Not so much a compromised work as it is a demonstration of the difficulties of translation between art forms, David Lynch’s Dune is at once fascinating and frustrating. Frank Herbert’s novel was a curio of the sci-fi boom of the ’60s, eschewing visions of technological advancement in favor of biological evolution, one in which humans have mutated to the point that some can send spaceships light years through the void using only their brainpower. In many respects, the book has more in common with fantasy than science fiction, presenting a galactic empire that’s very much akin to a medieval European kingdom, and much of its drama playing out as court intrigue between warring houses of nobility.
For Lynch, still a rising talent at the time that he was handed his first—and, to date, only—blockbuster-scaled project, he approaches the challenge of adapting Herbert’s novel with a strategy that’s at times surprisingly literal for a filmmaker known for his propensity for abstraction. The book’s liberal use of internal monologue manifests as a near-constant stream of voiceover narration in which characters always spell out exactly what they’re feeling or surmising. Lynch shows minimal interest in the meat of the story, handling the convolutions of palace intrigue and serf insurrection with a dutiful but often flat fealty to the novel.
And yet, Lynch’s vision manages to shine through in the film’s ambitious production design. If what goes on within palace walls holds little of value for Lynch, the walls themselves are crafted with intense care. The glittering halls of Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV’s (José Ferrer) palace speak to his complete isolation from the people of his interstellar kingdom, while the hellish industrial expanse of Geidi Prime of House Harkonnen, a world of smog-blackened skies and belching forge fires, where colossal walls of metal piping can be seen as a vivid extrapolation of the Rust Belt decay of Philadelphia as seen in Eraserhead.
Lynch highlights the fascinating, sometimes abhorrent physical deformity of the story’s future humans. This includes the high, sloping foreheads of prophesying Bene Gesserit witches, as well as the completely deformed, fungus-like navigators of the Spice Guild, whose human bodies long ago broke down from exposure to the lucrative Spice Melange, the narrative MacGuffin that propels so much of the characters’ power plays. There are even elements here that would recur in Lynch’s later work, from the vaguely retro look of communications equipment that bring to mind 1950s microphones and radio, to the bulky, hissing monolith that houses guild navigators that share more than a few features with the strange, pneumatic form that F.B.I. Special Agent Phillip Jeffries takes in Twin Peaks: The Return.
Most relevant to Lynch auteurists is, of course, that this production featured a number of current and future collaborators, none more critical than Kyle MacLachlan, who plays the messianic Paul Atreides. If Dune struggles to capture the strange psychological and ecological threads of the novel, MacLachlan’s performance nails Paul’s alternately benevolent and aloof nature as a born leader who finds himself increasingly worried about the holy war that his very existence ignites among the underclass on the desert planet that he comes to rule.
MacLachlan subtly infuses Paul’s initial image as a fresh-faced, preternaturally talented young noble with an increasingly ecstatic religious fervor. His performance points to all of his future work with Lynch, where his gung-ho, pleasantly demeanored characters slowly reveal new depths of maturity that are, at times, dark and destructive. What Lynch coaxes out of the actor suggests that he wasn’t nearly as checked out from the material as he subsequently has claimed, and for all its obvious struggle to fully render the complexity of the novel, his Dune is considerably more faithful to the book’s strengths than one might think at first glance.
Image/Sound
Dune looks extremely film-like on Arrow Video’s 4K release, which boasts excellent grain distribution and careful color balance. The interiors show off the fine detail of the set design and matte paintings, while scenes out on the surface of the vast, sunbaked deserts of Arrakis impressively capture a wide range of yellows and tans. Detail is consistently strong, sometimes uncomfortably so, as when you can see the nuances of oozing and crusted-over pus leaking from Baron Harkonnen’s suppurating boils. The disc includes the original stereo and a 5.1 surround remix, and both sound superb. The 5.1 mix adds more separation to the elements, but the stereo track is incredibly robust, with deep bass levels and exceptional clarity even when sound effects and Toto’s music are booming on the soundtrack during dialogue-heavy scenes. Arrow’s disc defaults to the stereo, and the track is so rich that there’s little reason even with a solid home-theater setup to swap it out for the remix.
Extras
Arrow has stuffed their limited edition release of Dune with a boatload of extras, some new and some sourced from prior home-video releases. The 4K disc includes two new commentary tracks, one by film historian Paul M. Sammon and one by Projection Booth podcaster Mike White. Both Sammon and White stick up for the maligned film, arguing that David Lynch did a fine job bringing an unfilmable novel to the screen. There are also archival documentaries and featurettes that look back on Dune and interview the cast and crew (Lynch, though, is conspicuously absent) and offer candid, if appreciative thoughts about the project.
A second Blu-ray disc includes Beyond Imagination, a new documentary devoted to the hilariously doomed project to craft merchandise and toys for the film, as well as a brief examination of Toto’s score. A handful of new and old interviews round out the bonus disc, each segment focusing on crew members well below the line, such as makeup artists and production coordinators. There’s also a hefty booklet containing essays by critics Andrew Nette, Christian McCrea, and Charlie Brigden, as well as licensed archival interviews with sound designer Alan Spier and excerpts from Lynch on Lynch.
Interestingly, this set doesn’t include the extended cut of Dune, which is a major lapse from a completionist perspective. But as Lynch completely disowned the longer cut (which is infamously credited to “Alan Smithee”), Arrow prioritizes the theatrical version as the truest reflection of a great director’s vision, however out of his element he was.
Overall
A true film maudit, Dune is a compelling outlier in David Lynch’s filmography, and Arrow’s lavish UHD release makes a strong case for its reappraisal.
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