Review: David Lynch's "Dune" is as singular as Lynch himself

Movie of the Week #26 surveys the late director's controversial adaptation

David Lynch was, until his death last week, my favorite living American filmmaker, as you’ll probably know if you’ve read or listened to my work for any length of time. I hope to write or record a longer-form tribute to him in the near future, but for now, I’m pulling up this review of his 1984 DUNE - from my book 200 Reviews, but not available here on Fade to Lack before - as our Movie of the Week, and a nod to a director so singular that even this, his most notable commercial ‘misfire’, is vital, fascinating, and unmistakably Lynch.

I’ll also note that this review was originally written before Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part Two was released, and before I re-evaluated Part One and found myself warming to it. So I don’t agree with everything I originally wrote here, though I think it was a fair reaction when all we had to compare was the first half of Villeneuve’s adaptation. And in my heart of hearts, there’s still a lot I prefer about Lynch’s take on the material. Enjoy…

Dune

1984, Dir. David Lynch

David Lynch’s Dune is many magnitudes more interesting a movie than Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, and it really isn’t a contest. Let me tell you why.

First off, I should say that there are few if any directors I share as close a wavelength with as David Lynch. I am a dyed-in-the-wool Lynch partisan. His work speaks to me. And there’s a lot of Lynch in this Dune – more of his personality and preoccupations than I’d remembered from previous viewings, revisiting it now. The ‘space fold’ sequence, the Water of Life/birth of Aria scene, all the dream sequences…it’s a lot closer to Eraserhead, Twin Peaks: The Return, and Inland Empire (the most avant-garde points of his commercial career) than his other films.

But even if I weren’t a Lynch fanboy, this is still the better movie. It has more emotion, and so much more tonal variety. Its production design is just as much if not more compelling than Villeneuve’s, but more importantly, Lynch constantly invites you to wonder at this world he and his collaborators have built. Not just to see it, but to feel it, to be in awe of it. Villeneuve's film builds many incredible sights, and it deserved every technical Oscar it won, but the director’s colder, more explicitly expository presentation of the material doesn’t invite us to behold it all with the degree of amazement Lynch does.

I (finally) started reading the original Frank Herbert novel recently, and it struck me that Lynch’s take is also substantially closer in tone to Herbert’s writing – which is to say, weird and philosophical and ephemeral and mysterious. Lynch was perfect for this, even if the film ultimately got out of his hands in post-production. Villeneuve’s film is sterile, matter-of-fact and unemotional, like it’s recounting history, not a (completely insane and psychedelic) piece of bold pop fiction – which is what Dune is, and which is a wonderful thing. When I read the book, I see Lynch’s images, not Villeneuve’s.

Lynch’s film is “flawed” in many ways, if we’re evaluating it like a precious gem (to borrow an allegory of Roger Ebert’s – his point being this is a weird way to look at art), but it’s so deeply compelling at all times, not just in spite of those problems, but often because of them. It’s real art, risky and personal and visionary. Villeneuve’s film (or at least, the half of it we have) isn’t bad, and is probably less ‘flawed’ by conventional definitions; a jewelry appraiser would certainly deem it more valuable. It’s a smooth gem that’s easy to grasp and admire. But there’s just nowhere near as much there to appreciate or get excited about – they polished the stone so much the heart fell out with it.

Lynch's rendering is so deeply felt, with a dreamlike and intoxicating atmosphere. Most importantly, Kyle MacLachlan's Paul is such a triumph of a character – you feel the transformation here, and that’s the heart of the story. Compare, for instance, the scene where Paul processes the death of his father and realizes the weight of his premonitions in Lynch’s film and Villeneuve’s. The latter is a pretty straightforward preview of things to come, with little sense of mourning. Lynch’s is this beautiful little audiovisual poem, as Paul moves from grief to wonder to righteous anger, and we feel the rumblings of a terrible ambition.

I’ve often seen it said, even by defenders of Lynch’s version, that he misses the “punch” of Herbert’s ending – the realization that in achieving his ambition, Paul has doomed the universe. Lynch doesn’t quite verbalize that, but I do think his ending is hauntingly ambivalent. He plays it like the hand of God has descended, spoken, and unleashed an awesome power – and for me, at least, it plays as scary. Instead of ending with a clear denouement, Lynch drops the mic and cuts to black. It really knocks you back. I find it incredibly effective.

The biggest black mark on Lynch’s version is, as many before me have observed, that the grotesquery of the villainous Harkonnens gets wound up, intentionally or not, in a lot of homophobia. It’s the ‘gay villain’ trope taken to an extreme, these diseased bodies deformed by their excess and transgressions. It is, indeed, problematic; though even here, I at least find there is something to talk about. There is a definite tension, but it is, for better or worse, a productive one. What can one say about the Harkonnens in Villeneuve’s version? Even with the great Stellan Skarsgård in play, there is a sort of robotic banality to their depiction in the newer film, these beings of endless consumption who are also, somehow, emotionless. I see where Lynch was going with his version of the characters, and I can see where that path went wrong – but again, it feels like a true choice, a real interpretation.

The main pushback on Lynch’s film will always be that it tells the story messily, wildly barreling through plot at an increasingly accelerated speed to fit the events of the novel into a frequently incomprehensible 137 minutes. And there is validity to that, certainly. But when I watch it today, especially having come to know the story from other sources, I find that concern melting away. If I want the story as legible as possible, Herbert’s book isn’t going anywhere. What Lynch offers, warts and all, is a real artistic interpretation, a series of choices that find the filmmakers in active conversation with the text, wrestling with it in weird and interesting ways, surprising us along the way. And that, more than fealty to the written word, should always be the goal of adaptation.

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