After watching a documentary called Jodorowsky’s Dune, my “film major” husband announced, “You have to watch this movie. It will blow your mind.” And so I did. And he was right. This is one of those films that raises our consciousness about raising our consciousness. For this reason, hosting a Movie Night with this film is worth it. In fact, I’m giving you my Movie Night! Guide for discussing this film. Invite your family, friends, students, or community to watch. The Guide is FREE for the next two weeks. Here’s a brief review of the film and why you’ll want to show it.
In Jodorowky’s Dune, you meet the charismatic personality of Alejandro Jodorowsky as he shares his passion to make a film based on the seminal science fiction novel Dune, by Frank Herbert. You learn about Jodorowsky’s theater background and wildly successful film-making career leading up to this new project. The cult-like following that resulted from his earlier and highly surreal works (El Topo and Holy Mountain) now gives him the freedom to direct something bigger and farther reaching, something to “change the young minds of the world.”
Jodorowsky seems almost divinely guided as he assembles his team of artists and actors, his “spiritual warriors” as he calls them, to manifest his stunning vision for the movie of Dune. The talent includes the already-famous and those who will become so because of their work on this film.
As the story’s quintessential plot of good and evil in the universe unfolds through detailed, scene-by-scene construction, you are reminded of Star Wars. Yet, Jodorowsky’s script predates that series. As you recognize pieces of Jodorowsky’s vision appearing in other films (of all genres, not just science fiction) by other directors, films that have entered our collective imagination, it begins to dawn on you. A movie that no one has seen has exponentially influenced so many of the ones we have.
When Jodorowsky’s film fails to be made, you feel his dejection and loss as your own. Why were we denied this incredibly important film? Not only for its out-of-the-box cinematography and visual imagery, not only for its celebrity-rich never-to-be-replicated cast and artistic talent, but for its unfulfilled breakthrough in what could have been a universe-altering development in the evolution of human consciousness. It is that mind blowing. But would we have been ready in 1972?
Following the collapse of his project, Jodorowsky’s vision for his Dune peeks through numerous Hollywood’s films. There is no doubt that they shaped what audiences see and think today. But these films pale in comparison to what we did not see. We did not see the stimulating end that Jodorowsky adds to his script which is not in the novel. This addition jerks us out of our ethnocentric perspective and launches us, practically past a world-centric morality, and into a cosmos-centric one.
Simply put, Jodorowsky was ahead of his time. Some of us may still not be ready for his world-, no, cosmo!-view, but for those who are, this is the closest you’ll get to “seeing” what is perhaps the most influential movie never made. Or was it?
Your free Movie Night! Guide includes valuable talking points for discussing the film with your students, family members, colleagues, congregants, or community. Enjoy and be inspired. Remember the popcorn!
See Resources for more movie guides on teaching religion in an interspiritual age.
In passing, while I’m a big fan of Jodorowosky, I think that you are doing something of a disservice to the original author of the (original) Dune series, Frank Herbert. Many of the ideas highlighted in the documentary actually go back to the original text, which is replete with a profound spiritual insight (which is one of the things that his son so dismally fails to pull off in the ‘hurry up and cash in’ series published after Frank’s death).
The power of Jodorowsky’s plan for Dune was that he was intending to stick pretty closely to the original text (rather than the inevitable bowdlerising that made the David Lynch version so risible; well that and Sting, of course). The spiritual warriors that you’ve picked up on are of course modelled on the Fedaykin of Muad’dib in the original text – although Herbert’s use of the concept of Jihad is one that makes for much less comfortable reading now than in the 60s when few had heard of it, and it wasn’t on the news every night.
Ian, Thanks for these thoughts. They are well worth taking under advisement.