Dune
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
You know so many people count this as a failure for Lynch, probably including Lynch himself, but I have always really enjoyed it as a film. For me it works as a kind of enigmatic art film as much as it does a big blockbuster and not on the level I can enjoy B- and Z-grade films on. I don’t think I’ve once found it structurally incoherent as some have suggested, though that may be due to repeated viewings with handfuls of kava kava supplements as a youth. I have never read the books, but from what I’ve heard they seem considerably more labyrinthine than the film, which makes sense as novels and films aren’t structurally equivalent forms. And since having seen the awful SciFi channel “authentic” interpretation of the book, I’m not really convinced Lynch’s film would have been better if it had stuck closer to Herbert’s plot. If anybody can articulate to me why they think this is a poor film without resorting to the normal crutches (Lynch jumping the shark, deLaurentis re-cutting the film, not true to the novel, Sting’s allegedly poor performance, that its just inane big budget Hollywood pap, MacLachlan hate, etc), I would love to hear it, because I’ve just never understood the argument.
It has always been one of my favorite Lynch films, too. Taken on its own, it is perhaps his strangest film. Even more so than Eraserhead, as that can be read “psychoanalytically.”
It seems to function on a very dream-like level–something all of his movies manage to do (even the Straight Story).