Movie Review: Jodorowsky’s Dune is a fascinating documentary

FILM buffs with a love for cinema’s secret history must make tracks for this extraordinary documentary ASAP.

Jodorowsky’s Dune (M)

Director : Frank Pavich (documentary debut)

Starring : Alejandro Jodorowsky, Richard Stanley, Michel Seydoux.

Rating: ***1/2

Buffs with a love for cinema’s secret history must make tracks for this extraordinary documentary ASAP.

It tells the true story of what is arguably the greatest movie never made: Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted mid-1970s adaptation of Dune.

Frank Herbert’s epic sci-novel was proclaimed unfilmable upon publication, a fact later proven by the great David Lynch (whose career was nearly totalled by his botched take on the book in 1984).

Pet project ... Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky.

In spite of openly professing he had never read a page of Dune, Jodorowsky acquired the rights and assembled an A-team of major creative talent to make the impossible dream a reality.

Pink Floyd handled the music. Orson Welles, Salvador Dali and Mick Jagger were just three names confirmed for a wildly esoteric cast.

Visual effects were handled by Dan O’Bannon and H.R. Giger (who certainly put their Dune experience to good use a few years later on Alien).

Money was no object, then. All Jodorowsky had to do was scale down the sprawling parallel universe charted by Herbert’s book into a viable earthbound screenplay.

Intriguing doco ... a scene from the film Jodorowsky's Dune.

After holing himself up inside a castle for a year with the right chemical assistance close at hand, Jodorowsky emerged with an incredible volume of intricate storyboards and designs to shop around Hollywood.

In the words of one studio executive lucky enough to have read Jodorowsky’s work, “there has never been a screenplay like it before or since.”

Spectacular direction ... a scene from Jodorowsky's Dune.

However, there was one massive elephant in the room of Jodorowsky’s imagination that could not be shooed away. The director’s finished blueprint was for a 12-hour movie. There were no takers. A spectacular vision flickered, faded and then vanished for good.

Now 85 years of age and still a mercurial force of nature, a chipper Jodorowsky fronts the camera at all times in this doco, and cheerfully dishes the dirt on the biggest disaster of his creative life.

His Dune may exist largely in his own head, but there are still moments in this film where Jodorowsky has us seeing exactly what he saw. The view is spectacular.

Jodorowsky’s Dune: Now showing Nova VIC, Dendy Newtown NSW. Other states to follow.