may seem. Joyce has not lived an easy life since the trial. For years she was hounded by paparazzi. Home videos reveal her to be extremely lonely, perhaps even clinically depressed. She never married and her only companions seem to be her dogs. It's been over 30 years since she kidnapped Kirk Anderson with the chloroform and the fake gun.  She's still working on that book.

Grade: A