Dune

I don't think I'd be exaggerating very much if I said that I thought David Lynch's Dune was one of the most awful films I've ever seen. It seemed to do almost nothing right; the acting, special effects, direction were all risible at best. I am informed that the film tries to compress several very long novels into one film and given that most adaptations of single novels miss out great chunks, the reason for Dune being such an incoherent mess is not hard to determine. I don't think it's even achieved the status of a cult classic, but that's probably only because I can't imagine anyone who'd actually want to watch it more than once (if at all).

About the only thing salvageable from the film, aside from the occasionally impressive production (which was always undermined by the dreadful visual effects) was the score by rock group Toto. I don't actually know much about them, but they at least tried to give Lynch's project the epic dignity it should have had. Unlike say (plucking something obscure out of thin air) Star Wars, which is an enjoyable pulp sci-fi film made more exciting with a rousing score, Dune attempts to have such gravitas that even Wagner would have had trouble making it seem plausible. Fortunately, we can enjoy Toto's efforts on disc. The main theme I found to be instantly recognisable, even previous to having seen the film - it is as portentous as the film, but as a kind of imitation sci fi Lawrence of Arabia type theme, works well as a scene setter.

The album is somewhat peppered by musical vignettes which don't quite relate to each other as strongly as they might, but never lose the plot too often - unlike the film. Some of these diversions are quite marvellous, the pseudo Gothic splendour of The Floating Fat Man or some of the driving action motifs. Aside from the main theme, the most notable moment of music in the film was what could be termed as real rock opera; a mixture of electric guitars and choir that even Trevor Rabin hasn't tried. It sounds awful, but is surprisingly effective with the group managing to integrate their own act with the larger ensemble very successfully. Rather curiously this doesn't seem to appear very often in the album, although I could swear it did during the film, but it appears most notably in the inspiringly titled Big Battle.

Like the film, the album is perhaps a fraction long, but Toto manage to keep a grip on the musical narrative and produce something that is almost always interesting, thus demonstrating that rock musicians can indeed produce good, coherent film music. I'm surprised Toto didn't write any other film scores, but if they wanted to, I suspect they were somewhat sunk by the film itself. This expanded release replaces an identical version from 1997 (in terms of track listing and content), but that version had some errors and sound quality problems. These have been corrected here, even though for legal reasons (apparently) the packaging is identical to the 1997 release. A score that is far better than the film and had the film been better, it would probably have inspired a classic.