Jodorowsky’s Dune  is a documentary about an elaborate but aborted movie project of the mid 70’s, in which psychedelic director Alejandro Jodorowsky embarked on a visionary rendition of Frank Herbert’s famous science fiction novel. Jodorowsky is still alive, and well-edited excerpts from several lengthy interviews with him form the central narration for the film, liberally supplemented with the recollections and opinions of many others who were involved with the project, as well as several film critics who attempt to provide a slightly broader perspective on the film and its importance. The documentary is immensely entertaining, probably the first really good film I’ve seen all year.

Jodorowsky is a fascinating character. He is clearly presented here as a creative genius of the highest order, but how much and what kind of a genius is he? It seems to me that the main creative achievement of this particular project was collecting together and inspiring various talented artists – H.R. Giger, Chris Foss, Dan O’Bannon – who were brought to Paris to live and work on this project, and encouraged to create an incredible, sprawling visual world (way beyond anything that’s actually in the novel) in the form of paintings and drawings of the various settings in the movie. He also had a guy named “Moebius” (Jean Giraud) drawing an elaborate storybook of every frame of the movie, together with the dialog. All this art was circulated through Hollywood in an attempt to secure funding, and it is these pieces of artwork and visual ideas that form the main legacy of the film, supposedly inspiring imitations in many subsequent science fiction films (the documentary’s evidence for this was quite interesting).

In other aspects, the Dune project seems decidedly less compelling. The film was going to be ten hours long, meaning he was really making a TV miniseries instead of a movie. Yes, he got Pink Floyd and some freaky French group that no one has ever heard of (Magma) to agree to score the film, but apparently not a single note was ever written, so this accomplishment is questionable. And Jodorowsky’s casting decisions, not withstanding the very entertaining and bizarre stories behind each one, seem quite remote from his stated goal of assembling a team of “spiritual warriors” for the film. Why was Salvador Dali the only person in the world who could play the emperor of the universe? Especially since that role was at most 5 minutes in the film, and Dali was going to cost half-a-million dollars, plus the forced additional casting of his non-actress “muse” Amanda Lear. Orsen Wells is basically bribed to take a role, so how spiritual could his involvement possibly be?! Mick Jagger apparently agreed, at least verbally at some party, but it’s totally unclear why Mick Jagger was needed. And the casting of his then-young son Brontis Jodorowsky as the character Paul comes across predominantly as an excuse to torture the poor little bastard – he subjected the kid to excruciating martial arts training, four hours a day, every day, for two straight years, at the hands of some nut-job, to get him ready for the role. It’s a period of life which Brontis clearly now remembers with considerable pain, resentment, and regret. Christ, couldn’t they just find a body double that already knew how to do all that shit?

Then there is the rendition of the novel itself. Little is said in the documentary about elements of the story actually occurring in the book. Instead, they focus on the ponderous Christian-psychedelic additions to the story – metaphorical virgin birth, crucifixion and resurrection – which although clearly important to Jodorowsky do seem to unnecessarily mar the original tale. And the re-envisioned ending, where the planet Dune becomes green and “goes out” to spread positive spirituality to the universe, is absolutely painful from today’s perspective, now that “spirituality” has become completely mainstream and commercialized as a palliative to keep average people docile and malleable to the depredations of the world financial elite. Honestly, in the end I found myself thinking that maybe it was a good thing that he never made this movie.

But all this notwithstanding, Jodorowsky’s Dune is one hell of fun ride. Jodorowsky is really amusing to listen to, and the entire story is captivating and strangely thought-provoking. You don’t have to be a lover of Dune to enjoy this film – you could hate the book and still have a blast watching the documentary. I very highly recommend it.