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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The story of Dune can be described using all sorts of adjectives, but in my books, it can be wrapped up in three themes, so to speak: epic, romantic, and ethnic. The feature film of 1984 went overboard on the epic and romantic, bordering on delusional. The Sci-Fi Channel film of 2000 nearly abandons both the epic and romantic aspects of the story and explodes with ethnicity. The cinematography and art direction in the newer film are nothing short of brilliant, correcting the silliness surrounding the visuals of the earlier film. But with a seemingly endless budget for sets, the new film completely loses track of both the characters and the larger political battle, ignoring the reflective meditations of the first film and, of course, skipping entire battle scenes such as the invasion of Arrakis by the Harkonnens. With these aspects of the story missing, the 2000 film lacks the passion and scope of the first film, dwelling instead on lengthy and rather boring, unnecessary scenes involving characters whose actors don't seem to care one bit for their roles. As corny as the original Lynch film was, at least you got the feeling that you were witnessing a story of epic proportions, and that was partly due to the phenomenal cast of that film and wonderous (though I dare say again: corny) visuals of the different worlds and space travel. The 2000 film is certainly respectable, for its attention paid to the ethnic elements of the story is incredible, but at its lengthy running time, there did not remain enough of the epic or romantic elements to keep audiences from losing interest. A rising star of the sci-fi genre of film scoring, Graeme Revell is a diverse enough composer to tackle the project. Interestingly, he too would be constrained by the flaws of the film. To deal with the overwhelming ethnicity of this version of the story, Revell returned to Middle Eastern and former Soviet area instrumentation that we have heard in his dramatic, suspence scores such as The Siege, producing the exact kind of exotic feeling that the first film lacked. But in so doing, Revell, restricted by the weakness of the film, could not inject the necessary romance or action into the score (and anyone familiar with The Saint knows that he is capable of doing so in a heartbeat). But the film had no epic battle scenes, no satisfying romantic moments of decent length (especially disappointing in terms of the Jessica and Leto part of the story, which was agonizing in the first film), and Revell therefore never had an opportunity to give this score as much power as it needed. Having sat though the entire film myself, I do believe that there were many moments underplayed by Revell, who could have easily stepped up a notch with the force of the City of Prague Philharmonic and Chorus, which is no slacking group of musicians. The power of that performing group was wasted, with the only highlights of the score coming from incessant pounding of the timpani and some interesting woodwind solos. If you came looking for a triumphant-sounding score, then you're watching the wrong film; even with the valiant finish to the story, Revell's finale simply restates the title theme without bells, whistles, victorious horns, or, come to think of it, anything that would give you the impression that the Fremen rebels had actually won! In sum, the score for the 2000 television film is underdeveloped and underperformed. Revell is a fantastically talented composer, which makes me believe that the heavily restrained scale of the score was a dictate from the director and/or producers. The music was not only low on the epic scale, but what Revell did produce was undermixed in the film, often at barely audible levels at times when the score was actually at its best. For entire ten minute sequences, the low mixing of the music caused Revell's effort to wash away into nothingness... a meaningless background noise. So the blame for the ultimate failure of the score does not rest solely on Revells' shoulders. The producers and director of the Sci-Fi Channel film stipped away all the elements of the story that would have allowed Revell the freedom to elaborate on the subdued title theme for the film and rock the story with the epic power it requires in order to hold water. One interesting note is a short passage at 0:40 into the final track during which Revell pays tribute to Toto's title theme for the original film. It was a nice touch for those of us who have Toto's 1984 score memorized, but it was far too little to salvage the score from the murky depths of despair that the film's drudgery place it in. I can only say that this entire new film was a monumental disappointment in its neglect of key epic and romantic elements of the story, and no overemphasized ethnic flavour provided by Revell in his music could compensate for the lack of the other two elements. **
The insert includes extensive notes about the film and its music. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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