Arrakis... Dune... Desert planet... Sole source of the spice melange in the entire universe... A place of strife, power struggles, fanaticism, and revolutions devouring their own children. (Continued from Part 1)
----
Frank Herbert gradually got wind of the nothing-short-of-daring Slovak adaptation of
Dune during the second half of 1984. The film was mostly kept under wraps outside of central Europe until very late before the premiere, so it took a while for word-of-mouth to spread on the western side of the European Iron Curtain, and even a bit longer to reach North American science fiction circles.
Dune was actually somewhat hampered by legal rights issues even after its premiere, so much so that the film's crew became terrified Frank Herbert's letter to them would threaten to sue the whole production and any future sequels. Thankfully, it turned out that Frank reached out, genuinely curious about the film, as he had heard some buzz about the adaptation, but had no means to actually see it. Relieved, Hollý and the crew pulled some strings via the FRG production companies they co-produced the film with, and two or three copies of a special version with added English subtitles was sent overseas to the United States.
Herbert eventually wrote back, having carefully watched the film several times, even taking notes on later rewatches. To the crew's relief, he sounded surprisingly elated, and even promised to help with clearing up any legal issues with the
Dune series' current publishers. Herbert confessed he not only enjoyed the adaptation, he was particularly fond of the attention payed to the script, the use of film language and acting subtlety instead of heavy-handed exposition, and the creators showing a clear grasp on the themes he wanted to explore in the novel. "I started watching your adaptation with low, tempered expectations, and I was in for a pleasant shock at how well your crew and cast have managed to recreate the novel, its atmosphere, story and themes, without resorting to oversimplifications or otherwise underestimating your viewers. Consider your adaptation a success !"
Frank Herbert made no secret he deeply dislikes communist, far-right or any other similar regimes, but he was very happy to see his novel found a strong resonance even in an overlooked Warsaw Pact country and inspired such a dedicated film-making effort. He even confessed that the mutual appreciation of art and narrative themes on both sides of the Iron Curtain gives him hope that the world might still become a more unifieid place in the future, at some point or another. Most importantly, besides help with sorting out the legal rights for the first film, Herbert also promised to help sort out the rights for the potential two sequels. (Personally, he thought it would be likely the most plausible to not continue after
Children of Dune, feeling that the technology needed to adapt
God Emperor of Dune wasn't there yet, and would be prohibitively expensive and inaccessible to modest Slovak film studios anyway.)
Correspondence between the film-makers and the writer continued until his death in 1986. Every few weeks or at least months, some mail arrived to Herbert or from Herbert, with the writer answering whenever he had time in-between writing
Chapterhouse Dune and planning the seventh novel (the latter ultimately unfinished). Though the total correspondence wasn't numerically that large, it was still packed with information and insights by both sides. Nowadays, the correspondence is
part of the archives of the Slovak Film Institute. Photocopies and digital scans of the original correspondence had also been created later and donated to the Herbert estate, and eventually even the Herbert fandom.
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SPASITEĽ DUNY ("
Dune Messiah")
Directed by:
Martin Hollý Jr.
Produced by: Slovenská filmová tvorba Bratislava (Czechoslovakia), Taurus Film, Omnia Film (Federal Republic of Germany)
Country of origin: Slovakia (partly co-produced with production companies from the Federal Republic of Germany)
Based on the novel by: Frank Herbert
Pre-production phase: 1985-1986
Filming: September 1986 - February 1987
Post-production: February 1983 - August 1987
Released: 12 September 1987
Cast:
Vladimír Hajdu as Paul Atreides, known as Muad'Dib
Petra Vančíková as Chani Kynes
Milan Kňažko as Hayt / Duncan Idaho (ghola)
Marián Geišberg as Stilgar
Natália Hasprová as Alia Atreides
Jana Nagyová as princess Irulan Corrino
Boris Farkaš as Otheym
Zuzana Mauréry as Lichna / Scytale (Lichna impersonation)
Peter Bzdúch as Bijaz
Dušan Jamrich as Scytale ("real" form)
Vlado Černý as Scytale (Jamis impersonation)
Viera Strnisková as Gaius Helen Mohiam
Dušan Lenci as Guild Navigator Edric
Ľubomír Paulovič as Korba
Kamila Magálová as Harah
Soňa Valentová as lady Jessica Atreides (cameo)
Jozef Kroner as Gurney Halleck (cameo)
Jozef Adamovič as duke Leto Atreides (vision cameo)
Marek Ťapák as Staban Tuek
Leopold Haverl as a Spacing Guild representative
and
Peter Rúfus as filmbook records voiceover
Filming locations:
- Koliba Film Studios (most of the interiors, including in sietches, Arrakeen and various palaces)
- Šranecké piesky in Záhorie (near Lakšárska Nová Ves, various Arrakis exteriors)
- several Slovak quarries (Dargov, Brekov and Nižný Hrabovec, rocky Arrakis exteriors)
- Súľovské skaly, Veľký Rozsutec, Bukovské vrchy, Tatra mountain lakes (exterior footage representing Caladan)
- arboretum in Mlyňany, arboretum in Borová Hora (grounds of Castle Caladan)
- Orava Castle (some interiors of Castle Caladan)
- Košice Botanical Gardens (interior scenes of the Arrakeen Palace greenhouse)
- Wadi Rum desert in Jordan (Arrakis exterior shots, main desert filming locations)
- deserts in Uzbekistan (Arrakis exterior shots, main desert filming locations)
Directors of photography: Stanislav Szomolányi and Jozef Šimončič
Music: Svetozár Stračina (orchestral themes), Marián Varga and Collegium Musicum (electronic ambients and electric guitar ambients)
Set design: Viliam Ján Gruska
Special effects and production design:
Most of the effects in the second installment were a continuation of the tried-and-true effects from the sleeper hit that was the first film. The film crew and production designers of the original
Dune film had the foresight of keeping all of the already completed effects assets that served them well during filming at home and abroad. This made the transition into adapting the sequel easier. As in the first film, optical effects were used minimally, with an emphasis on blended techniques using miniatures, on in-camera effects and other practical trickery.
One of the most elaborate and involved new effects was the full depiction of a Guild Navigator, specifically steersman Edric, one of the co-conspirators in the attempt to assassinate Paul Atreides. The production designers went through many different ideas and concepts before they started arriving at a conclusion on how to bring Edric to life. With computer generated imagery (CGI) being a complete novelty even west of the Iron Curtain, the only real avenues available for the Navigator character were either the development of an elaborate and detailed humanoid puppet, or the use of an actor in a detailed prosthetic suit. After a short while of exploring the puppet idea, it dawned on the production design crew and the director that even the best puppet they could create might seem a little too artificial and unconvincing. Particularly when it comes to depicting speech. The crew were worried they're at wits end, but after an evening of discussion between the production designers, prosthetic makers and the director, an inspired compromise was reached. Rather than use only one of the two methods, they'd attempt to combine the two.
Most of the body of the Navigator would be depicted by a detailed, remote-controlled puppet with concealed wires, but the face of Edric and all his expressions and speech would be portrayed by a real actor in a lifelike prosthetic mask ! Later into the final casting, after going through several potential portrayers, Dušan Lenci landed the role, in no small part thanks to his distinctive, thoughtful voice. Lenci was reported to proclaim, after having the completed prosthetic mask applied to his face and opening his eyes for the first time afterward, "My goodness ! So odd... You've really turned me into a peculiar fella...". Despite the actor's initial fears that he wouldn't be able to move his fake lips and eyelids convincingly, those elements of the mask were fine-tuned fairly quickly. In the meantime, the puppet was built, intended to be presented only from the front. The legs, arms and hands were remote-controlled via mechanical wires and small servos, and were designed to give the impression of floating in mid-air (to depict Edric's floating in a spice tank). Previous props went unwasted, with the crew improving the existing single prop-hand of the Navigator from the first film, then creating a right-hand copy of it with slightly different surface details, and integrating both hands into the new full-size puppet. Edric's body, though clothed in something like a hi-tech swimsuit with the emblem of the Guild, had a wrinkly, almost frog-like or toad-like skin texture and a more subdued colour pallete, inspired by various colour hues of the desert. The backside hidden via set design and forced perspective.
Behind the puppet was a concealed cubbyhole of sorts for the actor. Dušan Lenci later joked that getting into the cubbyhole was like entering a tiny sub or some deep-sea diving suit or spacesuit entered from the back. He voiced some worries about having to stand in the space behind the puppet for a longer while, so the crew built an improvised stool-like seat. Lenci once again joked years later, while recording his interviews for the behind the scenes documentaries for the remastered home video releases, that the way he sat comfy on a stool, in an elevated position within Edric's spice tank, made him feel like a bored monarch idly watching his lower-seated fellow actors. The interior of the spice tank was created by the use of colour-tinted see-through glass, colour-tinted backlit areas near the floor of the tank, and the use of dry ice plumes floating inside. The resulting image was that of Edric the Navigator floating inside a cylindrical tank filled with spice gas.
Due to the presence of a Tleilaxu spy in the story, the cunning Face Dancer known as Scytale, it was deemed necessary to use creative camera angles, concealment tricks and editing room cutting techniques to mostly hide the Face Dancer transformations. As a consequence, Scytale's transformations happened largelly off-screen. However, much as in the case of the mutated, merman-like Edric, Martin Hollý wanted to equally emphasize the strangeness of the Face Dancers, given their origin as bio-engineered humans. Between 1984 and Frank Herbert's eventual passing in 1986, fairly regular correspondence between the writer and the film crew continued, with Hollý having the foresight to ask what the neutral form of a Face Dancer's... well, face... would look like, if it was ever to be seen. Frank replied to the question by sharing his description from
Heretics of Dune, released just recently in 1984 (in what would become one of many questions and answers in an impromptu FAQ for the film-makers). The crew needed no more encouragement. A one-off prosthetic mask was developed for Scytale's post-mortem face, based on the description from
Heretics. It was a far less mobile prosthetic than the one made for Edric, as it didn't need to be used for speech, but still had a high level fo detail and polish.
Mr. Jamrich, the other of the two "prosthetic Dušan-s", as the crew grew to nickname the two actors, put on Scytale's mask for the brief shots of his dead face, and still considered the mask remarkably alienating and scary. (An film buff urban legend emerged in the 1990s about Jamrich suffering from nightmares after seeing himself in the prosthetic, but Jamrich denied this in the 2000s, after he had first heard of this claim.) In the finished film, Paul Atreides, aided by the timely intervention of Duncan Idaho and his own newborn son Leto II, outsmarts and kills Scytale, who threatened to murder his newborn children and tried to blackmail him to give into the demands of his masters, the feared Bene Tleilax. After Paul kills Scytale, saving little Leto and Ghanima, we witness a shot of Scytale's face, lying on the ground, mouth slightly agap. It has transformed from its usual form (portrayed directly by Dušan Jamrich) to a hideous, humanoid but semi-inhuman appearance (portrayed via the one-off prosthetic). A face right out of Herbert's description ! (
"Almost chinless round faces, pug noses, tiny mouths, black button eyes, and short-cropped white hair that stood up from their heads like the bristles on a brush.")
Famously, in the entire scene prior to that, Scytale changes his appearance and voice several times. After he drops the guise of Otheym's daughter Lichna (whom he murdered), he uses his "standard" face for a while, but then briefly adopts the guise of Jamis, the Fremen Paul had killed in a duel in the first film, to mess with Paul's mind and deepen his guilt. For the brief scene, Vlado Černý reprised his appearance as Jamis, albeit actually portraying Scytale. The Face Dancer, reverting to his "standard" face and mocking Paul's mental torment, threatens to also change his face to that of Paul's father, Leto I, and denigrate Paul in order to break him mentally. Such a threat went ultimately unrealised before Paul quickly grasps at the opportunity he receives to kill Scytale. Though director Hollý wanted to show off the Face Dancer transformation trickery in the scene, he felt that including Leto I would overegg the scene, so the idea of having Jozef Adamovič as Leto I mocking Vladimír Hajdu as Paul was never filmed. However, Adamovič did reprise his role as Leto I in Paul's visions and dreams seen earlier in the film. (Other brief cameo appearances in the film included lady Jessica and Gurney on Caladan, pondering about how Paul is doing, and whether to visit him after the assassination attempt. These scenes were added to keep some continuity before the two characters' full reappearance in an eventual third film.)
Audiences in 1987 were fascinated by the first appearance of steersman Edric, as well as the later scene of Scytale's manipulative mind games and scary face after death. Mere seconds after Edric's haunting first impression, with the camera panning ominously and slowly from his webbed feet to his grotesque, half-fish, half-human face, filmgoers were treated to the character's first lines in Lenci's characteristic voice: "I do hope travelling to thisss... meeting was a worthwhile endeavour onnn... my part."
(he trails off in thought for a few moments, staring elsewhere as if in a trance or talking out of a strange fever dream) "Wormhole slide uneventful, Holtzmann drive and all systems nominal, destination spectral class G2, target orbit of terrestrial crust type planetary destination, orbit insertion confirmed, gravity well comfortable for heighliner landing... Feelsss different... yessss. A quarter of an hour ago, Imperial Time Standard..."
(he stops ennumerating and pays his co-conspirators attention once more) "...me and my brother-pilots have just folded space. From Ixxxx... Many... Strange. Many machines on Ix. Machines. Why ? Hmmm..."
(he looks at Korba, then at Mohiam) "So, what is your plan ?"
When interviewed years later, Hollý and many of the production design crew elaborated on how people felt a little disappointed by the non-presence of more alien beings in the first film. Though the story of the novel limited any such appearances, Hollý fully intended to utilise the presence of Edric and Scytale in the visual worldbuilding of the second film. As Hollý himself put it "the writer didn't really include any human-like aliens in his book series, but in this far future it takes place in, there are a fair few humans who have, for lack of a better term,
become aliens, via artificial means or their byproducts". Edric's strange, spaced-out-sounding style of speech during certain moments, was meant to remind the audience that Guild Navigators are not only physically mutated from constant exposure to spice, but their psychology is also shifted due to perceiving spacetime differently than humans not overdosed on and mutated by the spice. The Navigators are also "married to the job" and so attuned to the heighliners they pilot, the ship's sensors might as well be the steersmen's second set of senses, as familiar to them as those of their physical bodies.
(Edric's appearance in this adaptation is reminescent of a taller-seeming, rather thin-bodied variation on this Navigator puppet from the first television miniseries. His hands are a bit less bat-like and more like a webbed counterpart of his legs, both vaguely frog-like, the overall impression that of a thin and spooky merman living in microgravity.)
Edric's comment on "brother-pilots" was meant to highlight the pseudo-monastic nature of the Guild, as a male counterpart to the other mystic order of the Imperium, the female-dominated Bene Gesserit. (The various costumes of the Guild representatives have often been likened to a blend of monks and medieval patrician merchants, with a few playful anachronisms here and there, such as some Guildsmen wearing 1960s/1970s style colour-tinted sunglasses.)
The scenes of the stoneburner attack on Arrakeen, which leads to the blinding of Paul Atreides and many unfortunate locals, were achieved with a few simpler opticals, camera filters and freeze frames.
----
DETI DUNY ("
Children of Dune")
Directed by:
Martin Hollý Jr.
Produced by: Slovenská filmová tvorba Bratislava (Czechoslovakia), Taurus Film, Omnia Film (Federal Republic of Germany)
Country of origin: Slovakia (partly co-produced with production companies from the Federal Republic of Germany)
Based on the novel by: Frank Herbert
Pre-production phase: 1989
Filming: September May 1989 - February 1990
Post-production: April 1990 - September 1990
Released: 14 October 1990
Cast:
Martin Hrebeň as Leto II Atreides
Monika Haasová as Ghanima Atreides
Natália Hasprová as Alia Atreides
Jana Nagyová as princess Irulan Corrino
Milan Kňažko as Duncan Idaho (ghola)
Marián Geišberg as Stilgar
Branislav Mišík as Farad'n Corrino
Anna Javorková as princess Wensicia Corrino
Bronislav Križan as bashar Tyekanik
Vladimír Hajdu as The Preacher / Paul Atreides
Soňa Valentová as lady Jessica Atreides
Jozef Kroner as Gurney Halleck
Zuzana Kapráliková as Sabiha
Petra Vančíková as Chani Kynes (vision cameo)
Kamila Magálová as Harah (cameo)
Vladimír Müller as baron Vladimir Harkonnen (vision cameos)
and
Peter Rúfus as filmbook records voiceover and closing voiceover
Filming locations:
- Koliba Film Studios (most of the interiors, including in sietches, Arrakeen and various palaces)
- Šranecké piesky in Záhorie (near Lakšárska Nová Ves, various Arrakis exteriors)
- several Slovak quarries (Dargov, Brekov and Nižný Hrabovec, rocky Arrakis exteriors)
- Súľovské skaly, Veľký Rozsutec, Bukovské vrchy, Tatra mountain lakes (exterior footage representing Caladan)
- arboretum in Mlyňany, arboretum in Borová Hora (grounds of Castle Caladan)
- Orava Castle (some interiors of Castle Caladan)
- Košice Botanical Gardens (interior scenes of the Arrakeen Palace greenhouse)
- Wadi Rum desert in Jordan (Arrakis exterior shots, main desert filming locations)
- deserts in Uzbekistan (Arrakis exterior shots, main desert filming locations)
Directors of photography: Stanislav Szomolányi and Jozef Šimončič
Music: Svetozár Stračina (orchestral themes), Marián Varga and Collegium Musicum (electronic ambients and electric guitar ambients)
Set design: Viliam Ján Gruska
Special effects and production design:
Once again, most of the effects were passed down from the previous two films. Compared to the previous two films, there was generally much less new ground to cover. Most of the more notable new effects focused on ageing up the actors visually by a few more years, particularly in the case of Hajdu as Paul, now living as a mysterious hermit known as The Preacher, Nagyová's Princess Irulan, Hasprová's Alia Atreides, or Kňažko's Duncan Idaho. Some slight ageing make-up was also added to Geišberg's Stilgar or to Valentová's lady Jessica. Since Irulan was portrayed as older by almost twenty years compared to the first novel, her scheming sister Wensicia was cast with the several years older actress Javorková. This created the impression Wensicia is the younger sister of the two, but both are visually close in terms of rough age, with Irulan being the older sibling, by a few years.
A special prosthetic suit was developed for Leto II, meant to represent the biological suit he creates for himself after grafting sandtrout to his body, then travels to Arrakeen to confront Alia, her court, the Qizarate and the rest of the Atreides family. Martin Hrebeň was rather uncomfortable wearing the prosthetic suit, but soldiered on, as it was thankfully only needed for a relatively small amount of scenes.
One of the tricker things in the third installment was the portrayal of the laza tigers. Ultimately, a solution was found in renting out two tamed Bengal tigers, sedating them, then dressing them in a clothing-like prosthetic for the front half and spine area of their bodies. Once the tigers woke, the crew and the tigers' experienced owner hurried up to film the various shots they would need of the beasts attacking. Once the filming was fully completed (it only took a day), the tigers were sedated once more and the prosthetic was removed. Then they were taken back home. However, the work was not done there. A convincing puppet-prosthetic tiger head was constructed, as well as two convincing tiger paws. These were controlled by a somewhat more sophisticated version of the mechanism used for the single prop-hand of the Navigator in the first film, or the mechanisms used for Navigator Edric's puppet in the second installment. The laza tiger head puppet and puppet-paws only appear in the scenes when Leto and Ghanima are hiding in the desert cave they managed to squeeze into, to evade the two big felines. All in all, aside from one carefully prepared forced perspective shot, Martin Hrebeň and Monika Haasová never shared the same shot or filming location with the two tame tigers in mock-up prosthetics.
After the premiere of the third film, due to a fair bit of public interest, a travelling exhibition was created of the various props, costumes, models and miniatures, prosthetics and makeup effects, that gradually toured Czechoslovakia for over a year. It even included some television screens that showed select behind the scenes footage, on a loop, such as the preparation of optical effects, miniature effects and the blending of various techniques via clever cutting.
A short documentary was made about the travelling exhibition, and is nowadays included alongside other behind the scenes documentaries and bonus materials on the DVD and Bluray releases of the film trilogy.
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In the thirty years since the completion of the
Dune film trilogy, the little-trodden genre of Slovak science fiction cinema hasn't really seen another production of its size, scope and ambition. After completing the film trilogy, director Martin Hollý felt that any attempts to create a live-action adapdation of
God Emperor of Dune would be simply too demanding, especially with all the effects necessary to portray Leto II in his mutated, sandworm-like form, and the story of the novel being heavily philosophical. As if to underline this, the epilogue of the third film featured a condensed montage that showed the events in the future of the Dune universe, during the course of about 5000 years in the future.
(For a bit of an idea of how it was presented, imagine the montage from the final minutes of Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise, depicting the personal history and world history of that film's alternate planet Earth. Just apply it to the Dune universe and its future after Children of Dune.)
This montage ended on an ambiguous note and a final voiceover by Peter Rúfus, declaring that the fate of humanity after the fall of the "god-emperor" Leto II, the subsequent Scattering and eventual return of humans from deep space still leaves humanity at a crossroads. Even millennia after the death of Paul and his relatives... The saga of
Dune might have concluded, but the complex story of humanity, their awful failings and great achievements, continues...
Despite the fall of communism, the "winds of change" atmosphere in early 1990s Czechoslovakia, and much talk abroad about the end of the Cold War signifying a nebulous "end of history", Hollý's final installment in the Slovak
Dune trilogy seemed to imply that "history never ends, nor do the tribulations and challenges that humanity faces". This was very much in line with the themes of Herbert's source material and their thorough skepticism towards any blind belief in achieving utopias, or attempting to forge better futures via dubious, manipulative or anti-humanitarian means. After the release of the third film, many of the more thoughtful reviewers picked up on this and stressed that Hollý's film was more timely than it seems, as an overly relaxed attitude over the Czechoslovakia's dynamically unfolding future could inadvertently cause a sliding back into autocracy instead of a renewal of democracy. The recurring political and social troubles of the next thirty years proved these warnings right. So much so that during the toughest and darkest days of the 90s, Slovak satirists and film fans mockingly labeled then prime minister Mečiar and his corrupt and authoritarian behaviour as "baron Vladimír, millennia too early". Even more than thirty years later after the completion of the trilogy, many viewers still view the trilogy not only as a classic, but as a thoughtful meditation on the dangers of falling for the lure of "easy solutions", cynical shortcuts and fanatical, totalitarian ideologies.
In the early 1980s, director Hollý and his script writer collaborators took the fictional Litany Against Fear from
Dune to heart: "Fear is the mind-killer." Despite the complex and often artistically stifling situation in 1980s Czechoslovakia, they managed to create a well-received adaptation that helped put Slovakia on the science fiction cinema map, and remains an admired example of the genre from just before the end of the Cold War. Though proposals have occassionally resurfaced for at least an animated adaptation of
God Emperor of Dune, there are currently no realistic prospects of creating another Slovak-language film adaptation of Frank Herbert's works, whether one from the
Dune series or anything other.
