“Jodorowsky’s Dune” is a documentary about the greatest movie never made. Its first achievement is in convincing us this film is as great, as ambitious and as influential as the people involved would have you believe.
Its more impressive feat however is in making the case for cinema and the need to have spirituality, ambition and madness within every frame. “Jodorowsky’s Dune” will scratch the itch of the curious filmmaker and industry man who wants to hear a juicy, behind the scenes story of a troubled production, but it will turn them into cinephiles with the appreciation for real genius and vision.
Frank Pavich directs this account of the mad genius Alejandro Jodorowsky, a cult filmmaker from Chile who made outrageous and acclaimed midnight movies in the ‘70s, including “El Topo” and “The Holy Mountain”. Following the success of those films, he sought to adapt the sprawling novel by Frank Herbert, “Dune.” Jodorowsky had never even read the book, but he knew it to be something more than a story; it was an entirely contained universe set in space, and he wanted to create another world separate from literature or from cinema. Continue reading “Jodorowsky’s Dune”