And yet, I still returned to Dune every few years. And it got a little better each time I watched it, while certain other Lynch movies (The Elephant Man, Lost Highway) drop in my estimation each time I revisit them. After multiple viewings—and still never having read the entirety of the Frank Herbert novel on which the film is based—Dune's plot seems so lucid I feel like a dum-dum for not understanding it upon my first viewing. While it seemed to sorely lack Lynch's experimental verve all those years ago, I now can't understand how I didn't always recognize how far-out Dune is, with its disconcertingly fascistic hero and disgusting, pustule-plagued villain, who at one point, tries to force a captive to milk a cat duct-taped to a rat. I mean, did Lynch ever even devise anything weirder than that?
Now I can enjoy Dune as a pretty entertaining space opera and a pretty avant-garde one to boot. It's not without its flaws, but now Virginia Madsen's bewilderingly complicated prologue, all the fluffy eyebrows and lip sores, Sting's glorious hamming as a baddy in a leather diaper, the cornball closing credits featuring an appallingly cheesy Toto tune, and the cat/rat make me chuckle and add to the pleasure of the wild mess that is Dune. The picture also happens to have some truly spectacular costumes and sets and one of the greatest casts ever assembled. Jab me with a hunter-seeker, but I like Dune!
I'm not alone, and the film has long had a small but dedicated fan-base. Dunies should be most pleased with Arrow's new 4K restoration of their favorite movie, which is hitting the market as a double-disc standard Blu-ray, and a double-disc 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray. Since I haven't gone far enough down the AV club sandworm hole for 4K Ultra-Whatsahoosits, I reviewed the standard Blu-ray, which looks superb with strong detail, natural grain, and striking enough visuals for a movie that is mostly the color of sand. Most of the extras are oldies, with all the featurettes ported over from the 2005 DVD and the solid if somewhat dry 40-minute 2003 doc Impressions of Dune. A 6-minute promo doc from 1984 features charmingly dated video effects and more enthusiasm for the project from Lynch than you're likely to see anywhere else. Interestingly, this set really emphasizes Dune as a Lynch film, so it does not include the bloated TV-edit credited to Alan Smithee as the earlier double-disc DVD edition does. No big loss.
Arrow's new bonuses include a few on-screen interviews, a couple of audio commentaries from people who didn't actually work on the picture, and two truly neat featurettes: one about the film's bizarre kid-oriented tie-in products courtesy of the guy behind the fun Netflix series The Toys That Made Us and the other about Toto's generally terrific score (that closing-credits music notwithstanding). This lavish package also includes a reversible poster, a selection of lobby card repros, and a thick booklet with essays and an excerpt from Chris Rodley's Lynch on Lynch book (just like a Criterion Collection booklet!). Don't fold space without it.
