Jodorowsky's Dune

Too silly to live, yet too ridiculous to die, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s version of Dune survives now as a series of storyboards animated only by his titanic force of will. In the mid-1970s, the director gathered an estimable group of co-conspirators like Moebius and H.R. Giger—“spiritual warriors,” as he likes to call them—in order to design what now seems like the lost bridge between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. But Hollywood was not keen on handing over millions of dollars to a surrealist oddball, which makes it all the more inexplicable that the first adaptation of Frank Herbert’s (overrated, dull) sci-fi epic should be directed by the guy who made Eraserhead. Understandably, Jodorowsky is relieved at this rival version’s cruddiness, and his gleeful schadenfreude is one of the comic charms of Jodorowsky’s Dune, Frank Pavich’s loving tribute to the lost film. With a great show of sympathy, Jodorowsky excuses David Lynch and blames the failure of Dune 1.0 on meddling producers, but there is a tinge of pride to this pity: Hollywood may have tamed Lynch, but it could not cage the great Jodo. It should come as no surprise that this man's peculiar metaphysics seemingly include the notion that everyone—but especially him—is god.

Certainly, Pavich and his faithful crew of talking heads are all too happy to indulge Jodorowsky’s genial megalomania. But a bullshit artist is an artist nonetheless, and the remarkably spry octogenarian has an enthusiasm that is hard to resist. Hearing him breathlessly describe his version of Dune is even sometimes more enjoyable than watching his films. The director, as an interlocutor of his work, possesses virtues often absent from his art: he’s giddy and jocular where films like Fando y Lis and El Topo feel weighted down with po-faced provocations and somber self-importance. Who wouldn’t sign up to a quixotic art-quest under the spell of this chattering whirlwind’s charisma? (Dan O’Bannon signs up for the project after doing drugs and becoming hypnotized by Jodorowsky’s face, apparently.) But while Pavich succumbs to the man’s charms, the audience would be advised to approach some of the stories with more skepticism. Some of the more dubious casting ideas suggest Jodorowsky is pulling our leg, or at the very least engaging in the cinematic equivalent of a fantasy football league (Orson Welles! Mick Jagger! Salvador Dali!). Still, such implausible conceits fit with the aura of impossibility that feeds the film’s enduring legend. Perhaps this is the purest expression of Jodorowsky’s surrealism—a film that exists only in dreams.

EIFF: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

A princess who hides her ugliness behind a veil leans over a pond and catches a glimpse of herself in the water, but beautiful now, the beauty she feels is her right but has been denied her. A catfish surfaces and begins to speak, praising her loveliness, and she enters into the water, dropping her jewels as an offering as she asks to be made as beautiful as her reflection. Finally, she floats in the centre of the pond, and the catfish begins to, um, pleasure her.

This rather odd folktale/digression/past life(?) is dropped into the middle of Apitchatpong Weersethakul’s beguiling, baffling, and altogether astounding Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. More a drifting dream than narrative film, this curiosity from Thailand nonetheless tells the story of Boonmee, an aging farmer whose kidneys are failing him. As the end of his life draws near, he is joined by the ghost of his dead wife and his long-missing son, who appears in the form of a monkey spirit with eyes that glow piercing red in the dark.

Don’t ask me what any of this means on a literal level, or how it relates to the story of the princess, but let me assure you no other film this year has offered me as much pure delight per square inch of celluloid. The key is to not allow the idiosyncrasies of the storytelling distract from the fundamental, and rather simple, theme. Much like how Weersethakul’s earlier Tropical Malady was a deeply strange yet completely clear love story, exalting romantic surrender in the most mystical terms, this film hinges on the idea that any death is also a birth, and then allows us to take that notion in any number of directions.

For instance, in various interviews Weersethakul has spoken of the film as an ode to the dying medium of film. Certainly, you can see a reverence for cinematic history in such disparate reference points as Thai costume drama (the sumptuously shot story of the princess and the catfish) and Chris Marker’s La Jetee (Boonmee’s dream of the future, told in a series of still photos). The darkened cavern Boonmee and co. enter at night is both a womb and movie theatre, the shadows on the wall and primitive cave paintings pointing to the beginnings of all visual arts. It’s the origins of man and the origins of cinema—and the primal place where Boonmee goes to die.

You can take a lot of different ideas from this, which is perhaps the point. Weersethakul carefully avoids overexplaining his films in interviews, and his reasons are obvious. He’s after a sense of wonder above all else, and wonder cannot exist without at least some level of mystery. If you completely understood the significance of the red-eyed monkey spirits, if you knew that they were meant to symbolize such-and-such thing, would you feel that mixture of dread and awe at their appearance? Would you feel anything at all?

Perhaps this sounds like a cop-out, but we’re so used to our cinematic pleasures being parceled out through a neatly organized delivery system that we lack the language to properly praise a film that provides such unfiltered delight. If anything, the real problem is whether or not we would be so accepting of this mystical weirdness from a western director. The last thing exoticism should be is an excuse to engage with art we would deny if it were domestic.

But I can think of no director quite as guileless as Weersethakul, whose work is so open and gentle, even as it looks unblinkingly at the darkness of the world (the violence of his homeland is never denied, with Boonmee even wondering if his illness is karma for the communists he killed in his youth as a soldier). There’s no sense of calculation here—in fact, the story might make more sense if there was. It’s also worth noting that Weersethakul’s father died of a kidney affliction similar to Boonmee’s, suggesting that part of the film’s strangeness comes from how it pulls on private experiences and distorts them for cinematic effect. Like North American eccentrics such as Guy Maddin and David Lynch, Weersethakul’s unique sensibility comes from the way his films derive from his own memories and dreams. He’s probably as much a curiosity to his countrymen as he is to us.

None of which is any help for the hapless viewer approaching this remarkable work. We cannot see this film through Weersethakul’s eyes, only our own. But to my eyes, this is a beautiful film by any measure, open with possibilities for anyone willing to enter its mysteries. This is perhaps what the director intends with the multiple worlds we see at the end of the film. In one alternative, three characters sit in a hotel room, transfixed by the dull glow of the television set, frozen into complete passivity. In the other, two of these people leave the room and head to a karaoke bar, where they may or not sing, but regardless, they are free and moving through the world. I cannot tell you which alternative the director intends as reality. But I can tell you which one is more fun.

NFB Film of the Week: Strange Invaders

Continuing with the space theme I began last week with Universe, I thought I would highlight another NFB film dealing with the awe-inspiring, breath-taking, and deeply malicious cosmos—Cordell Barker's animated short Strange Invaders.

Barker's chief claim to fame is The Cat Came Back, one of those NFB shorts that infiltrate the Canadian consciousness by virtue of repeated airings on CBC. I assumed it was pointless to highlight that film since it's possibly the most recognized film on the entire NFB site. However, I still encourage people to revisit it, especially if they haven't seen it since childhood. My own dim youthful recollections just couldn't do justice to the film's superb timing or stranger jokes, which very likely flew right over my immature head (like the brilliantly bizarre gag in which the frantic protagonist comes across a cow tied up on the railroad tracks like a damsel in distress from an old silent-movie serial). Instead, I want to bring some attention to Cordell Barker's other great NFB short.

Strange Invaders is in many ways a prime example of NFB animation—the drawing is idiosyncratic and fluid, the tone droll and whimsical. But Barker balances some rather dark humour with a deeply felt theme (he apparently referred to the film as "semi-autobiographical," and for all of its fantasy trappings the film does seem strongly rooted in the realities of parenthood). The film focuses on Roger and Doris, a married couple whose wish for a child is answered when a baby-like alien crashes into their living room. At first overjoyed, they soon discover that the alien is a terror of a child, wreaking havoc with their lives and ravaging their home.

For a sample of Barker's masterful sense of comic timing, just look at the scene where Roger and Doris come across the alien after it has eaten three of their goldfish. It lies faces down on the floor with the skeletons of the fish scattered around it. A single goldfish swims around the nearly empty bowl. After the couple leave, the alien tilts its head towards the bowl. Ever so slightly, the fish begins to spin faster. The film is steeped in these sort of sly touches, hiding smaller gags within the more manic comedic set-ups.

Any new parents will fear what a baby will do to their lives, and this witty little film builds a brilliant farce out of that anxiety. Even though it ultimately reconciles itself to parenthood, the film dives deep into almost every possible worry associated with a new child—strained marriage, sleepless nights, damaged home, terrorized pets. Consider this the ideal short program to play before David Lynch's Eraserhead. The alien's excruciating squawking of "Peanut!"—the single word it knows how to speak—is perhaps not as painful as the wretched mewling noise of Lynch's mutant baby, but both strike the same nerve with deadly precision. Don't miss this one.