Cinema lovers salivating over the trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s new take on Frank Herbert’s sweeping space opera Dune, starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, might have picked up on a few interesting shots. The French-Canadian director seems to have slipped in a few visual nods to the work of great American auteur David Lynch.
The Twin Peaks creator wrangled the brick-like book about spice wars and giant worms onto the big screen way back in that most dystopian-appropriate year 1984. But he wasn’t the first to try. Chilean-French visionary Alejandro Jodorowsky gave it a red-hot go in a glorious-looking folly that failed to lift off. It was considered something of a cursed project, and Lynch disowned his attempt, which made it to cinemas and promptly flopped.
Which is not to say it isn’t as gloriously bonkers and surreally cerebral as you’d expect from the man who apparently knows how to tap into our haunted dreamscapes. Thanks to the Randwick Ritz, you’ll be able to reassess Lynch’s vision. Hs Dune will screen on October 15 as part of the cinema's showcase David Lynch Retrospective: Master of Surreal Cinema.
Kicking off with black-and-white body horror film Eraserhead (1977) on October 8, each Thursday night the cinema will show all ten of his mind-bending features, one a week at 7pm. Dune will be followed by neo-noir thriller Blue Velvet (1986) on October 22. It cast soon-to-be Twin Peaks lead Kyle MacLachlan alongside Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, and Laura Dern.
Then, on October 29, Wild at Heart (1990) brings back Dern and pairs her with the irrepressible Nic Cage as young lovers on the run in this 30th anniversary screening. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), the big screen prequel that fills in the final days of doomed Laura Palmer, will play on November 5, while Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette are unforgettable in the identity shifting Lost Highway (1997), showing November 12.
Road trips are a recurring theme in Lynch movies, with biopic The Straight Story (1999) slightly more unusual in its relative wholesomeness. It depicts Richard Farnsworth as a WWII veteran who journeys across America atop an 8km an hour lawnmower to visit his dying brother (Lynch regular Harry Dean Stanton). It shows on November 19, with one of Lynch’s greatest masterpieces, the Naomi Watts-led Mulholland Drive (2001) on November 26.
While 2006’s Inland Empire is arguably his least celebrated, it’s well worth a revisit on the big screen, and then the season ends with a legit masterpiece in 1980s haunting biopic The Elephant Man, which casts the late, great John Hurt as a Victorian man cruelly shunned for his disfigured appearance, and Anthony Hopkins as the surgeon who tries to offer him a kinder life.
You can check out the program and book tickets here. They’re $12 for members, $20 for regulars. Then get your research in by watching Lynch’s Dune first to compare and contrast when the Villeneuve drops on Boxing Day.
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