The first time I tried to watch it, I found it thoroughly incomprehensible and couldn't finish it. The second time I was somewhat arrested by the visuals, but still dumbfounded.
But then I hunkered down and actually read Frank Herbert's Dune, the classic sci-fi novel Lynch was attempting to adapt, a work that is widely beloved but also infamously dense, complicated and hard to adapt both visually and verbally.
I must say that seeing the movie with the book so fresh in my mind was the absolute best way to experience it -- and for the first time I found the film much more engaging and compelling.
I know Lynch has disowned it, bemoaning the fact that he did not have final cut and wasn't able to make the film he wanted to make. Of his ten feature films, it is almost always ranked as his worst by most critics, with this film's defenders largely seen as little more than eccentric contrarians.
Well, count me among that latter group. This is a surprisingly faithful adaptation -- it's almost akin to being Lynch's Spartacus -- and it has a really striking visual palette. Sure, some of the effects don't hold up great (most 1984 effects don't) but many do -- and the set design, costumes and make-up are largely spectacular and feel authentic in terms of the worlds the book conveyed.
For at least the first half, the movie is a pretty arresting sci-fi epic that captures the spirit and much of the narrative of the book but the running time only allows for so much plotting and it starts to feel like it suffers from trying to stuff in too much. Although, I will say, his intentionally disgusting take on the infamous villain Baron Harkonnen has launched some hilarious anti-Trump memes.
The recent, acclaimed documentary Jodorowsky's Dune has cemented the idea in many cinephiles minds that director Alejandro Jodorowsky's expensive, long-planned version of this film (shelved in the late 1970s) would have been the definitive take on this material, but there's no reason to presume that.
Having just read the book I do think there's material there for a great film but it needs to be both streamlined and made more accessible, without of course completely disregarding the universe the narrative takes great pains to create -- this is no small feat for any filmmaker.
Director Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Arrival) has been vocal about wanting to take this behemoth on and I think he has the chops to do it. He definitely has proven his adeptness with thinking people's sci-fi, big budgets and eye-popping visuals.
I do think however, that Lynch's version should not be so contemptuously dismissed -- it has a lot of virtues and it nothing else, it helped introduce the director to many iconic members of what would become something of a stock company of actors, including MacLachlan, who has become both a Lynch muse and surrogate for decades now.
It's disappointing box office performance and relative lack of a directorial stamp (although there are plenty Lynchian moments in this movie) have probably doomed this version of Dune's reputation forever, but it's just a different kind of sci-fi film than we were accustomed to then and now -- more baroque and stilted -- a style I found fascinating, but which I can see alienating a lot of viewers.
That being said, the book isn't for everyone either.
Ironically, Lynch was approached to direct Return of the Jedi by George Lucas the year before this movie was released, and it's fun to contemplate what he might have done with the finale to that classic trilogy. Dune demonstrates the challenge of marrying his sensibility with what is supposed to be a rousing adventure, but the result is not so much a mess and an intriguing misfire.
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