Lynch's DUNE and Villeneuve's DUNE.
Director Villeneuve's version of "Dune".
Wow, the immersion was incredible! I was completely transported to a desert planet. This is a movie that must be seen on a big screen with big sound!
I'm a fan who loves David Lynch's 1984 version of "Dune," was thrilled by the 2013 documentary "Jodorowsky's Dune," and even bought the Blu-ray box sets for both. And since I'm also a huge fan of Director Villeneuve's work, I went to see it with my expectations through the roof... So, how was the Villeneuve version???
It's a tie!
Villeneuve, Lynch, and Jodorowsky all did their best! They are all masterpieces!
Jodorowsky's "Dune" wasn't even filmed in the end, though (lol).
Man, they were all interesting.
When it was first released, I was surprised to see morning talk shows featuring segments on how the Lynch version was a failure or how Jodorowsky failed to make his film, all to promote the Villeneuve version (lol)... I mean, you can't really compare them, right?
The Lynch version exaggerates the source material to its heart's content, becoming an 80s-style fetishistic Lynch film in the vein of "Eraserhead"... The Jodorowsky version also exaggerates the source material to its heart's content, aiming to be a Jodorowsky film right in the middle of the technicolor 70s drug culture... and the Villeneuve version feels like a work of the 2020s. While the Lynch and Jodorowsky versions are passionate and somewhat like B-movies, the Villeneuve version feels like a cool, intelligent film! Everyone says, "I've adapted the essence of the original work!" while ultimately just filming what they want to film, haha. And each one is deeply imbued with the spirit of its own era.
You can't compare these, can you? It's like comparing ramen, spaghetti, and soba to see which is the most delicious noodle dish! ...I want to eat them all.
However, the Villeneuve version was quite like soba, wasn't it? Cold soba noodles.
The color palette was close to monochrome, like an ink wash painting, and the various designs, as well as the actors' performances, were super light and minimalist, with bold omissions.
Paul, played by Timothée Chalamet this time, and Paul, played by Kyle MacLachlan in the 1984 Lynch version, are both the ultimate princes and are fantastic, but their acting methods are actually almost polar opposites. This was interesting.
Even though I said, "You can't compare them!", let's compare these two, haha.
Kyle's Paul has a "sturdy physique and a generous smile (always grinning), with a masculine, youthful charm"whereasTimothée's Paul is played with a "slender, naive, and troubled look, with an androgynous, boyish charm."The approaches are polar opposites! Yet both look like Paul Atreides. Let's talk about the specific acting.
Kyle uses an 80s-style character acting method to play Paul's royal and innocent feel "externally." He shows a generous smile to all his subordinates equally, and he is polite to his parents... he is exactly what one imagines the royal family to look like.
In contrast, Timothée uses a 2020s-style communication acting method to play Paul's royal and innocent feel by acting out "relationships." He is polite and kind to subordinates he doesn't have a particular attachment to, but he acts like an adolescent toward his strict teacher Gurney, and he runs up and hugs his favorite soldier Duncan with all his might (lol); his attitude changes completely depending on who he is with. Even with his parents, he tries to act like an adult toward his father, but acts spoiled toward his mother (lol).
...Yes,by acting out an attitude that changes based on his "relationship" with the other person, Timothée expresses the swaying and conflicted Paul during his adolescence, as he transitions from a boy to a young man.
The "Gom Jabbar test" scene, where he puts his hand in the box, was particularly interesting because you can feel the intensity. While Kyle in the Lynch version played Paul as brave, albeit immature, throughout the time he was suffering with his hand in the box, Timothée's Paul in this version looks at the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother in front of him and gives her a pleading look, as if to say, "Why are you doing such a terrible thing?" (lol). He brings his relationship with the other person into his expression of Paul's reaction to pain.
Timothée's Paul wants to be "evaluated as a full-fledged man" by men, but he has moments where he suddenly acts spoiled toward women. (In the breakfast scene, he has his mother get him water.)
The meticulous construction of his performance, in which Paul, burdened by such "adolescent conflict," achieves independence by updating his "relationships" with his mother and others through various events, was truly a magnificent lead performance.
As I wrote in the episode about the film "Drive My Car", modern acting, both in terms of script structure and performance technique, does not "move linearly toward a goal" but rather "discovers a place to belong while wandering."
Kyle's Paul moves straight toward becoming a messiah from the beginning, but Timothée's Paul has no particular goal at first; he wanders and grows into a revolutionary he could never have imagined at the start.
Wandering... the relationship with Chani, the woman who appears in his dreams, was especially like that. Kyle's Paul kisses Chani as soon as he meets her (laughs), but Timothée's Paul meets Chani in a hostile relationship, and within that, he borrows her great-aunt's knife, and by re-measuring the distance between them many times, their relationship is updated, and by the end of Part 1, they aren't even lovers yet. I'm sure that in Part 2, their relationship will continue to wander, be updated many times, and eventually, some kind of strong bond will be built.
It's impossible to meticulously act out the details of such a change in relationship with the kind of "external" character acting that Kyle is doing.
This acting method, which depicts a character with a complex inner life by playing out the multi-layered structure of relationships with others, is truly 2020s-style. Timothée Chalamet is impressive as expected.
His acting in "Lady Bird (2017)" and "Little Women (2019)" was also super charming and wonderful, but I think he has become even more refined.
Now, finally, I would like to write a little about the "DUNE" that director Alejandro Jodorowsky was supposed to film...but after seeing the Villeneuve version in the theater this time, going home and re-watching the Lynch version on Blu-ray... I felt like the image of the "DUNE" that Jodorowsky wanted to film became clearly visible lol.
That's because even though Villeneuve and Lynch both said they were "respecting the original work to the maximum," they both ended up filming the "DUNE" they liked (laughs).
In the climax of the documentary film "Jodorowsky's Dune," there is a sequence where Jodorowsky, unable to film "DUNE," goes to see Lynch's version of "DUNE" in a movie theater in a desperate mood.
"When the movie started, I was about to cry. But as I watched it, I strangely began to feel better. I was happy because the movie was so terrible... Hey, it's a huge failure!!!"
He's a terrible old man who says this with a big smile (laughs), but I understand his feelings.
Jodorowsky says that Lynch failed to capture the essence of the original "DUNE"! The flaws of the Lynch version include the story being hard to understand and various other things, but he is the director of "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain"? For the genius artist Jodorowsky, such things are probably trivial. So, what was the essence of the original "DUNE" according to Jodorowsky... I think it was "The expansion of human consciousness through drugs and the transformation into a superhuman. And a peaceful revolution of the universe by that superhuman!"that he meant.
He says,"What I wanted to create was a film that could change the way the human mind works, allowing you to experience that sense of euphoria without having to take LSD."he says.
The melange (spice) that appears in Frank Herbert's science fiction novel "DUNE," published in 1965, is a "spice = drug that gives humanity the power to transcend time and space," and it can even expand human consciousness to fold space and travel through the universe... In short, it's a story about the consciousness revolution and peace revolution caused by drugs and hallucinogens that were popular worldwide in the 60s.
The world of the original "DUNE" is set in a future where thinking machines like computers and AI were banned following a war that nearly wiped out humanity. Instead, superhumans with consciousness expanded by drugs use psychic powers to fold space and travel across the universe at high speeds. (Amazing!)
That element of a "drug-fueled revolution" is quite thin in Lynch's version, with only a brief depiction of mutant navigators using psychic powers to travel through space. In Villeneuve's version, even that scene is removed, and the drug-like nature of melange (spice) and the way it expands human abilities to superhuman levels is almost entirely cut. Well, it's a sign of the times. No director would make a movie praising drugs these days.
So, if Jodorowsky were to watch Villeneuve's "DUNE," he would probably be even more energized than he was with Lynch's version, wouldn't he? (lol) He'd be like, "He doesn't understand the essence of 'DUNE' either! Only I do!" (laughs).
The design sketches for Jodorowsky's "DUNE" are all vividly colored and magnificent, the exact opposite of the ink-wash painting style of Villeneuve's version. I mean, the spaceships are pink, purple, and yellow (laughs). This is drug culture itself.
And I suspect that Jodorowsky's "DUNE" would have been a work overflowing with masculine power, even more so than Lynch's version. The cast is incredible... Orson Welles, Udo Kier, Salvador Dalí, Mick Jagger, David Carradine... It's a lineup that screams 70s hyper-masculine society... It's incredibly fascinating (lol).
Because of that,the thing I most earnestly thought while watching Villeneuve's "DUNE" was, "I want to see Jodorowsky's 'DUNE'!!!" (laughs).
Wouldn't it be amazing to line them up and compare all three? After all, they are each a "DUNE my way" shot with full effort by three genius directors. There's nothing more luxurious than that.
Ah, talking about these three films has turned into an incredibly long post. Thank you to everyone who read this far.
With that said, director Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" is now showing in theaters to great acclaim. And if you enjoyed it, I recommend watching the 1984 Lynch version and the documentary film "Jodorowsky's Dune" on Amazon Prime as well (lol).
Debi Kobayashi <Debi Note☆彡>