Light in the dark­ness: David Lynch’s Dune

Even as a 1984 Dune apol­o­gist, I can admit that David Lynch’s third fea­ture is a strange entry to a canon of oth­er­wise deeply earnest, haunt­ing work that leaves behind it an unpar­al­leled mark on visu­al cul­ture. A text­book case of a film mau­dit, Dune suf­fered from such an extreme case of stu­dio inter­fer­ence that Lynch, being denied final cut, would end up dis­avow­ing it entire­ly. It’s no pre­cious stone, but a rough-cut gem shines all the same, and despite its flaws, it’s an aes­thet­i­cal­ly bril­liant, out­landish­ly psy­che­del­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of Frank Herbert’s space epic. It also marks the begin­ning of Lynch’s cre­ative part­ner­ship with Kyle Maclach­lan. Lest we for­get, Jack Nance is there too.

If one thing in this film is unde­ni­ably Lynchi­an, it’s Gie­di Prime. Lynch’s fin­ger­prints are all over the Harkon­nen home plan­et, which he depicts as a grotesque, post-indus­tri­al Emer­ald City rid­den with dis­ease, smoke­stacks and thick black liq­uid bub­bling in open trench­es. As we’re intro­duced to the Harkon­nens, Ken­neth McMil­lan imme­di­ate­ly com­mands the scene as the unhinged Baron, rel­ish­ing in hideous excess while a doc­tor lov­ing­ly tends to the warts on his face. Each of the Harkon­nens’ ser­vants bears a scar on their face – eyes are sewn shut (see no evil), an ear is miss­ing (hear no evil), a mouth is stitched up (speak no evil) – and are all equipped with heart plugs which the Baron can tug like the pin on a grenade, the threat of instant death loom­ing over their every move.

What fol­lows is one of the film’s most mem­o­rable images: a young male ser­vant is ush­ered into the room with a bou­quet of flow­ers. Wrap­ping up his scheme on how to kill Leto Atrei­des (​Jür­gen Prochnow), the Baron floats towards a pipe that oozes black liq­uid all over him, then charges for the young man, pulls his heart plug out, and – in an unfor­tu­nate­ly faith­ful repro­duc­tion of Herbert’s homo­pho­bia, whose char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the Baron would grotesque­ly asso­ciate homo­sex­u­al­i­ty with pae­dophil­ia – nau­se­at­ing­ly embraces him. Blood spills out of the young ser­vant and splat­ters across the flo­ral arrange­ment while Toto’s score swells with orches­tral dread.

The Baron is a deeply car­toon­ish vil­lain: man­ic, glut­to­nous, sick­ly, per­verse. How­ev­er, when we hear his inner thoughts, McMillan’s more sub­dued voiceover paints a despot of many gross lay­ers, a cal­cu­lat­ing politi­cian whose over-the-top demeanour could just be an affec­ta­tion. Ulti­mate­ly, the heav­i­est source of hor­ror that weighs over this overt­ly crude dis­play of polit­i­cal mon­strous­ness, is how much it resem­bles the spec­tre of fas­cism, more specif­i­cal­ly the face it wears in Amer­i­ca today.

With­in the time­line of Lynchi­an evil, it also makes per­fect sense that the Baron is an imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor of the more sin­is­ter, psy­chot­ic, bound­less evil that would mate­ri­alise in Frank Booth. Beyond the phys­i­cal­ly mon­strous, evil in Dune can be charis­mat­ic, slen­der and mys­te­ri­ous too. Evil can be Sting as Feyd Rautha, oiled-up, strut­ting in a metal­lic blue codpiece.

Had Lynch been tasked with mak­ing Gie­di Prime: The Movie, the result might not have been such a big source of sad­ness in his life. Dune would teach Lynch about the cor­ro­sive effects of big-bud­get stu­dio film­mak­ing and the dan­gers of com­pro­mis­ing his authen­tic­i­ty, which he would nev­er go on to do again. And as we go back to his films to tra­verse the strange and dark cor­ri­dors of illu­sion, we must keep with us the knowl­edge that through­out the dark­ness, his faith in human­i­ty, love, hope and good­ness remained unyield­ing. To keep our hearts intact, we must make sure to hold this light inside of us, for the Log Lady knows this truth as sure as the dawn: Dark­ness will always yield to light when the light is strong.

To com­mem­o­rate the life and cre­ative lega­cy of the peer­less film­mak­er David Lynch, Lit­tle White Lies has brought togeth­er writ­ers and artists who loved him to cre­ate ​‘In Heav­en Every­thing Is Fine‘: a series cel­e­brat­ing his work. We asked par­tic­i­pants to respond to a Lynch project how­ev­er they saw fit – the results were haunt­ing, pro­found, and illuminating.