12/25/14 (Part One): The Greatest Movie Never Made

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Alejandro Jodorowsky, Alex Cox, Amanda Lear, ambitious films, auteur theory, Best of 2014, Brontis Jodorowsky, Chris Foss, cinema, Dan O'Bannon, David Lynch, Devin Faraci, Diane O'Bannon, documentaries, Douglas Trumball, Drew McWeeny, Dune, El Topo, favorite films, Film auteurs, film festival favorite, film reviews, films, Frank Herbert, Frank Pavich, George Lucas, H.R. Giger, inspirational films, Jean Giraud, Jodorowsky's Dune, Michel Seydoux, Movies, Nicholas Winding Refn, Pink Floyd, Richard Stanley, Salvador Dali, Santa Sangre, sci-fi, science-fiction, special-effects extravaganza, The Holy Mountain, unfinished films

What is the greatest sci-fi film ever? Depending on who you ask, you might get answers like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Silent Running (1972), Solaris (1972), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Star Trek II: The Wraith of Khan (1982) or Disney’s The Black Hole (1979). The answers probably depend on lots of stuff: the age of the person in question, where they sit on the “Star Wars vs Trek” scale, how “hard” they like their sci-fi…hell, how someone defines the genre can even affect this particular list. One thing is pretty clear, however: ask this one simple question to a crowd of people and expect to get a crowd of answers (unless, of course, you’re at a Trekkie convention, at which point the answer will, obviously, be Silent Running).

The greatest sci-fi film ever made? That’s a hard question. But the greatest sci-fi film never made? That, friends and neighbors, is much easier to answer. After all, which sci-fi movie was supposed to have featured Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali and Orson Welles in starring roles, while Pink Floyd supplied part of the musical score? Which hypothetical extravaganza gave notorious freaknik H.R. Giger free reign over part of the production design, featured eye-popping storyboards by renowned graphic artist Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) and would have rivaled the special effects technology of Star Wars a full two years before George Lucas and his team struggled to make their landmark film?

If all of the above sounds like some sort of acid trip dreamt up in a sensory deprivation chamber, know that it almost came to pass, albeit in the same way that comets “almost” batter the Earth on a constant basis. Who was the mad genius responsible for what would have, without a doubt, been the single most mind-blowing, game-changing, iconic science fiction film in the history of the medium? Why, none other than the mad monk of experimental cinema, the spiritual guru behind essential “midnight” films like Fando y Lis (1968), El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973): Alejandro Jodorowsky. As we see in Frank Pavich’s amazing, inspirational new documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune (2014), the Chilean auteur’s singular, stunning vision for Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel may have been doomed from the get-go but the Technicolor sense of wonder associated with the project will live on forever.

Beginning with a quote from Austrian neurologist Viktor Frankl (“What is to give light must endure burning”), Pavich’s documentary immediately introduces us to one of the most kinetic, passionate, amazing filmmakers to ever draw breath, the inimitable Alejandro Jodorowsky. Instantly infamous after his bizarre, spiritual and surrealist El Topo managed to tear a collective hole in the brain-pans of ’70s-era film audiences, Jodorowsky was riding high after the success of El Topo’s follow-up, the even more “out-there” Holy Mountain. Looking for his next project, Jodorowsky had the good fortune of running into a friend who extolled the virtues of the Frank Herbert book, Dune (1968), a massively popular best-seller. The rest, as they say, was almost history.

Despite never reading the novel, Jodorowsky immediately started to put together a production plan that must have seemed about as realistic as someone attempting to flap their arms and fly to the moon: assemble a dream-team of creative personnel (from all disciplines), shoot for the moon with casting (Jagger at the height of the Stones power, the legendary Dali as “Emperor of the Universe,” Welles when he’d already become a societal recluse, David Carradine, just because), pull out the stops for the musical score (Pink Floyd, fresh off the record-breaking success of Dark Side of the Moon) and aim for a final product that’s more about mind-expansion and “ushering in a new era” than earning box office coin. Had Jodorowsky been able to pull off this amazing mess of an idea, we’d probably still be discussing the film, almost 40 years after its release. Instead, the version of Dune that fans finally received was the troubled 1984 David Lynch version, a film that bore very little resemblance to Jodorowsky’s proposed epic. Despite never being made, however, copious production notes, pictures and sketches exist from the pre-production visualization, production notes and designs which have actually been (subtly) influencing popular film for several decades. A film so influential that it influenced films without ever being made…now that’s a legend!

From beginning to end, Jodorowsky’s Dune is an absolute and complete joy, a film that’s more about the never-ending passion to create and a “never say die” attitude than anything as simple as a failed adaptation of a popular novel. Pavich utilizes some truly great talking head interviews, from the likes of directors Nicholas Winding Refn, Richard Stanley and Alex Cox, to genre experts like Badass Digest’s Devin Faraci and Ain’t It Cool’s Drew McWeeny and actual personnel from Jodorowsky’s planned version of the film, including producer Michel Seydoux, H.R. Giger (before his recent death), Dan O’Bannon’s widow, Diane, and legendary graphic artist Giraud. Looming over everything, however, is the formidable presence of the master himself, Jodorowsky: at no point in the film is Jodorowsky ever less than a wonderful, exuberant personality, a true force of nature who comes across as the single greatest cheerleader that the human race has ever had. In fact, I’ll lay a little wager down here: if you don’t feel your heart growing three sizes by the time the film is over, ala that mean old Grinch from yore, I’m gonna go ahead and assume that you’re already dead. Even then, I’m pretty sure ol’ Alejandro would still be able to wring at least a grin from the most somber soul.

While any notion of a “perfect film” is, by definition, rather pie-in-the-sky, Jodorowsky’s Dune is that rarest of things: a perfect film, from beginning to end. Chalk it up to a perfect storm of awesomeness: a fascinating subject, plenty of in-depth information and amazing production notes, excellent commentary from participants and experts, a subtextual underdog story and some of the coolest, funniest and strangest behind-the-scenes stories ever told. It’s almost impossible to pick the best stuff out but one of my personal favorites was the section devoted to Jodorowsky and Seydoux trying to secure Dali for the film. While the notorious surrealist went out of his way to make things difficult for the filmmakers, their ultimate solution was pure genius (let’s just say that, for the briefest of moments, Dali got his wish and really was the highest-paid actor on Earth). The truth is, however, if there’s one good story here, there are at least a hundred: one of the film’s meanest hat-tricks is how it makes the 90-minute runtime feel closer to 15 minutes…if ever there was a film that deserved to be 3+ hours, Jodorowsky’s Dune is that film.

For me, Pavich’s documentary is absolutely essential thanks to my incessant fanboy love of Jodorowsky: I was corrupted by his films at an early age and, thankfully, haven’t looked back since. Even if I wasn’t a huge fan of his work, however, Jodorowsky’s Dune would still manage to capture my heart. At its core, Pavich’s film is really about the never-say-die attitude of true artists, the kind of folks who simply can’t bend and conform to society no matter what they do. There’s something unbelievably empowering about listening to the 84-year-old Jodorowsky talk about his various philosophies: he has a way of making even the impossible seem possible, which also goes a long way towards explaining the appeal of the documentary, itself. Thanks to Pavich’s film, cinephiles and multiplex-patrons alike can revel in some of the most imaginative, insane, epic and impossible cinematic creations never put to film.

Jodorowsky’s Dune may not exist in any way that we can consume but, thanks to Frank Pavich’s amazing Jodorowsky’s Dune, at least we’ll be able to admire the mirage from a distance. If the stars would have aligned all those years ago, Jodorowsky would have been able to make his film…and it very well may have changed the world as we know it. We’ll never have the actual film but we’ll be able to marvel at the imagination and innovation behind it from now until the stars in the sky finally wink out. In a perfect universe, Jodorowsky made his Dune and it was, without question, the single, greatest sci-fi film ever.

11/11/14: The Back of the Class

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Accion Mutante, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Alex de la Iglesia, Anna Massey, auteur theory, based on a book, Burn Gorman, cinema, co-writers, disappointing films, dramas, El dia de la bestia, Elijah Wood, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, grad students, Guillermo del Toro, Jim Carter, John Hurt, Jorge Guerricaechevarria, Julie Cox, Leonor Watling, mathematical formulas, Movies, murder-mystery, Oxford University, Perdita Durango, professor, Santa Sangre, The Day of the Beast, The Last Circus, The Oxford Murders, twist ending, Witching and Bitching, writer-director

Without a doubt, Spanish auteur Alex de la Iglesia is one of my very favorite filmmakers, a mischievous maestro who combines the surreal, magical-realism of Alejandro Jodorowsky with Guillermo del Toro’s affinity for genre material (and impish sense of humor). When de la Iglesia is good, he’s absolutely amazing: I would happily rank his most recent films, The Last Circus (2010), As Luck Would Have It (2011) and Witching and Bitching (2013) as some of the best films I’ve ever seen, which doesn’t even take into account his legendary ’90s output that features such cult classic (if impossible to find) treasures as Accion Mutante (1993), El dia de la Bestia (1995) and Perdita Durango (1997).

At his best, de la Iglesia is like a more accessible Jodorowsky, filling his films with delightfully bizarre little asides and eye-popping visual spectacles: in fact, I’ve always felt that The Last Circus was the best film that Jodorowsky never made, an impossibly beautiful yet horrifyingly grotesque political parable that can sit shoulder-to-shoulder with the classic Santa Sangre (1989). When he’s not scaling those impossible heights, de la Iglesia manages to turn out massively entertaining, endlessly pulpy genre films that usually involve tough women, lots of cars and guns and odd supernatural angles. Despite not having the pleasure of watching his entire back-catalog, I can honestly say that I never met a de la Iglesia film that I didn’t like…until I met The Oxford Murders (2008), that is. Despite an excellent cast and an appropriately twisty storyline, the film is largely an inert, confusing mess that displays barely a glimmer of de la Iglesia’s trademark bravura filmmaking. For the first time, to my chagrin, here was my hero treading water.

Our hero, Martin (Elijah Wood), is a grad student obsessed with the legendarily difficult, reclusive mathematician Arthur Seldom (John Hurt). Seeking to get a face-to-face meeting with the professor, Martin takes up lodging with his sister, Mrs. Eagleton (Anna Massey), and her moony-eyed daughter, Beth (Julie Cox). Disrupting one of Seldom’s lectures, Martin makes an ass out of himself, which makes things even more awkward when both he and Seldom end up back at Eagleton’s boarding house. They soon have something to talk about other than Martin’s bad manners, however, when they stumble upon the decidedly dead body of the land-lady.

A note found at the scene seems to indicate that Mrs. Eagleton was the victim of a serial killer, one who inscribes mathematical symbols like perfect circles onto his missives. Putting their heads together, Martin and Arthur realize that the killer is trying to play a game with the professor, a game that involves creating perfectly logical murders, all towards the goal of proving that they don’t exist. Confused yet? As Martin and Arthur rush from one new crime scene to the other, ably aided by Lorna (Leonor Watling), a young nurse who’s been intimate with both the grad student AND his elderly professor, they discover an intricate series of “almost-murders,” crimes committed in such ways as to seem almost natural…unless one knows what to look for, of course.

As the clock ticks down, the dynamic duo finds themselves in more and more danger, along with an increasing police presence that sees their continued appearance at the crime scenes as being a little too coincidental. Will they catch their culprit or will a mysterious maniac continue to wreak havoc in the hallowed halls of Oxford University?

There are lots of rather critical problems with The Oxford Murders but we’ll start with the biggest one: the film is both overly complicated and impossibly stupid, a critically lethal combo if ever there was one. In an attempt to seem Hitchcockian (an obvious source of inspiration), de la Iglesia piles one double-cross after another left-turn into further complications until the whole thing collapses into a soggy mess of plot contrivances. There are so many red herrings here (Martin’s batshit crazy roommate is an obvious one) that it kinds of feels like parody, after a while, as if de la Iglesia decided to take the piss out of old “drawing-room” mysteries for no perceptible reason.

Trying to follow the plot is no easy task but it’s made immeasurably more difficult by the film’s manic pace and propensity for over-the-top melodrama: Burn Gorman’s Yuri is one of the best examples of a character who not only makes no narrative sense but is pitched at such an insane level (he appears to be dubbed, which makes his bizarre speech patterns a little more understandable but just barely) that he seems to belong in another film. The bit where he makes an ass of himself at the party is a real “high” point but there isn’t much to his performance that could be deemed natural or, you know, non-hysterical.

Wood and Hurt, for their parts, are reliably sturdy, although they both end up just recycling previous performances as if re-wearing comfortable suits: Hurt is the cranky, sardonic old mentor, while Wood is the fish-out-of-water newbie just having his eyes opened to the real world. They’re performances that either actor could give in their sleep, to be honest, and bring nothing new to the table.

It’s not all a dreary disappointment, however: buried within the muck is one moment of pure, unadulterated de la Iglesia that’s an absolute joy to watch. After leaving Prof. Seldom’s lecture, Martin heads back to the boarding house and the camera heads along with him. In a simply glorious single take, the camera glides along after Martin but ends up “tagging” various other characters along the way, jumping from person to person like a giddy child before finally swooping into the boarding house to reveal Mrs. Eagleton’s dead body. Quite simply, it’s a wonderful scene: too bad it’s the only moment in the entire film that actually reminded me of de la Iglesia.

All in all, The Oxford Murders is a middle-of-the-road mystery hobbled by some truly over-the-top performances, a needlessly confusing plot and a truly stupid twist ending. Were any other filmmaker attached to this project, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about the film, since I’ve seen way too many “competent” movies just like this. This is Alex de la Iglesia, however, a genuinely brilliant writer-director: there was no need for the film to be so completely tedious and anonymous. Luckily, de la Iglesia would follow-up The Oxford Murders with the aforementioned trilogy of The Last Circus, As Luck Would Have It and Witching and Bitching, handily proving that this was only a minor blip in an otherwise impeccable career. As it stands, The Oxford Murders should only be of interest to de la Iglesia completists: all others are advised to go straight to his classics and give this as wide a berth as possible.