CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)

First things first. Director Hugh Hudson's cinematic follow-up to his Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire (1981), Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) is not particularly faithful to the events depicted in his source material, Edgar Rice Burrough's 1914 novel, Tarzan of the Apes.

For instance, in the 27-million dollar movie adaptation, Tarzan (Christopher Lambert) does not meet Jane Porter (Andie MacDowell) in the jungle; nor return for her later in the United States; in Baltimore and then Wisconsin, specifically.

The film also largely omits Tarzan's varied (sometimes playful) interactions with a local village/tribe in Africa, plus his attempts to learn to read English himself.

And the film's climax -- in which Tarzan returns to the jungle, leaving Jane behind (ostensibly forever...) -- is also not exactly canonical; though it can certainly be rationalized in movie terms, since everyone involved in the production was no doubt thinking/hoping "sequel."

Importantly, however, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, does, in very welcome fashion, get at the human "truth" of the popular, often-told Tarzan story. Specifically, the film offers a realistic and believable excavation of that which Burroughs first imagined: the story of an orphaned human boy raised by apes in the wild, and his interactions with so-called human civilization.

If the Richard Donner Superman: The Movie of 1978 was all about "you'll believe a man can fly," then this careful, painstaking iteration of Tarzan is, perhaps, "you'll believe a man can swing on a vine."

And actually, that's no small achievement.

Over the long decades, the silver screen Tarzan has been involved in the hunt for gold (Tarzan's Secret Treasure [1941]), battled Nazis (Tarzan Triumphs [1943]) and faced down evil cults (Tarzan and the Leopard Woman [1946]). By deliberate contrast, Greystoke is a back-to-basics approach, focusing on the man and his identity rather than the pulp-styled enemies or cliffhanger challenges the character so often faces.

Crafted with meticulous care -- with great actors, gorgeous locations and Rick Baker's still-impressive ape make-up -- Greystoke was widely welcomed in theaters in 1984 as "one of the best movies" of the year. Joseph Gelmis wrote in Newsday (March 30, 1984, page 7) that it is a "serious movie, a thinking man's Tarzan. It is also ravishingly beautiful, provocative" and "profoundly moving."

Much of that "profoundly moving" part arises from the considerable efforts of Christopher Lambert, an actor who is, in many ways at his absolute finest here. I also admire Johnny Weissmuller, one of Lambert's more prominent predecessors in the role of Tarzan, but Weissmuller's interpretation was a product of a different, more artificial/theatrical age in movie history. Weissmuller was a sort of muscle-bound body-builder-type, which today seems wrong for Tarzan. He was also a bit too clean-shaven and civilized to seem a believable man of the jungle.

Greystoke knowingly adopts a more natural approach, and Lambert is absolutely believable as an animalistic figure, one almost always in motion. His Tarzan is a creature of instinct, curiosity and barely-contained energy. Lambert doesn't look like a body builder, either. His Tarzan is a lean, strong man who has flourished in the wild, sustained by that which nature provides. And much of Lambert's focused performance -- the character's sense of cunning and intelligence -- arises in his penetrating eyes. Lamberts' eyes are like lasers here, targeting objects and, in an instant, assessing them as threats or non-threats. Lambert also carries all of the character's emotional pain in his eyes, and at times, this is a quite powerful choice. It's an accomplished performance.

Jack Kroll in Newsweek described Lambert's Tarzan well, (March 26, 1984, page 74), calling him "a supple, feral creature, not an overmuscled hulk, whose animal grace becomes a human virtue and whose eyes, piercing but gentle, shows a keenness and clarity that overcivilized senses have lost."

This description really nails the Tarzan persona of Greystoke. Tarzan is not a super-human "hero" in any way, though he boasts the survival skills of his adopted family, the apes. Instead, the movie finds the character's vulnerable, human core.

Much of what Greystoke dramatizes is, in effect, Tarzan's sense of powerlessness in the face of mortality. As a baby, he is unable to prevent the death of his biological parents, the noble Claytons. As a teen in the jungle, he loses his ape mother, Kala, and is again. powerless to prevent death. Finally, upon return to civilization, Tarzan loses his kindly grandfather (Ralph Richardson) and even his ape father, who has been shipped to London to be studied. Thus life for Tarzan, as depicted in this film, is but a series of terrible losses; grief experienced and re-experienced.

This viewpoint, I submit, helps to explain Tarzan's final choice to return to the jungle at the film's climax. When life is so short, when death lurks around every corner, we cling to "home," to the place that helps us remember those loved ones that we've lost. For Tarzan, that place of happier memories is the jungle.

Unlike many Tarzan adventures of the silver screen, Greystoke also focuses explicitly on the differences between man's "modern" world and the primitive ape world of the jungle. Howard Kissel, writing a review in Women's Wear Daily (March 28, 1984, page 27), noted that Burroughs' book was written "when Darwinism and its social implications were still a dominant intellectual force." He goes on to suggest that "the book was aware of man's dual nature - simultaneously primitive and civilized." Greystoke gets at this point ably. It spends a little over half its running time in the jungle, as Tarzan ascends to the leadership of a local ape tribe, and about an hour in staid England, where instinct is derided and manners are treated as a paramount consideration.

Here's the difference as I see it: In the ape world, nobody tried to control Tarzan. Or if they did..he confronted and dominated (or even killed) them. In England, Tarzan becomes a pawn of sorts, one who is supposed to "represent" something, perhaps, like the innate superiority of man over beast. "You must overturn what has happened to you," Phillippe D'Arnot (Ian Holm) suggests. at one point But Tarzan isn't interested in being a case study. He doesn't need to be "greater than the accident of his child," or a triumph of the "Imperial Science."

On the contrary, Tarzan is "what the jungle has made him" and just wants to be free to...live. As much as Tarzan loves and admires his grandfather, he knows that the land is not his to "sell" or "keep." His wisdom is different from the conventional wisdom of Darwin's England, and this also makes him a perpetual outsider.

The duality of Tarzan 's nature -- part man/part ape -- is often expressed in Greystoke through shots involving a mirror (or a reflection). "Mirror" is one of the first English words Tarzan learns, for instance. Early in the film, while sitting lakeside with another ape, he also spies his own reflection in the water and can detect, for the first time, how different he is from those around him. Later, he discovers the hut where his parents died and -- again -- gazes into a mirror, expressing a half-remembered familiarity with the alien world of human civilization.

Finally, when Tarzan courts Jane, Hudson shoots almost the entire scene inside the frame of a mirror, in a reflection. The inference is that by accepting Jane, by loving her, Tarzan fully enters the world of civilization, perhaps. There's a subtle message about human relationships here, as well. Jane loves Tarzan because he is not like the mannered buttoned-down men of the aristocracy, the men who are all around her. And yet, still, she wants to change him. As much as she admires him for what he is, she knows that in this state he is not an acceptable husband. Eventually, in a scene showcasing the nobility of women, Jane chooses Tarzan's happiness over her own.

Greystoke is made with such care and such love (from a script by Robert Towne, under a pseudonym). For example, I admire the beautiful book-end views of the jungle that open/close the film, a reminder that the life of Tarzan -- indeed all our lives -- is but a blip in the life of the Earth. The ape-suits by Rick Baker hold up remarkable well today, twenty-five years after the film's production. And the performances are particularly strong, with Lambert providing a strong, sympathetic anchor. Richardson and Holm also do great work, creating very sympathetic "father figures" for Tarzan.

But two aspects of the film may prove troubling to some. The first is a technical issue. Andie MacDowell (playing Jane) is dubbed throughout the entire film by Glenn Close. Every time the young character speaks, there's an emotional disconnect between MacDowell's youthful appearance and Close's line readings. You can just tell something is off, and this fact diminishes the relationship between Jane and Tarzan in some critical, under-the-surface fashion. American accent or no American accent, MacDowell's line readings should have stayed in the film. Americans Kevin Costner (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), Keanu Reeves (Bram Stoker's Dracula) and Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly) have all played British characters and were not dubbed in their roles, and MacDowell deserves the same courtesy.

Secondly, Greystoke seems to go out of its way to not include or verbalize the name "Tarzan" in relation to Lambert's character. He is called Clayton, Jack, or simply Greystoke. I understand why this decision was made. It's another attempt to distance the character from his pulpy movie past and make this film a serious, believable interpretation of the legend. But Tarzan must be Tarzan...you can't hide his name any more than you can hide the name "Superman" or "Batman." This movie very much wants to be about who Greystoke is -- his very identity -- and yet the name Tarzan ("White Skin") is a crucial part of that identity. The movie should have taken the name back for Tarzan, not ignored it.

My feeling about Greystoke is that it is a great first movie in a franchise that, unfortunately, never arrived. The movie accomplishes the difficult task of taking Tarzan's world seriously; of making the character and his environs believable and authentic to a degree never before seen. I just wish there had been a second film in the franchise, one which captured a little more of the pulp; a little more of the adventurous spirit of the Tarzan stories we know from our pop culture. Rex Reed wrote In The New York Post (March 30, 1984, page 39) that Greystoke boasts "lavish detail," "opulent sets and splendid canvases of Scottish life on the heath" but "the second half resembles all too often a boring Masterpiece Theater production on Public Broadcasting."

I wouldn't go that far, perhaps. Greystoke is a lush and enchanting character piece that gazes at the beating heart of Tarzan. It succeeds on those grounds. But I too -- particularly as the movie rounded out its second hour -- wished for a little more excitement, a little more action. Making a Casino Royale-style introduction is one (very impressive) thing; but after a time, you also hunger for a little Quantum of Solace-adventure, to adopt the titles of another recently re-worked British franchise.

After all, what's the point of being the Lord of the Jungle if you can't rescue Jane from a few perils like quick sand, giant snakes or rampaging elephant? Right?

Greystoke remains a gorgeous and powerful movie, featuring perhaps the greatest Tarzan in film history (thanks to Christopher Lambert's performance.) Yet when its over, you do wish the movie had also let Greystoke be the Tarzan of our popular imagination, just for a while.

I also would have enjoyed, I guess I'm saying, seeing a sequel with Lambert's Tarzan...fighting Nazis, Ant-Men and unearthing golden cities..

SGU: "Earth" and "Time"

Yesterday on the blog here, I wrote at length about the latest arm of the Stargate franchise, SGU.

I was especially impressed with the way the new Sy Fy series -- right out the "gate" (sorry...) -- seemed to improve and perfect the formula of TV space adventures.

Specifically, SGU excised the techno babble that caused people to abandon Star Trek in droves in the late nineties, avoided the self-righteous, on-the-nose commentary of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, and adopted and updated some of the best and most dynamic ideas from older, classic genre programs such as Star Trek, Blake's 7 and Space:1999.

All that established, it was clear the series was still finding its "space legs" (to quote Scotty) in the episodes I watched prior to my first review ("Air," "Darkness," "Light"). So I was truly, happily surprised when two of the three episodes I watched last night delivered powerfully on the series' potential, providing the young catalog with two stand-out episodes.

First up was "Water," and this one was okay, but not terrific by any means. In some sense, it seemed to rehash that which had already come before, especially in the last part of "Air:" a dangerous mission to an inhospitable planet to collect resources (this time H20), with two crew members nearly left behind as the FTL clock on the Destiny clicks down. This was a perfectly -competent installment, but I did worry a little bit that "Water" was treading...water. It wasn't groundbreaking or fresh.

But then came a show called "Earth" that absolutely gobsmacked me. I didn't mention this in my review yesterday, but one aspect of SGU that I felt worried about initially involved these "communication stones." Specifically, Destiny is equipped with a few Ancient "relics' that permit a person aboard the lost, speeding-to-the-end-of-the-universe Destiny to literally transpose him or herself with another person back on Earth. In early episodes, we saw Colonel Telford (Lou Diamond Phillips) and Colonel Young (Louis Ferrara) undergo this procedure so that Young could de-brief back at Home Base, and Telford -- in Young's body -- could assess for himself the situation on the ship.

I held my fire about the communication stones in my review yesterday because it was clearly still early in the series. But I was afraid the stones were going to prove an easy gimmick (kind of like Star Trek's holodeck) to get the men and women trapped on Destiny into earthbound, safe stories. I was concerned that the communication stones represented an easy out, an escape valve, when it was clear that life on Destiny should be a crucible for tension, anxiety and claustrophobia.

And then came "Earth" (directed by the great Ernest Dickerson...) which surprised this veteran sci-fi, space-adventure reviewer to no end. This episode brings Chloe (Elyse Levesque), Eli (David Blue) and Young back to Earth using the communication stones. Telford takes command of Destiny (in Young's body) and submits the ship to a dangerous experiment which could bring the crew home (and give Homeworld Base a ready-made Ancient ship...), while on Earth, Young (in Telford's body) visits his estranged wife and attempts to patch things up.

Young and his wife do reconcile and have sex, but something goes wrong with the communication exchange during their lovemaking, and Telford returns to his own body...in mid-intercourse with Young's wife. Whoa!

I was stunned by this moment, a logical but entirely unexpected development of the communication stone technology, and thrilled to see a modern sci-fi series tread into real dramatic, human territory, not easy phantasmagoria with laser beams and robots. The moment is funny, shocking, and superbly well-played. Telford "awakes" in his own body to find himself making love to another man's wife; a woman who is unaware a switch has occurred.

To its everlasting credit, "Earth" followed this up with a denouement that literally made my jaw drop.

I don't want to spoil it, but the last shot of this episode is a keeper...a perfect character moment that establishes something important: Stargate SGU is playing for keeps, and playing fair with its premise and technology. What can I say?...I just didn't expect this. I had kind of dismissed previous Stargates as fun for the kiddies...and then this happens. The creators of this show are working hard to make this Stargate different; to give this Stargate its own unique voice and tenor.

Again, it's important to note that men like Telford and Young are not the romantic ideals of old fashioned TV space operas, but real human beings, replete with flaws and foibles. And this scenario (and particularly the closing moment...) truly gets that idea transmitted. Honestly, I had wondered why Lou Diamond Phillips was playing a character back on Earth (instead of on Destiny) but now I get it; I understand. With this episode, Telford suddenly emerges as a character with real human shades, real and complex dramatic possibilities. He's not just an overly-gruff, wrong-headed military superior...he's something else. And I can't wait to see how his character develops from here...

"Earth" also achieves much for the characters of Eli and Chloe. Having exchanged bodies with a young scientist on Earth, Eli discovers that a whole world (of women, primarily...) would open up to him if he were in, let's say, a more traditionally attractive body. Eli is already brilliant, funny, and he has a great personality...but handsome looks would complete the package for him, he learns. I found this idea fascinating, and wondered about what could happen if someone found a way not to return his or her own body. I also appreciated Chloe's journey in "Earth," her discovery that she -- literally -- "can't go home again" even if she is, actually, home.

With "Earth," SGU has traveled a significant distance towards wiping out any remaining concerns I had with the series. The writers have selected the one aspect of the series premise I worried about the most (the communication stones) and utilized it not only in an authentically surprising fashion that reveals more about characters like Telford, but -- amazingly -- given us the best episode so far using that problematic technology.

The next episode, "Time," is every bit as good as "Earth"..but completely different in tone, movement and feel. It involves the discovery of a kino (a floating, Phantasm ball-styled camera...) on a jungle planet. When the images are played back by Destiny's crew, they reveal a food-collection mission gone horribly wrong. The danger involves a deadly disease and worse, small, lizard-like predators with a penchant for chewing through human torsos.

I can only describe this episode as riveting. If "Earth" represents an unexpected twist in formula, "Time" is a confident, blistering show that captures perfectly the dangers of outer space and finds SGU right on message, re-asserting its raison d'etre. Delightfully, the character work is also uniformly strong here, with one great scene involving Eli, particularly his discussion of mortality (and the concept of oblivion). The episode also features a doom-laden atmosphere: a feeling of inevitability that grants the hour a real sense of pace and drive.

Sex, character development, philosophy and gut-busting aliens?. If SGU keeps on this track, I'm seriously going to have a new favorite space adventure here.

But certainly, considering the quality of the episodes I've watched so far, I'm going to begin blogging Season Two on a regular basis when it airs.

For me, SGU represents another important lesson (which I must re-learn from time to time.) Don't pre-judge a show, even a franchise show. Because if you do, you could miss out on something really terrific. I learned this lesson the hard way with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the 1990s...I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it by my wife, only to learn I was ignoring something special. Same thing with Millennium: I initially dismissed it as serial killer of the week. Not until I began paying attention did I see that Chris Carter had created another real masterpiece.

Well, SGU, I've learned my lesson (again...), and I'm boarding Destiny for the duration.

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 108: SGU: Stargate Universe (2009 - )

I should probably begin this review by informing you that I have not watched a whole lot of Stargate: SG-1 or Stargate: Atlantis.

Oh, I've sat down in front of a few episodes of each series. But I concluded on these occasions that the popular franchise just wasn't my cup of tea.

Not that the shows were poorly-done in any particular sense, only that they weren't my thing. Admittedly, this is my bias: I tend to prefer my space adventures in one of two modes: first, in the anti-establishment vein of Firefly, Farscape, Blake's 7 or even Doctor Who.

Or second, I really dig space adventures in which the characters are cut off from the establishment (from Earth, actually...), dealing with the mysteries of the galaxy without an available command structure or back-up reserves. In this light, I think of Space: 1999 or even the original Star Trek. In those programs, life and death is on the line with every last decision. There's no cavalry, for the most part, to come over the hill at the last moment.

What little I viewed of the Stargate franchise seemed to me both over-militarized and under-serious.

That may or not be a fair critical statement. It's a personal impression based on my narrow experience with the Stargate panoply.

But I have a good friend and regular reader here on the blog, Pete, who suggested that I check out SGU: Stargate Universe, the latest arm of the franchise, airing on Sy Fy. Long story short: I'm glad he recommended it to me, because, unlike the other examples of Stargate, this incarnation is indeed right up my alley.

Stargate Universe is a bit edgier, somewhat more serious in intent, and far more mysterious than what I've seen of the other Stargate series. It showcases flawed but interesting human characters instead of gun-toting, romanticized ideals. It's also -- at least from what I've seen -- not as overtly militarized in bent. There are still several military characters involved in the drama, but the show isn't all guns and salutes. Not hardly.

SGU dramatizes a tale of disaster and survival. A group of officers, scientists and technicians from Earth are unexpectedly forced to abandon an off-world base called Icarus following a surprise attack on the installation.

But when the group evacuates through a star gate, it returns not to Earth, but lands bumpily aboard a damaged, colossal spaceship traveling at faster-than-light velocities towards the end of the universe itself.

The man responsible for this selection of destination is the inscrutable Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle), who has been working for years to puzzle out the last "chevron" on the Stargate technology in hopes of discovering more about the race that constructed it: The Ancients.

So, a group of about fifty or so people -- the "wrong people" -- according to Colonel Young (Louis Ferrara) are now trapped together aboard this inhospitable vessel named Destiny. In the opening three-part episode, "Air," life-support power fails and the crew is forced to scour a desert planet for resources needed to repair the C02 scrubbers. In the second episode, "Darkness," the ship's power fails completely, and in the third, "Light," Destiny becomes trapped on an apparent collision course with an alien star. A lottery is held to see which fifteen people will board an escape shuttle, and who will be forced to remain aboard the ship as it plummets towards the sun...

Outside of the Stargate franchise, SGU is heir to a rich cinematic and television legacy of space adventuring. The series' impressive opening shot -- of the huge Destiny gliding through the void -- puts the Empire's Star Destroyer and the inaugural shot of Star Wars [1977] -- to shame. Then, in the very next shot, the opener cuts to a Ridley Scott-esque tour of quiescent interior corridors, evoking the Nostromo in Alien (1979).

The notion of boarding and deciphering a starship of alien construction reminds me of the Liberator and Terry Nation's Blake's 7. And the scenario of men and women trapped on an out-of-control "vessel" unable to control speed or trajectory made me think of Space:1999's Moonbase Alpha. For good measure, the opener also throws in some (largely unnecessary) character flashbacks that evoke the early years of Lost (2004-2010).

And did I mention that the soundtrack boasts the Far Eastern, melancholy feel of Firefly?

Despite all these familiar touchstones, SGU makes some intriguing and positive modifications on formula. For one thing, the series eschews the horrible techno-babble that scuttled late-era Star Trek (Next Gen, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise).

On those 1990s programs (which have not aged well, for the most part...), the resolution of the crisis of the week always involved a simple re-shuffling of a deck of cards. Let's re-modulate the power array to shoot a graviton pulse at this tertiary domain of subspace that will seal the space/time rift blah blah blah.

Somehow, no matter what hand the crew of the Enterprise-D, Deep Space Nine or Voyager was dealt, it always managed to pull an ace from that deck. Once or twice of course, this was fine but after a while, the cumulative effect was actually a negative statement about humanity and the supposedly-heroic Starfleet characters. They had no real resourcefulness or ingenuity of their own but they did have great technology, and simply by reshuffling the same deck every week, they could survive and flourish in the universe.

My hero and mentor, the late Johnny Byrne -- who served as story editor on the first year of Space: 1999 -- once compared late era Trek and Space: 1999 in the following way. He said that shows like Next Gen and Voyager assumed the characters already had everything they needed to succeed, whereas Space: 1999 adopted the perspective that the characters did not already have what they needed to survive.

Which approach do you think is inherently more dramatic?

And indeed, this is reason why so many episodes of Next Gen, Voyager and Enterprise feel so rote. The sense of danger is missing. In drama, when characters have everything that they need (even when separated from home base by a quadrant or two...), space adventuring just becomes a workaday job. And besides, the holodeck is open all night...

Refreshingly, SGU revives the earlier template, and adopts the perspective that the characters don't have the resources or know-how they need to survive, or, at the very least, don't yet understand how to master the technology that would permit survival to be anything approaching easy.

In other words, the Destiny may provide for all, but the crew -- again, the "wrong people" -- don't necessarily have the skill set to figure it all out. This is Johnny Byrne's Space:1999 principle applied, and applied well.

What I admire about SGU is that, even in these early shows, there's a lot of trial and error on display, a lot of attempts that go nowhere. At one crisis point in "Darkness," I was suddenly, out-of-the-blue, reminded of the Apollo 13 incident in 1970...of people working in space to solve pressing (nay, urgent...) problems with ingenuity, grace, available resources, and luck. The series really captures this vibe well. It's something about the danger of space travel and human inspiration intertwined...and it works. It's a concept that in large part, modern space adventure series have abandoned, and it's nice to see it back at the forefront of the medium.

SGU also gets something else right, and this is crucial. By and large, SGU allows the viewer to scan the drama for subtext rather than spelling out that subtext as, well, actual text.

This was always my primary concern with the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica [2005-2009]. Not that the producers seemed more interested in telling stories about Abu Ghraib, September 11th, Al Qaeda, the Geneva Conventions and late 20th century East/West perceptions of God than tales of survival in hostile galaxy, but that they did so in such an on-the-nose, obvious fashion.

By contrast, the early episodes of SGU feature some vivid human drama, but the series isn't crushingly self-important or pretentious in the way that Galactica often was. It doesn't spoon-feed you with obvious analogs for current events. It doesn't pat viewers on the back for knowing that "go frak yourself" is the same as Dick Cheney's famous "go fuck yourself." I mean, we get it, right?

Also, the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series was alarmingly lazy about creating the universe around its human characters. On alien planets half-way across the universe, people drove late 20th century, American-produced Humvees. This was basically an admission on the part of the producers that television can't believably do "sci fi" -- a theorem I disagree vehemently with -- and so no real imagination was afforded for the look or design of the show; to create believable alien vistas, technology or cultures. The only civilizations in all of Battlestar Galactica were humans and their creation, the human-looking Cylons.

I just find that idea...immensely depressing. Kind of like us getting to outer space and discovering that in all the cosmos, in all the stars, there are just Liberals and Conservatives, or just Muslims and Christians. As a sci-fi series taking place in the great unknown, Battlestar Galactica could dream nothing better for mankind than perpetual divisiveness and partisanship. Of course, this is an entirely valid philosophy and approach...just not one that engaged me, personally, I suppose. I could always watch the series as an adrenaline-inducing pressure cooker...it worked very well in that sense. But the new BSG had no curiosity about the universe itself.

I have enjoyed what I've seen so far of Stargate SGU because it remembers that there is more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamed of in our human philosophy. The universe is a riddle; human nature is a riddle. There are mysteries and terrors in space beyond anything we can imagine. The series is actually based on a riddle itself, the mastery of an alien ship, Destiny. Why was the ship built? Where is it headed? What was its mission?

Because I am so immersed in the history, details and minutiae of sci-fi television, I often check with my barometer, my wife, Kathryn to see how she registers new programs. She watched the first disc of SGU episodes with me and, if anything, enjoyed the show even more than I did. She's no pushover. On the contrary, because she is not strictly a "sci-fi" fan, Kathryn can be cutting, even brutal, in her assessments of these programs.

One of her observations I found especially trenchant. She noted that the actors in the series seemed to have been cast for their abilities, not for their looks or youth. There are few underwear models here, in other words. The characters aren't all "smoldering" hotties in their early twenties, but real people doing their best in a difficult environment. And again, being the "wrong people," being unprepared for this journey, makes them, by and large, interesting to follow. Young clings to his military training. Rush clings to his belief that he can learn everything on Destiny...if given time, Eli clings to his sense of humor, and so on.

You can never guess what right or wrong turns a series will take as it continues down the long years, but in these early episodes, SGU is promising, dramatic and much better than I expected it would be. It hasn't dropped any land mines that may come back to haunt it (like the identity of the fifth Cylon, or the invisible tree-shaking monsters), and instead seems focused on a good concept and, so far, solid scripts.

I appreciate SGU for the same reason that I've always enjoyed original Trek and Space:1999. It's a program about Humans -- us -- trying to make our way in the stars with danger -- and opportunity -- around every turn. In each adventure, human constitution and ingenuity gets put on the table. Sometimes it fails, sometimes it succeeds in completing the task at hand. But these are programs that tell us, in every hour, that despite the failures, the sky can still be the limit.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Inland Empire (2006)

"I can't seem to remember if it's today, two days from now, or yesterday. I suppose if it was 9:45, I'd think it was after midnight! For instance, if today was tomorrow, you wouldn't even remember that you owed on an unpaid bill. Actions do have consequences. And yet, there is the magic. If it was tomorrow, you would be sitting over there..."
- A strange Gypsy woman (Grace Zabriskie) discusses the vicissitudes of time (and "dream" time) with actress Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) in David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006).

This is an entirely personal assessment, but Inland Empire is the David Lynch movie that appears to make the least amount of "concrete," conventional sense and the most amount of "dream sense," if that is no paradox.

Inland Empire is a film in which logical, conscious connections between scenes are negligible and therefore almost fruitless to discuss or assess. Instead, the logic of dreams holds sway (powerful sway...) and Lynch's dream sense sweeps viewers from one emotional and terrifying moment to the next. For nearly three hours...

Like many of the artist's previous films, this is a "story" we can understand on emotional terms almost instantly, but not always on a clear, intellectual and practical level.

To truly comprehend Inland Empire we are required once more to undertake the process of "dream distillation." We must open ourselves up to Lynch's visual representations (dreams translated to images, via Freud's Interpretation of Dreams), and symbols, which in dreams replace action, persons and ideas.

Before we get that far, a pseudo synopsis of what "appears" to occur in the film may prove helpful.
You Have a New Role to Play, I've Heard. Or Where Stars Make Dreams and Dreams Make Stars...

In Inland Empire's first scene (after a scratchy record on a gramophone announces the introduction of history's "longest-running radio show, "AXXoNN,") two figures are depicted in expressionist, film-noirish black-and-white photography. They speak Polish.

Both personalities are "blurred" out so that viewers can't make out their faces (or even, in fact, that they have faces). This disquieting blurring effect cloaks their identities but also grants these mystery figures a strange timeless quality, as though their identities have been smudged and stretched (bled actually...) beyond the boundaries of the immediate context (a dark, seedy hotel at night).

Very soon, the man broaches sex with the woman ("do you know what whores do?") and the duo engages in it. During the act -- which is obscured by the blurry faces -- the woman asks fearfully "where am I?" and admits that she is "afraid."

Following this sequence Lynch cuts to shots of a crying woman in close-up, trapped in another hotel room and watching a banal TV sitcom replete with laugh track. The actors in this TV program are horribly creepy, humanoid bunnies. "What time is it?" asks one of the nicely-dressed bunnies.

"I have a secret..." says another ominously.

Next, in modern Los Angeles, we meet Nikki Grace (Dern) an actress up for a leading role in a new Hollywood film called "On High in Blue Tomorrows." A strange, foreign (Polish...) neighbor, a Gypsy played by Grace Zabriskie, shows up and introduces herself . She reports that Nikki will get the coveted movie part, specifically that she has a "new role to play." In sinister fashion, she also informs Nikki that the new role involves a "brutal murder" and that it has something to do with marriage.

The strange gypsy then tells Nikki a story, an "old tale" about a little girl, and it carries faintly diabolical overtones: "A little girl went out to play. Lost in the marketplace, as if half-born. Then, not through the marketplace - you see that, don't you? - but through the alley behind the marketplace. This is the way to the palace. But it isn't something you remember," she says.

Nikki is appropriately disturbed by her neighbor's creepy demeanor, but the woman continues to chatter. She informs Nikki that actions have consequences, that there is "magic," and that if it were "tomorrow" Nikki would be sitting on her sofa...over there.

Cut to Nikki, already seated on the sofa, as though time has indeed bent to the neighbor's will. It is tomorrow.

Promptly, NIkki learns that she got the part and that she will be starring in the film with an actor named Devon (Justin Theroux). Disturbingly, Nikki and Devon also learn from the film's director, Halsey (Jeremy Irons), that "On High in Blue Tomorrows" is actually a remake of a film that was never completed, a Polish film called "47." Like the current screenplay, it was the tale of two illicit lovers ,and one based on an old Folk Tale. "Something happened before it was finished" says Halsey enigmatically, and the implication is that the story itself is cursed.

Before long, Nikki and Devon begin to unwittingly take on the characteristics of their characters, Sue and Billy, respectively. They become illicit lovers despite the fact that Nikki's husband is exceedingly jealous. He warns Devon/Billy that his wife "is not a free agent" and that the bonds of marriage will be "enforced.

And then Nikki seems to slip between realities, inhabiting other lives. And this is where the movie really gets complicated. The San Francisco's Chronicle Walter Addiego explains: "Dern seems to be two other characters as well: a housewife living in a white-trash environment (possibly the Inland Empire region, east of Los Angeles) and also a hardened young woman who vents her anger at length about being abused by men (in this guise she delivers an extended and quite powerful monologue to a mysterious fellow with crooked glasses).

As we eventually suss out, Nikki's journey is part film making illusion and part reality. But the final destination is frightening and sinister. She ends up at a hotel room labeled 47, where must pass a malevolent "Shadow" to free the woman we saw earlier -- perhaps the real Sue -- trapped in that hotel room (and still watching TV bunnies...).

Got it?

"There's a Vast Network, An Ocean of Possibilities" Opening the Gates to Other Lives in Inland Empire

A close watching of Inland Empire reveals several familiar David Lynch obsessions, including sexual violence against women (an important factor in Blue Velvet [1986], Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me [1992], and Lost Highway [1997], an excavation of Hollywood illusion (Mulholland Drive [2001]), and Evil as a symbol contained in one possibly supernatural individual (Bob of Twin Peaks; Robert Blake's bi locating videographer in Lost Highway).

Also, the 2006 film showcases the "gateway" to other worlds, other realities, like the Black Lodge of Twin Peaks or the world-opening/changing "box" of Mulholland Drive. Here, there's a gateway tagged with the legend AXXoNN that transports the protagonist, Nikki Grace, from one reality to another; from one state of being to another. On the surface it's just a door, with those letters scrawled roughly in chalk on it.

However, if we interpret the nonsense word "AXXoNN," we come up with a close approximation in science: the word "axon."

And, biologically-speaking, an axon is a crucial part of our mental landscape. It is (by Wikipedia) "a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, that conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron's cell body or soma."

The diagram from Wikipedia (left) actually proves quite helpful here: it diagrams "axons" linking sections of the brain, closing the gulf between synapses and carrying "thoughts" from one point to another.

The AXXoNN gate in Inland Empire fulfills much the same function. In the film, it links realities, identities, dreams and even disparate time periods together. Nikki navigates this gate and taps not into something personal (the "day residue" of dreams described Freud) but something much more Jungian in concept: an unconscious idea hidden in the conscious mind of the race itself; something about the "genetic" memory of women; of womanhood/sisterhood itself.

I discussed in my review of Lynch's Dune how Paul Atreides' dreams seemed to originate with the Divine, one important school of dream interpretation. In Inland Empire, the dream sense of David Lynch suggests supernatural communication instead; the magical linking of at least two women (Sue and Nikki), and perhaps more, across time and space.

The magical AXXoNN gate is a symbol for the human mind. The "longest running show" in human history is the human collective memory, in this case the female of the species' collective memory of sexual violence and abuse through the ages, across the globe.

The perpetrators of such violence are symbolized in Inland Empire as one male uber-being or presence, the "Shadow," a recurring monster figure. The Shadow is the Blurry Man in the film's opening scene who demands sex, and also an unseen killer on the prowl in Poland. Finally, he is monstrous man "guarding" room 47 and keeping a woman locked up there.

When Nikki shoots this Shadow, he changes shape. First he is a horrible female thing (an amalgam of many female faces; pictured above), but then he shows his true visage and it is both monstrous and terrifying.

The Gypsy (Zabriskie) has prepared us for the presence of this thing in her first scene: "A little boy went out to play. When he opened his door, he saw the world. As he passed through the doorway, he caused a reflection. Evil was born. Evil was born, and followed the boy."

The Evil that has followed thus "little boy" is the mistreatment of women; the "dark side" (or reflection) of manhood.

But by taking on the role of "Sue" in the movie, by becoming the receptacle for the remake's "curse," Nikki has crossed the gate and become aware of the collective memory of abuse in the "sisterhood" of women, and it is up to her to free the woman in the hotel (again, perhaps Sue herself...) who has been trapped there, unable to return to her husband and son because of the "box" (of sexuality?) where the Shadow has locked her up.

In very simple, horror movie terms, Nikki "exorcises" the ghost of Sue/the trapped spirit from the haunted tale of "On High in Blue Tomorrows." That "old tale" is about how men treat women poorly, like Billy treats Sue, or like Nikki's husband threatens her. In much the same fashion that Nancy Thompson takes away Freddy's power in a Nightmare on Elm Street, Nikki takes away the Shadow's power in Inland Empire.

"It Had Something to Do with the Telling of Time" Time is But a Dream in Inland Empire
One of the most significant aspects of Inland Empire is Lynch's complete negation -- nay annihilation -- of any coherent "timeline" of events. The film's dialogue constantly refers to time as meaningless or, at the very least, circular. Examples:

"In the future, you'll be dreaming,"

"I figured one day I'd just wake up and and find out what the hell yesterday was all about. I'm not too keen on thinkin' about tomorrow. And today's slipping by."

"This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know it's tomorrow."

"I'll show you light now. It burns bright forever. No more blue tomorrows. You on high now, love."

And, one of the creepiest incidents in the film involves Nikki passing through the first AXXoNN gate and coming upon...herself. Early in the film, Halsey, Devon and Nicki rehearse a scene from the movie on a darkened, apparently empty sound stage. But a noise is heard in the shadowy distance, and Devon investigates. The film later reveals Nikki herself is the source of that noise, observing herself, Halsey and Devon from a distance. Has she time traveled, or is all but we see or seem but a dream within a dream?

Once more, we must delve into dream interpretation or dream distillation to afford ourselves an understanding of what's happening in a Lynch film. Consider that, as dreamers, we do not experience time. In dreams, there is no past and no future, just the eternal moment of now (to coin a phrase). Time moves differently in the world of dreams, if it moves at all. More likely we -- the dreamers -- are the ones that "move;" from one vision or idea to another; from one phantasm to the next. But we don't "drive" or "fly or otherwise travel to new ideas in any conventional fashion On the contrary, we miraculously, seamlessly transition from things that happened, to things that might happen, to things that will happen. And they all seem to be happening NOW.

This is the dream sense of David Lynch, translated to film. We jump from one reality to another without conventional physical travel. The connections forged in the film are the connections of the mind, the subway path of the axons, the AXXoNN gate. A thought triggers another thought and we witness this progression of ideas played out. Only here, an idea in a scene (like the abuse of women) triggers another scene that's a variation on that theme, and on and on. The connections are the light-speed connections of cognition itself, of thought. David Lynch is an artist who knows his own mind, and Inland Empire is his mind's eye brought to the surface...dreaming on film for us.
"This Sounds Like Dialogue from our Script," or "Look at Me and Tell me if You've Known Me Before"
Inland Empire also gazes specifically at Hollywood, the land where dreams come true for some and manifestly don't for others. This is the surface/underneath dichotomy that David Lynch often utilizes in his films.

Inland Empire

cuts between the wealth and opulence of a movie star's life (Nikki) and life on the streets for several Los Angeles hookers. Importantly, the streetwalkers ply their trade on mean streets decorated with Walk of Fame "stars," a startling conjunction of wealth and desperation.

It's more than that, too. The film very much concerns the way that Hollywood (and film making in general) can take a horrifying, upsetting tale (like Sue's) and put a shiny gloss over it; "remaking it" as a palatable entertainment that pleases the masses. The underneath -- the darkness -- is buried beneath the mainstream, MPAA-authorized surface.

So, hookers -- preparing to meet their "johns" -- burst into a musical number featuring Carole King's 1962 hit "The Loco-Motion." Something seedy and demeaning has been turned into entertainment, a cavalcade of "tits and ass" as one hooker notes (after showing off her artificially augmented bosom).

As Inland Empire also notes, actors in Hollywood become buried in their parts, lost in other lives (the way Nikki becomes lost in other lives.) Accordingly, the film is literally packed with incidents wherein characters state "I'm not who you think I am." This could be a reference to many things. Like the fact that, as viewers, we often mistake actors for the roles they play (in other words assuming that Shatner is actually Captain Kirk-like; or that Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones-esque).

On a deeper level, this notation that "I'm not who you think I am" could refer to any number of important dualities in human nature The conscious/subconscious mind, the waking/dreaming state, or the idea of the AXXoNN gate again: that our brains can hold both our contemporary "identity" and the collective or genetic memory of those who came before, which we can access.

Two characters -- in two time periods and two different cities in Inland Empire -- also say "Look at me and tell me if you've known me before." It's a desperate kind of demand; one designed to foster understanding of who you are and moreso, get an exterior verification that can anchor you in the present, in your identity. Dreams are like tides...they can carry you away and sometimes you need to know what others see.

David Lynch shoots Inland Empire in standard definition video, a controversial decision which seems to highlight the seedy, lurid aspects of theis particulartale. Unlike most Lynch pictures, this is not a beautiful one in terms of color and crispness. The typical greens and reds we associate with Lynch are here in spades, but they bleed all over into human faces...and faces often look haggard and worn out, suffused with ugliness. The underlying notion seems to be of a "now" (a presenttime) exhausted by the cumulative weight of the past, of the collective unconscious. There can't be beauty here when the past is so often ugly.

Laura Dern is literally the anchor of the film -- the only person we can really hold onto while we're unstuck in time, as it were -- and she gives a courageous performance. By the end of the film, all artifice and notions even of technique are stripped away and we are looking at a person exposed, raw. It's a great achievement in terms of screen acting and actually one of the finest performances I've witnessed in some time.

Although I am looking back at Inland Empire after my review of Dune (1984) last week, I bear a deep and abiding sense that this movie is actually the mountain that David Lynch has been climbing for some time. From Blue Velvet through Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, from Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive, the artist has been ascending towards a film that speaks entirely in the language of dreams, towards a pinnacle of formalistic, expressionistic film making that can't be understood in any traditional, "conscious" fashion.

Some viewers Lynch will likely lose on the twisting mountain path leading up to Inland Empire. For instance, It has been called (by the Village Voice) "Lynch's most experimental film since Eraserhead."

But for other fellow travelers, however, this movie represents the apex of a long and intriguing journey; the summation of a career and a world view. You're on high now. Or, as one of the characters in the film notes, this movie is really a "mind fuck."

My advice to you, the prospective audience, is make it a consensual one.

Nightmare in Red, White and Blue Gets Theatrical Distribution

Followers of this blog will recall that about a year ago I participated in Joseph Maddrey's documentary, Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film along with John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Mick Garris, George Romero and other genre greats.

Now the doc, narrated by the inestimable Lance Henriksen, has gotten theatrical distribution here in the States after a successful initial run on the domestic and international film festival circuit.

Here are the details:

The films “American Grindhouse” and “Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue,” profiles of two film genres in America (exploitation and horror, respectively), will get a theatrical release in the U.S. and Canada through Lorber Films. The company plans to release “American Grindhouse” to more fests, theaters, and college venues beginning in June, and will do the same for “Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue” starting in July. The two films will get DVD releases later this year (“Grindhouse”) and early 2011 (“Nightmares”).

Elijah Drenner’s “American Grindhouse” brings together directors like John Landis, Jack Hill, and William Lustig and film historians Eddie Muller and Eric Schaefer to speak about the history of the exploitation genre. The film also includes clips of some of the most outrageous scenes from the American exploitation canon. Andrew Monument’s “Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue,” based on Joseph Maddrey’s book of the same name provides a history of American horror that situates films in their historical context from the mid-1920s to the present. The film includes interviews with George A. Romero, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, amongst other horror directors. Fangoria editor Tony Timpone and the film historian John Kenneth Muir are also interviewed in the film."

More details on the whens and whats (like cities and playdates...) when I get 'em. More info: I just learned from Joe Maddrey, the film's producer and writer, that there's a "street" date for the Nightmares DVD: September 28, 2010.

Planet of the Apes Week at Secure Immaturity!

My friend and fellow blogger Will over at Secure Immaturity is making this the week to "go ape" at his site, with reviews of all the Planet of The Apes films. It's a look back at five genre classics...and the Tim Burton remake too.

Today he's on Escape from the Planet of The Apes. Check it out.

(And while you're there, also check out his review of the 1966 Batman, which happens to be my three-year old son's favorite movie....),

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Session 9 (2001)

There's a school of thought regarding movies that goes along these lines: If you don't like a film-- or think you could do it better -- then, go ahead and make one in response.

Or, simply stated, the best answer to criticisms about one movie may be producing another movie.

In intriguing and careful fashion, Brad Anderson's Session 9 (2001) lives up to that notion because it's a very well-played, very atmospheric variation on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), but one that successfully skirts the line that The Shining, finally, tripped over.

I'm as devoted an admirer of The Shining as the next horror enthusiast, for a variety of reasons, and in Horror Films of the 1980s, I rated the film four stars out of four. But at a certain point in the film's narrative, Kubrick sacrifices the ability to play the drama of Jack Torrance and his family on two parallel tracks simultaneously.

The story is either about a haunted place, the Overlook Hotel, or about a man who has lost his marbles entirely under his own auspices, Jack Nicholson's Torrance. Ultimately, The Shining makes a choice that it is indeed ghosts who spur Torrance's mental degeneration and that the Overlook is actually "haunted." We know this, in part, because ghosts unlock old Jackie boy from a freezer where his wife, Wendy, has trapped him.

Freezers don't unlock themselves.

Lest I get fisked, I'm not stating categorically that ambiguity is the best way to present a cinematic ghost story. Only that with ambiguity comes uncertainty. And feeling "uncertain" during a movie fosters a sense of uneasiness and terror in audiences. Bluntly stated, those are always good vibrations for horror films to tap into.

Session 9 boasts many similarities to The Shining, right down to its formal structure. Like The Shining, Session 9 uses title cards on a black background to periodically interrupt the narrative and remind viewers of the passage of time. And also like The Shining, Session 9 occurs mostly at one, fearsome setting, in this case the abandoned, blighted Danvers State Mental Hospital. Session 9's tag-line, "Fear is a Place" could also advertise for The Shining in a pinch.

More importantly, Session 9 and The Shining both concern a man experiencing some trouble with his family, (Gordon [Peter Mullan]) in the former, and Nicholson's struggling writer in the latter. And, both films also feature first act "tours" of the landscape, of the imposing structure that quickly proves the fulcrum of the action. Furthermore, in both efforts, a tour guide -- Ullman in The Shining and Griggs (Paul Guilfoyle) in Session 9 -- relates the long, tortured history of the place.

And what a place we visit in Session 9. Built in 1871 and closed in 1985, Danvers State Hospital is a self-contained town of sorts, with a church, a movie theater and even a bowling alley. The patients rooms are called "seclusions" and the facility housed 24,000 mentally-deranged people at its height. The hospital is also known, not pleasantly, as the locale where the "pre-frontal lobotomy was perfected."

It is this empty, desolate castle where Gordon -- "The Zen Master of Calm" according to colleagues -- and his three co-workers (Phil [David Caruso], Hank [Josh Lucas] and Jeff [Brendan Sexton]) attempt an impossible job -- asbestos abatement -- in just one week's time. Hank and Phil don't like each other either, which makes the work all the more difficult. And Gordon's wife has just given birth to the couple's first baby, meaning that he isn't getting any sleep. He's on edge, he's exhausted, he's short-tempered...

On Gordon's first sojourn through the vast, abandoned hospital, something disturbing occurs. He hears a disembodied voice welcome him. "Hello, Gordon," it says. Later, the same voice seems to convince him, "You can hear me."

And worst of all, the creepy voice seems to match ecactly the voice heard on an old patient session tape; the voice of a person with multiple personalities, one who claims to live inside "the weak" and the "wounded."

As the days pass by in the storyline, the tension in the film mounts by degrees. To bring up another classic horror film, Session 9 reminded me a bit of The Amityville Horror (1979).

Stephen King very ably described in his book, Danse Macabre, how that film doesn't really concern ghosts so much as it does a fear of home ownership and financial ruin: the mortgage you can't pay, the heating bill you can't afford, and so on.

Session 9 generates much of its suspense from Gordon's impossible schedule, his desperate need for money, the dangerous nature of removing asbestos (and the necessary precautions to do it safely...) and his apparent estrangement from his wife at home. As Phil and Hank bicker, the clock ticks down, accidents occur, and an impossible job just becomes all the more impossible.

Director Brad Anderson also peppers his film with intimations of something far more sinister than human nature, or pending deadlines, however. Specifically, he suggests something evil creeping out of the very wood work at Danvers. There is a discussion, early on, of Satanic Ritual Abuse Syndrome, for instance. And a poster on a wall inside Danvers reads, "Suddenly, it's going to dawn on you," and sure enough, the audience begins to get the unshakable vibe (from those voices and other dark happenstances) that there is something far more monstrous, and even supernatural at work in this ruined place.

One scene, set in a dark basement at night, and featuring Hank quickly proves incredibly terrifying. Hank is alone, in a long dark, subterranean corridor...when he begins to hear noises somewhere behind him. And then a figure, a shadow appears in the distance, and trust me, your adrenalin will rocket. By this point, the movie has raised so much uncertainty and fear that little things like that carry tremendous impact.

When Gordon's team members begin to show up lobotomized...their eyes bleeding, your mind will really go into over-drive asking questions: which of these men boasts the knowledge to perform the act? Or -- even more alarmingly -- does that knowledge of the procedure come from the spirit of the edifice itself? Is one of the men possessed?

And that pondering inevitably brings me back to The Shining (1980).

Unlike that film, Anderson here draws out the ambiguity to almost unbearable, gut-wrenching lengths, so that, as viewers, we frantically ping-pong between explanations. Either the source of the evil is human frailty; or it is the Danvers' living, sentient Id, let loose to play. Commendably, Anderson never reveals his hand, and so even when the film ends, the images continue to linger in the imagination. This is one movie which will have you mentally replaying scenes for clues over a span of days.

Session 9 is a resourceful and careful film. It's masterpiece of mood too; a low-budget horror film that succeeds by suggesting, not showing the forces at work on the characters.

And the setting itself, -- especially the Psych Wing -- is utterly terrifying. Like House of the Devil (2008), this film has mastered the art of the anxiety-provoking build-up, the set-up that just keeps inching and inching along until it grabs you by the throat. In this case, Anderson doles out "session" tapes down in the records room, a little bit at a time. Every time these recordings answer a question in the larger puzzle, they raise another one.

In this review, I've compared Session 9 to The Shining (1980), The Amityville Horror (1979) and House of the Devil (2008), and frankly, it's a film that deserves to be considered in such rarefied company. The movie's structure is highly reminiscent of The Shining, but I appreciate how Anderson has extended his story's sense of ambiguity to almost torturous lengths as a differentiating quality.

What's actually amazing about Session 9 is that, without Kubrick's budget, studio sets and extensive shooting schedule, Anderson has managed to convey in Session 9 the substantive, inescapable, suffocating feeling of being trapped in a place that is truly evil.

That's no small accomplishment, and Session 9 will really rattle you, whether or not you are the "Zen Master of Calm," like Gordon.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Dune (1984)

"I probably shouldn't have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved and this was the structure to do them in, there was so much room to create a world..."

- Director David Lynch discusses the controversial Dune (1984). (Inner views: filmmakers in conversation By David Breskin; Da Capo Press, 1997)


The first (and still finest) cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 landmark novel, Dune, premiered in theaters in 1984 and immediately faced an onslaught of negative criticism. Since then, it has been remembered, often, as David Lynch's cinematic Waterloo, the Heaven's Gate of sci-fi epics.

Writing in The New York Times, critic Janet Maslin concluded, regarding the 1984 film that: "Several of the characters in ''Dune'' are psychic, which puts them in the unique position of being able to understand what goes on in the movie. The plot of ''Dune'' is perilously overloaded..."

Roger Ebert liked the film less. He noted: "This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time. Even the color is no good; everything is seen through a sort of dusty yellow filter, as if the film was left out in the sun too long." Ebert and sparring partner Gene Siskel also rated Dune as one of the worst films of the year.

Even dedicated Lynch scholars, like Jeff Johnson, author of Pervert in the Pulpit: Morality in the Works of David Lynch (McFarland) didn't have much good to say about this vintage sci-fi epic: "The Messianic plot in Herbert's novel," contended the author "yields to Lynch's Manichean vision, and the film pretends to Biblical proportions; but for all its weirdness and sprawling sci-fi excess, Dune from its inception was too large a canvas for a director like Lynch..."

Lynch himself rarely if ever discusses Dune these days, though it is interesting to recall that it is the sci-fi film he chose to direct over Return of the Jedi (1983) because Lynch felt, at least, that he could put his individual stamp on Dune; whereas in Jedi, he would be playing entirely in the world of another artist, George Lucas.

In 2010, the big question about this particular film remains this: on what grounds can a critic assess David Lynch's Dune as a failure or a success? In terms of adaptation? In terms of how well it fits David Lynch's canon? Or in the more general entertainment terms set out above, by Maslin and Ebert: special effects, presentation and general coherence?

I screened Dune again recently, for the first time on Blu-Ray and in this new format it was nothing short of a revelation. Simply put, the movie has never looked better. Mr. Ebert accurately described the poor coloring and murky aspects of the film's visuals in his original view back in the 1980s, but I can state with confidence that this problem has been entirely remediated by Blu-Ray and apparent re-mastering. Dune's colors in this format are stunning and vivid. So the visuals as part of the movie's "problem" must, finally, a quarter century after theatrical release, be taken off the table.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's look back first at the source material, and get a refresher on Dune's plot.

A Beginning is a Very Delicate Time: Frank Herbert's Dune

The sprawling, epic storyline of the novel Dune, first serialized in Analog in 1963, occurs in the year 10,191...thousands of years in our future.

Man has conquered the stars and colonized a number of planets throughout the galaxy. These worlds are joined together in a kind of cosmic Parliament called the Landsraad, and the lynch-pin of the entire galactic economy is a spice called "melange."

This all-important spice extends life and expands consciousness, but more than that it is the one substance in all the universe vital to space travel. The Spacing Guild and its navigators utilize the spice to "fold space" and transport goods and citizenry from one world to another.

The spice also boasts psychic properties, and is used by the secretive sisterhood called The Bene Gesserit, which in undergoing "spice agony" is able to access the genetic memory of all previous, historic priestesses. The sisterhood hopes to genetically forge a "super" man called the "Kwisatz Haderach." He will be able to gaze into the psychic realm where the women can't; into the genetic memory of all men in history. He will be able to see and shape the future.

In terms of narrative, the novel and the film involve a Machiavellian initiative by Emperor Shaddam IV to undermine a popular force in the Landsraad, Duke Leto Atreides of Caladan. In secret, Shaddam plots with the Duke's rival, the Harkonnens of Giedi Prime, to this end. He assigns the Atreides the administration of the inhospitable planet Arrakis, or Dune: the one place in the universe where the spice, melange can be harvested. Once the Duke and his people are ensconced there on that arid world, the Emperor lends his Sardaukar shock-troopers to the Baron Harkonnen, and there is a terrible sneak attack.

Only a few survive the Harkonnen assault, include Duke Leto's son, Paul Atreides, and the Duke's concubine, the Bene Gesserit, Jessica. They soon join with the strange desert people of Dune, the Fremen, and teach them a new way of fighting, "The Weirding Way." Paul then leads a Fremen rebellion -- under the name of "Muad'Dib" -- and alters the destiny of the galaxy itself. Taking control of the spice, Paul -- the "Kwisatz Haderach" sets Dune and humankind on a new path (one that will hopefully avoid extinction).

Obviously, there is more to the "plot" of this sweeping novel, but this is Dune's story in broad strokes. In terms of historical importance, Herbert's Dune is widely considered one of the first and most important "ecological" science fiction stories because it deals with the use, exploitation and preservation of natural resources (consider the spice something along the lines of oil). But also, in part, because Herbert's work goes into detail about many life-forms on Arrakis, and reveals how they are all inter-connected in one unique eco-system.

In terms of politics, Dune serves overtly as a metaphor for the treatment of third world nations (particularly those in the Middle East) by the world's resource-hungry Empires. Arrakis, a back-water planet, is exploited by the Landsraad for the spice that powers its economy. Yet the people of Dune, the Fremen, do not share the wealth of that resource. Young Paul Atreides, a representative of "Empire" in a way, goes nativ e in this story, and launches "jihad" against the power structure that he was born into. Atreides is much like the historical Lawrence of Arabia, T.E. Lawrence, actually

The movie version of Dune directed by David Lynch embodies all these concepts and story lines, but by necessity must abridge some subplots, minimize some character development, and truncate much of the action. That's just the nature of any book-to-film adaptation.

Among the biggest changes from book to film: Paul brings a "sound module" technology to the Fremen, which is different from "The Weirding Way" of the novel.

Perhaps more substantively, the movie's final sequence sees rain fall on the planet Dune for the first time in history (to herald, in essence, the arrival of the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul.) As I will discuss below, this is a change that, while unacceptable to fans of Herbert, works perfectly in Lynch's universe.

"I See Plans within Plans:" Waking Dreams and the Underneath David Lynch's Dune.

In my Lynch Dossier post last week, I mentioned how many of the auteur's films make an unconventional sense that I term "Dream Sense."

This means that narratives themselves -- and the logic inside those narratives -- are comprehensible to the audience, but not in the strict, conscious, Euclidean sense of "reality" familiar to us from mainstream film plots or their story arcs.

Contrarily, dreams both figure explicitly in Lynch's films as important turning points in the plays themselves and also, globally, as the mode of expression in his works of art. Dune is no exception.

Within the narrative of Dune, dreaming is an important vehicle for the storytelling. Paul's way of gaining knowledge, his way of learning...is dreaming.

Before the Atreides move to Caladan, before the "sleeper" awakens on Arrakis, the Duke's son experiences prophetic dreams; dreams that foretell of his destiny, and Paul's (Kyle MacLachlan) important role in shaping the very destiny of the universe. Specifically, he dreams of Dune's second moon, Maud'Dib and his future Fremen lover, Chani (Sean Young).

As viewers, we understand that this dream, this prophecy, represents truth and reality delivered to Paul, perhaps, by a Divine Being. Later, when Paul's destiny is in doubt because of the war with the Harkonnens on Arrakis, he explicitly ties belief in his dreams, in the prophecy of his future, to faith. "God created Arakis to train the faithful." One cannot go against the word of God," he says. It is the word of God, then, that gave Paul the dreams and inspired his actions.

At one point, when Paul is discouraged and in the thick of the battle, he feels cut off from his dreams. He experiences a moment of extreme self-doubt. "All the images from my future are gone," he reveals to Chani. To highlight this point, Lynch cuts to a dream montage in which Dune's second moon, Maud Di'b cracks like an egg, shattering into pieces in the night sky. This is what Paul fears, the shattering of his dreams and his failure to achieve his destiny.

"I'm dead to everyone unless I become what I may be," Paul then states. Thus he decides to drink the Water of Life and undergo the movie's equivalent of the spice agony. For Paul, the"sleeper must awaken," and to undergo this process of self-actualization and self-realization, he must tap into the language and universe of dreams that will allow him to, literally "control the world."

Specifically, the Water of Life will allow Paul to see below the surface of things: to the hidden underneath. This is a very common Lynchian concept, of the world in two parts: as it appears to the naked eye and as it truly is. In many of his films, it is the character who faces or broaches the underneath -- and survives its lessons -- that proves successful, like Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986). The same is true of Paul here.

That underneath that Paul sees in his Water of Life vision involves an important, formerly unseen connection: the spice and the worm are one in the same. If Paul can control the worms (and therefore the spice), he will have the Empire at his mercy.

Lynch's unconventional visuals again express the nature of Paul's revelation. The film cuts to images of outer space (the universe itself), and Paul --- laying still and prone -- is at the center of everything...the very well-spring of the cosmic mind.

We then see images of the cathedral-like Navigator spaceship as a Third-Stage Navigator becomes aware of Paul, and swells with orange light, almost like rage. Atreides has invaded their "sacred space" and rejected their vision of reality for his own. The cathedral-like nature of the Guild spaceship reveals the wealth of the Guild but also its disconnection from "truth" and "faith." The Guild is all about dogma, control and hiding the underneath. That, in part, is what Paul shatters by taking the Water of Life. He experiences a personal connection to the Divine, to "God" if you will, and no longer needs the Church of the Guild to be his intermediary. He can be everywhere at once.

Next in the dream vision, an outstretched, disembodied human hand is seen floating in space (in the center of Lynch's frame), representing, perhaps, Paul's new grip on the universe. Symbolically, an outstretched hand might also represent faith and justice, and that too appears to fit this context, for Paul's faith in his dreams has led him here (led him to the dangerous task of drinking the Water of Life), and justice is what he will bring for the Fremen...and to his enemies.

Dreams occur throughout Dune. The Guild, which can fold space and time, becomes aware of Paul through another form of dreaming: psychic visions. Specifically, the Guild conspires with the Emperor to assure that Paul Atreides is killed. This is because, in those visions of the future, the Guild has seen what Paul can become; that he can become the man who stops all spice production, all spice trade, and thus all space travel. In opposition to Paul's way of knowing, through dreams the Spice Guild uses dreams to prevent destiny; to go against the very Word of God.

Thus David Lynch's Dune concerns, in a very real sense, one man's "vision of the future" (or dream) battling another man (or organization's) plan for the future. But that dream is literal, expressed through the auspices of prophetic and psychic visions. Sometimes for human beings, dreams are all that sustain us, and sometimes dreams do come true. In Paul's case we can say that both of these truisms are accurate. His dream on Caladan awakens him to the truth of the universe and gives him the power to change the fate of the galaxy itself. The film's final scene, of rain-fall on Dune may not be motivated rationally, scientifically or out of fidelity to Herbert's novel, but it makes perfect dream sense.

Throughout the film, Paul has dreamed of a droplet of water falling into a pool, and having a ripple effect there. This shot recurs in several dream montages, including the aforementioned Water of Life sequence. This is a metaphor the process of waking up, the "drip, drip, drip" if you will of knowledge added to knowledge, insight added to insight, of faith added to faith. And the ripple effect represents the way that Paul's circle grows, ultimately to include an Army of Fremen, Atreides retainers, and even the giant sand worms of Dune. In the film's last scene, Paul is rewarded for his faith and belief by a literal deluge from the Heavens, from an impossible rain fall. Why? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach.

"The likes of which even God has never seen:" Dune's Production Design Reveals the Universe of the Underneath

Seeing Dune on Blu Ray, I realized that the film's visual quality actually makes it an equal to such great science-fiction efforts as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Blade Runner (1982). That's no small statement, but I believe it's a valid one.

Consider that David Lynch had the task of creating not one "world" in Dune, but five separate and distinct worlds, all of which had to convey the meaning of the story with images, substance and color.

The production design of the forty million dollar film brilliantly creates a context for the action, and transmits important -- even vital -- clues about the nature of Paul's universe.

The first world visited in Dune is Kaitain, home of the Emperor Shaddam IV. As a Guild space craft arrives in this kingdom, Lynch provides an exterior view of the royal city by night, and it looks almost identical to the Kremlin, circa 1984, with a few futuristic touches. It's an Old World City of long history, but also, clearly, of some sinister aspect.

The interiors seen on Kaitain are opulent, decked out entirely in gold, with ornate spires and an abundance of room and space. This is, quite naturally, the environs of a King. Even the Emperor's pyramidal spaceship seen at the end of the film is golden, a symbol not only of wealth perhaps, but egregious, thoughtless waste. The artifical, gold universe of this futuristic Midas proves a real contrast to the authentic, sun-warmed gold of Arrakis, a very different kind of kingdom. One world is all about wealth; the other is about survival.

What the viewer gleans instantly (and almost subconsciously) from its views of Kaitain is that it is a world of extreme riches, but not warmth. In other worlds, this gilded, extravagant world of affluence has much to lose. if things change, if Paul's jihad is successful. That's what the production design informs us.

The planet of the film's other villains, the Harkonnens, is called Giedi Prime, and it is a world entirely out of balance with its environment.

Giedi Prime is an industrialized realm of lurid, sickly green hues, rains of black oil, and out-of-proportion, excessive machinery.

According to Lynch, this world was created primarily with steel, bolts and porcelain...and those materials transmit the idea of a hard, unforgiving place. It is perpetual night-time on this world too; there is no sunlight to warm the human soul.

The message conveyed is that Giedi Prime is an inhuman, ecological disaster. And this too informs the viewer something important about the film's storyline. As administrators of Arrakis and the spice, the Harkonnens are incapable of understanding the important connections between the Fremen, the spice and the worms. They are not interested in maintaining environmental "balance," they are strip-miners. Again, this is something Lynch establishes visually. The Harkonnens, as evidenced by their Baron's (Kenneth McMillan) egregious acne, are diseased parasites, sucking life from others. They are so inhuman, actually, that their appetites are literally monstrous. The Baron imagines sexual delight with his nephew (incest), and Rabban, "The Beast" is a brute who takes joy in killing. All the citizens of Giedi Prime are outfitted with heart plugs that can be ripped out (leading to a terminal blood flood), and the only thing surprising about this is that Harkonnens have hearts at all.

The third society depicted in Dune involves the Guild, the Navigators. We see their massive, cathedral-like ships on two occasions, their strangely dressed travel entourage (a priesthood, clearly) on Kaitain, and we understand from their first scene (in which they approach the Emperor and demand the death of Paul), that these people carry a power above and beyond sovereign statehood. They are, essentially, Dune's version of the Catholic Church in historical Europe. Because they control access to, essentially, God (the spice), they control the levers of power in the Empire too.

Caladan is a different case all together. This is appropriate, considering that the Atreides are the film's protagonists. Caladan is a beautiful, lush world of oceans, wood-paneling and exquisite carpentry. The people here seem to live in harmony with nature, and even their lamps are made to resemble the wild-life of the planet: roaming birds. The inference our eyes draw from Lynch's Caladan is that only in a world of natural beauty and balance can the Kwisatz Haderach arise. Nurtured in a world where everything (environment/education/physical fitness) seems in balance, Paul is able to thrive; to be receptive to the prophecy that changes his life.

And finally, there's Dune. Arrakis. Desert planet. It is a harsh, unforgiving world, but not unlike Caladan, the planet seems to evidence a unique sense of balance. The Fremen with their stillsuits express the idea of recycling and giving back to the body usedresources, and that's also a metaphor for the planet itself. Here, the structures of Arakeen are built unobtrusively from Earthen walls of clay, and the Fremen store vast quantities of "their" water in subterranean reservoirs. The idea is of stoic conservation; of eking out a life in a difficult environment. Though Paul was born and raised in a land of natural plenty (but not opulence like Kaitain), he comes to see the ascetic beauty of Arrakis; the way that the Fremen have forged a sustainable paradigm and way of life in a harsh terrain.

In Dune, each of these five "worlds" (Kaitain, Giedi Prime, the Cathedral of the Guild, Caladan and Arrakis) is crafted beautifully, down to the smallest detail.

Amazingly, the sets don't look like traditional movie sets; they appear to be part of a lived-in world, and many locations (the Duke's bedroom and balcony on Caladan, the Arakeen control room, the Fremen living quarters) are only visited for very short spans. Honestly, it looks like Lynch took his cameras to real locations and filmed there.

Down to the portraits hanging on the walls, the exquisite woodworking on Caladan, and the tiles in the grand hall on Arrakis. Lynch showcases his trademark attention to detail and penchant for lush visuals here. Dune is utterly, inarguably, magnificent in this regard.

But commendably, every set, every planet in Dune isn't just eye-candy. The production design transmits to the audience a sense of history and authenticity, but more importantly, some sense of meaning in this story. Again, it's not exposition, it's not in the screenplay, it's the between-the-lines approach of David Lynch that asks the audience to examine and synthesize, from exposure to his visuals, a sense of meaning nearly "outside" or independent from the words uttered by the characters.

I first saw Dune in high school (at the Clairidge Theater in Montclair, New Jersey), before I read the book even, and you know what? Even as a fourteen-year old, I didn't find it confusing in the slightest. Then I did read the book and the movie made even more sense. But I have never understood why movie critics insist on stating that the film is confusing. It isn't confusing, especially if you trust your eyes and pay attention to the dream imagery and production design. In fact, an opposite argument could be forged here. Through the heavy use of character voice-overs, Dune is actually over-explained, over-simplified. How can someone think the movie is confusing when the voice-overs explain everything (from Hunter Seekers to the gom jabbar)?

Indeed, a clever critic could probably argue the point that by removing the voice-over narration all together, Dune would be a better, less-cluttered film. I don't know if I agree with that idea entirely, because the voice-overs, by my perspective, lend another "dream sense" aspect to the proceedings. With the dramatis personae conveying their deep inner thoughts, there's the feeling that, in fact, we (the audience) are psychic; privy to information gleaned outside of traditional routes available to humans. The insistent, personal, whispered voice-over works well to help the film's form reflect its very content. If we are to understand the story by dream sense, as Paul contextualizes his act of self-realization, it seems that the personal voice over helps.

Does Dune have weaknesses? Sure. It's biggest weakness is the depiction of the final battle, between Maud D'ib's sandworm army and the forces of the Emperor. The combat is not particularly convincing or impressive, marred mainly by poor matte and blue screen work. But frankly, there was no other way to create this scene in 1984. In the age before CGI, the important elements of the sequence (worms, ships and cityscapes) had to be entirely constructed from miniatures. Those miniatures then had to be composited with the live-action actors. Not easy, especially given the vast difference in scope between combatants (worms and Sardaukar). Dune is a great film marred by a final battle scene, but that's hardly a disqualifier in terms of quality.

Some people may also argue that the electronic score by Toto, what with all the power chords, is somehow dated in 2010. Personally, I dig the soundtrack in the way I dig the disco opening theme to Space: 1999 (1975-1977): it captures a moment in time, and has a techno-quality that still reads, even years later, as "futuristic."

Sometimes, in illuminating the qualities of a particular film, a comparison helps. A couple of years ago (uh, maybe a decade ago now?) the Sci-Fi Channel created its own version of Dune and it was an absolute travesty, an almost cardboard rendition of Herbert's story with no sense of scale or drama, and certainly no sense of production design that could rival Lynch's vision. I'm amazed that some fans of Frank Herbert's novel have taken to this version: it looks like Dune by way of the 1930s Flash Gordon: it's a two-dimensional comic-book cartoon. With dream sense and sets that express the nature of Dune's universe, Lynch's version, despite diversions from Herbert's mythos, remains infinitely more impressive and "real."

With the arrival of Dune on crisp, glorious Blu Ray, My hope is that the sleeping critical reception for this great film will finally...awaken.