In Dreams: A David Lynch Retrospective
- Dune
- USA1984
- David Lynch
- 137 DCP
- PG
- In Dreams: A David Lynch Retrospective
Screening Dates
“David Lynch’s oddball adaptation remains a fascination [and] deserves a second chance … Lynch’s approach to the galactic is the rare sci-fi specimen that feels as alien as its subjects.”
Charles Bramesco, The Guardian
After The Elephant Man proved David Lynch could calibrate his outré sensibilities into Oscar-nominated prestige, producer Dino De Laurentiis came calling with a project long mired in development limbo—a film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “unfilmable” Dune. Lynch, seduced by the novel’s invention of alien worlds and motif of the sleeper who must awaken, took the job and then lost himself in a three-year, mega-budget sci-fi production rife with compromise and kneecapped by a Universal-controlled final cut. Its failure is legendary, as is its status as an inflection point in a career that, from here out, would never again relinquish vision to studio demand. The years have been forgiving to Dune: its grotesqueries, industrial-steampunk aesthetic, handcrafted effects, and introduction of Kyle MacLachlan—not to mention a host of other Lynch players, many of whom would reassemble for Twin Peaks—now present as fascinating and at times stridently brilliant artifacts in the evolution of Lynch.