Film: David Lynch's Dune

Dune recently passed through the HBO rotation and it met the five-year qualifier.

So I watched it again with something approximating fresh eyes.

In part because starting with its theatrical release (the $2 cinema, when such things existed) and then over the years, I'd bet that the theatrical cut (that is, the one with Lynch's name still attached, thus the title) is the version I've seen many fewer times than the extended, "Alan Smithee" cut, which incorporated production sketches, a new opening prologue narrator, and sundry footage additions.  On the strength of the idea that an "extended version" must have improved on an infamous box-office bomb, it ran continually as something of a television event on UHF stations for much of the 90s.

And initially, it seems like an improvement somewhere.  The theatrical cut was roundly pilloried as being "incoherent," though as it was in a pre-internet era I assume that most of the incoherency charges came from viewers with no relationship to the novel.  Still, the film is not the book, and it should be able to stand on its own, so there was some hope that an extra forty or so minutes would make Dune a passable entertainment.  On subsequent viewing, however, the seams begin to show.  Right away, the revised voice-over verbatim and artlessly exposits information that the characters themselves later exposit, and introduces characters with descriptions that both match verbatim, and in some cases, nearly immediately follow in dialogue.  That the additional footage still follows the basic shape of Lynch's film makes the Alan Smithee cut ultimately no more viable an adaptation. 

I am convinced that any single, cut-to-be-multiplex-friendly film would be nearly strangled trying to adapt the full scope and political complexities of the novel.  For example, one notable lost moment from the book, the Arakeen dinner scene, could chew up ten to twenty minutes.  And less than half of Lynch's cast could pull it off, anyway.  But the theatrical cut of Dune makes so many poor decisions with the story that the viewer must assume malpractice. This is a complicated story that is Hollywood Epic in scope, yet its through line is a fairly simple hero's journey: Paul loses his family and his status but matures into leadership and takes back his rightful place.  If Lynch had hewed closely to Paul's story, the resulting film would be a scant adaptation, missing much of the "necessary" Dune elements, but, I argue, a coherent, stronger film.  By including so much of the book's colorful flotsam,* Lynch hits some extra notes, occasionally to fine effect, but the whole of the piece suffers. Not that I think for a moment that Lynch ever had much of an interest in telling the hero's journey; a simple look at the film's running time will show that.**

* Geidi Prime in general, but particularly grisly, baroque pieces like the Baron's pustule treatment, or Piter's mantra, which in the film condenses a lot of Mentat exposition to empty self-parody, and yet the scene still runs more than a minute.

** The film is more than half done by the end of act 1, with the fall of House Atreides.  Suppressing some of this color might have pushed the end of act1 to before the halfway point...

The first example of unnecessary flotsam arrives right away: Irulan.  She acts as something of a narrator in the book, so she appears at the start, before any of the principals.  However, in the book she further serves a major political function as Shaddam IV's heir and she fulfills a small but significant role in that capacity late in the novel.  After her introduction monologue,  however, her character receives exactly one word*** of dialogue onscreen: "Father?"  "Irulan, you must leave."  

Irulan becomes a wholly unnecessary, "why is she even here?"level distraction. It's almost worse in the Smithee cut, where Irulan's prologue is cut in favor of the artless, male narrator.  Those viewers familiar only with the Smithee cut find Irulan's prominent place in the closing credits baffling at best.

***She does, however, still get to toss a terrific, haughty glare late in the film as the battle of Arakeen turns against her father...

To hit the ground running and at no additional cost to coherence, Dune could have started with the post-titles "Secret report within the Guild" sequence, and it would have lost little material or clarity: the context of the spice and the guild's need for it is made clear from the secret report's voiceover.  Less needed, I think, is the "four planets" pre-prologue piece, of which three are seen only briefly. Better, instead, to discuss the families and their relationship, though this receives further attention during the Guild's confrontation with the emperor. Indeed, much about the Guild's report is made redundant by their meeting with Shaddam IV, and this second introduction could be pared down as well.

During the nearly-superfluous meeting in the MGM Grand-themed throne room, Shaddam can't be under the impression his request for telepathy from Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Rohirrim has gone unnoticed by the guild? Yet they do not protest; they already know the skeleton of Shaddam's plot against House Atreides and have folded space from Ix simply to add a rider to the plot in exchange for their tacit approval: kill Paul.  That aside, the secret meeting is so much political Kabuki; indicated as such by the banal "new machines on Ix" observations that start the discussion. The scene exists for Lynch to throw more bizarre visuals on-screen first, with the reiteration of the film's plot a distant second.

Shifting next to Caladan, it is vital we make proper introductions for the Atreides household.  Paul, obviously, must be given a full accounting, even if it's slight overkill to do so immediately following the Kaitain meeting where he is named the Guild's primary threat.  Perhaps this scene should have come first? An interesting structural question; introduce the hero and then the enemy. That said, meeting Yueh, Gurney, and Thufir in addition to his parents, is essential at this stage, even if Gurney and arguably Thufir are barely seen in the film after the first act.  Yueh must be there to develop before his betrayal; if the latter pair do nothing else (read on...) the film needs them around to diffuse suspicion as to the traitor's identity.  But then, the book's significant time spent on the traitor misdirection is largely discarded, so in the interest of the narrative it may have been best to further reduce time spent with any of the three retainers.  Yet the padding grows more blatant still.  Paul's vidbook study hits the introduction/secret report/Shaddam material a third time and most of the data -- Arrakis' climate is hostile, the worms are huge, the spice -- receive multiple, natural points for later introduction.

More prominent in the early going,  and more problematic than Irulan along the  book/film axis is the personal shield.  Shields are a bedrock item of the Dune milieu, but they're also much more in the backstory than present during the events of the first book. Indeed, once on Arrakis personal shields are seen only once in the rest of the story, fleetingly. One does get the idea that Lynch liked the blocky, low-fi look of the shield vfx, though, and so kept the introduction scene in, and kept it long.  The sequence serves one useful function in establishing Paul as a credible action-hero bad-ass able to hold his own with Patrick Stewart (in combat, anyway),  but it's time that would have been better spent on explaining the film's version of the weirding way, a major difference from the novel and a concept introduced here. It's a deviation from the book that purists detest. I can sympathize with them,  but as an adaptation choice it's far from the worst one (really!) made by Lynch. The sound-based weirding way is much more "science-fictiony" than say, prana-bindu, and gives the good guys something fx-ially identifiable in long shots.

Again serving both story and Lynch's style, though perhaps again overlong, is Paul's evaluation by the Reverend Mother.   The scene is important to depicting Paul's importance to the various schemers who wish him dead -- far more than the shoddy negative photography and vision sequences that chart his later development -- but actual abilities, much less purpose of the Kwisatz Haderach is left murky, and whatever subtleties left in the scene get a little lost under close-ups of his hand cooking in the box.

One aspect of the book's complex political structure that Lynch first teases and then elides is the purpose, abilities, and most importantly, the secret agenda of the Bene Gesserit.  Paul sniffs out  overhears many of the key details about the Reverend Mother's errand on Caladan, and even confronts both her and Jessica.  Yet neither Paul nor Jessica ever discuss the matter again, nor do they talk about this with Leto, at least not on-screen.  It's a curious choice, perhaps a remnant from some earlier draft of the screenplay when the who's-the-traitor subplot was more evident in the script; directly addressing the issue would remove the most-likely suspect.  In the theatrical version Leto is certain the Arrakis move is a trap (Thufir believes it, and his loyalty to house Atreides is absolute) but goes along anyway, thinking that he can outwit the forces against him.

Once finally underway to the titular planet, Lynch picks up the pace considerably, lurching from event to event that signpost the Harkonnen plot. Significant character development of the Atreides retainers is given the shrift for items more in Lynch's wheelhouse: medical examinations, worms,  hallucinations, still more voice over, and the repulsive appetites of one Vladimir Harkonnen. Too slow to get momentum but too jerky to lay in some real tension -- the house shield, rendering them "invulnerable" is raised --   it's an abrupt relief when Yueh almost offhandedly throws his master stroke and betrays both warring families simultaneously.

The action sequence that follows is fairly anemic, with hordes of anonymous, fetish-suited Sardukar handily overrunning Arakeen's sabotaged defenses. Having removed the Duke's immediate family from the action, Lynch reduces the heroic Atreides gallantry to two moments.  First is Gurney Halleck, pug in arms, rallying the anonymous, beige-uniformed Atreides men. Second and far less is poor Duncan Idaho, whose role has been reduced to a symbol for the ultimate defeat by quickly dying in battle.

With mass combat, not a strength of Lynch's style of direction,  over for the moment it's time to celebrate, Harkonnen fashion -- which definitely is a Lynch strength. If one thought that Palpatine was too sneering a scenery-chewer, one need only look at Vladimir and Rabban, diseased and bestial, to find the true winner of the award for most engineered-to-be-hated villains in a genre film.  Subtlety -- or the film's questionable relationship with the Arrakis water recycling -- allows the Baron to literally bathe in Atreides blood.

Shortly thereafter it's montage time, glossing over the three standard years as Paul and the Fremen destroy Rabban's rule. And it's also not a bad adaptation choice; there's only so many times one could watch a little righteous Harkonnen ass-kicking before it grew monotonous.  This cut-to-the-chase style unfortunately also shrifts Paul's ascension in the Fremen culture, rendering them frequently as little more than noble savages helped by the colonizing outsider.

For all the shortcuts taken, one piece gets an unexpected emphasis. Lynch's gift for jackpot emotional scenes is evident in indulging a grace note that the film hardly required: the return of Gurney Halleck.  Given the arc of the hero's journey, bringing back the last loose-end minor character from Paul's old life is a touch superfluous. Halleck could have become a forgotten footnote like Thufir****, or died ignominiously like Duncan Idaho.  Instead, Stewart, the best actor still in the film, surrounded by thick smoke (from burning tires, if on-set anecdotes are true) and confronted by the unthinkable chokes out a hoarse "Paul?" with six different emotions at once.  It's the teacher's last lesson: the name as a killing word.

**** Thufir's grace note, dying nobly rather than betraying Paul in the most obvious, stupid way possible, was filmed and then cut at the last moment.  My vote for the rationale of the cut was that Paul inexplicably pronounces "Atreides" differently than everyone else.  Piter might have been able to get away with an alternate take on "Landsraad," but this is something a bit larger.    In all, Hawatt's closure is nowhere near the scene that the reunion with Gurney was, but it's a sight better than Thufir appearing and then disappearing in the final scene, as he does in both the Lynch and Smithee cuts. 

By this point in the story, Paul has effectively won the war; his Weirding Way-armed Fremen have annihilated spice production and brought the Imperium to the brink of ruin.  It's not terrifically better justified in the book, but it's at least a practical and almost rational decision;  in the film his I-just-must-do-this rationale for activating his latent Kwisatzness (Haderachitude?) is cheap motivation.  That the film audience isn't really certain of what the new abilities mean -- Paul boasts of, but never explicitly uses them, aside from giving surviving family nosebleeds -- helps nothing. 

At last, it's time to end the film, and from the narrative it's one of those little details of an sci-fi epic that Lynch has little interest in directing.  We go from brief miniature fx shots of giant worms and atomics, with more rounds of black-suited Sardaukar charging in the dark, to the hasty surrender of the Emperor and his allies.  Then Lynch gets to what he does want to show us: the climactic dagger fight between Paul and Sting.   It's not that good a piece of fight choreography, though it hits some decent actor beats. Then it's another hurry-to-the-wrap moment as Paul makes it rain (which according to Alia, is the power of the Kwisatz Haderach... implying the Bene Gesserit's millennia-long project was to control weather...) while important book moments like Paul's unambiguous ascension to the Imperial throne via marriage to the again-sidelined Irulan ended up being filmed, but then left in the cutting room.  A minor book-reader nit to pick I imagine; but another casualty of Lynch's disinterest in the material.   

He was the wrong director for the story, but coaxed some fascinating visual and actor moments in the margins: the hallmark of an interesting failure.*****

***** I would have loved his take on Return of the Jedi.  Like his Dune the trilogy reached its real climax in a duel between old enemies, and Lynch would likely have cut back on the Ewoks, depending on how short a leash Lucas would keep him on...