Cinemania 1996 (Rezension)

US (1984): Science Fiction
140 min, Rated PG-13, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

Lady Jessica (Francesca Annis) and her son Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan) stand awestruck
when they encounter one of the gigantic sandworms of the planet Arrakis, in the sci-fi epic Dune.
©1984 Paradise Films Inc. (Formerly Dino De Laurentiis Corporation)

Leonard Maltin Review (1.5 stars out of 4)
Roger Ebert Review (1.0 stars out of 4)
Pauline Kael Review

Leonard Maltin Review: 1.5 stars out of 4

Director

David Lynch

Cast Includes

Kyle MacLachlan
Francesca Annis
Brad Dourif
José Ferrer
Linda Hunt
Freddie Jones
Richard Jordan
Virginia Madsen
Silvana Mangano
Kenneth McMillan
Jack Nance
Sian Phillips
Jurgen Prochnow
Paul Smith
Sting
Dean Stockwell
Max von Sydow
Patrick Stewart
Sean Young

Review

Elephantine adaptation of Frank Herbert's popular sci-fi novel set in the year 10,991. You know you're in trouble when film's opening narration (setting up the story) is completely incomprehensible! Visually imaginative, well cast, but joyless and oppressive - not to mention long. For devotees of Herbert's novel only. (A special 190-minute edition of the film was prepared from scratch for TV airings, under protest from director Lynch. It contains much new narration and footage that wasn't used in the theatrical version. The TV print credits the pseudonymous Allen Smithee as director.) Todd-AO 35.

Roger Ebert Review: 1.0 stars out of 4

Cast & Credits

Kyle MacLachlan (Paul)
José Ferrer (Emperor)
Brad Dourif (De Vries)
Kenneth McMillan (Baron)
Sting (Feyd-Rautha)

Directed by David Lynch and produced by Raffaella de Laurentiis. Screenplay by Lynch.

Review

"It's like a dream," my friend from Hollywood was explaining. "It doesn't make any sense, and the special effects are straight from the dime store but if you give up trying to understand it, and just sit back and let it wash around in your mind, it's not bad." That was not exactly a rave review for a movie that someone paid $40 million to make, but it put me into a receptive frame of mind for DUNE, the epic based on the novels by Frank Herbert. I was even willing to forgive the special effects for not being great; after all, in an era when George Lucas's STAR WARS has turned movies into high tech, why not a film that looks like a throwback to FLASH GORDON. It might be kind of fun.

The movie's plot will no doubt mean more to people who've read Herbert than to those who are walking in cold. It has to do with a young hero's personal quest. He leads his people against an evil baron and tries to destroy a galaxy-wide trade in spice, a drug produced on the desert planet. Spice allows you to live indefinitely while you discover you have less and less to think about. There are various theological overtones, which are best left unexplored.

The movie has so many characters, so many unexplained or incomplete relationships, and so many parallel courses of action that it's sometimes a toss-up whether we're watching a story, or just an assembly of meditations on themes introduced by the novels (the movie is like a dream). Occasionally a striking image will swim into view: The alien brain floating in brine, for example, or our first glimpse of the giant sand worms plowing through the desert. If the first look is striking, however, the movie's special effects don't stand up to scrutiny. The heads of the sand worms begin to look more and more as if they came out of the same factory that produced Kermit the Frog (they have the same mouths). An evil baron floats through the air on trajectories all too obviously controlled by wires. The spaceships in the movie are so shabby, so lacking in detail or dimension, that they look almost like those student films where plastic models are shot against a tablecloth.

Nobody looks very happy in this movie. Actors stand around in ridiculous costumes, mouthing dialogue that has little or no context. They're not even given scenes that work on a self-contained basis; portentious lines of pop profundity are allowed to hang in the air unanswered, while additional characters arrive or leave on unexplained errands. DUNE looks like a project that was seriously out of control from the start. Sets were constructed, actors were hired; no usable screenplay was ever written; everybody faked it as long as they could. Some shabby special effects were thrown into the pot, and the producers crossed their fingers and hoped that everybody who has read the books will want to see the movie. Not if the word gets out, they won't.

Pauline Kael Review

David Lynch directed, and he did the adaptation of Frank Herbert's ecological sci-fi fantasy, but he doesn't make the story his own. Basically, this isn't a David Lynch movie - it's Dune. He lays out Herbert's grandiose vision of a galactic system, with hordes of characters parcelled out over four planets, and a messiah who is preordained to lead the righteous in a holy war. And he brings on the giant man-eating worms that produce the consciousness-altering spice that holds this universe together. The movie is heavy on exposition, and the story isn't dramatized - it's merely acted out (and hurried through), in a series of scenes that are like illustrations. And despite the care that has gone into the sets and costumes and the staging, the editing rhythms are limp and choppy. Lynch's best work is in the comedy scenes that involve Kenneth McMillan, Sting, Brad Dourif, Linda Hunt, Leonardo Cimino, and the creepy 8-year-old Alicia Roanne Witt. The cast includes Sian Phillips, Max von Sydow, Francesca Annis, José Ferrer, Freddie Jones, Richard Jordan, Virginia Madsen, Everett McGill, Dean Stockwell, Sean Young, Silvana Mangano, Jürgen Prochnow, Paul L. Smith, Jack Nance (of ERASERHEAD), and Kyle MacLachlan as the warrior messiah. Cinematography by Freddie Francis; production design by Anthony Masters; and creatures by Carlo Rambaldi. Produced by Raffaella De Laurentiis; a Dino De Laurentiis film, released by Universal.

For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book State of the Art.

© Microsoft 1995, entnommen aus "Cinemania 1996"