In days of old, the two grand counterculture science fiction novels were Robert Heinlein’s libertarian-division Stranger in a Strange Land, which made the word “grok” popular for a number of years (no longer that much, even seldom appears in crossword puzzles today) and 1965 Dune by Frank Herbert, a visionary geopolitical story that was anti-corporate, radical environmental, and Islamophilic. It is still a question about why huge producers and corporations have been following the supreme film adaptation of this novel of intellectual property for a number of decades. This question is not in the scope of this review, but it is still an appealing one.
When I was a pretentious adolescent in the 1970s, I didn’t read many sci-fi books, even countercultural sci-fi, so I missed Dune. Furthermore, I didn’t read David Lynch’s novel which was then adapted to a film backed by big producer Dino De Laurentiis. As a flashy twentysomething film buff, but not yet a professional person, there was just one thing significant to me, named Lynch picture. However, for some reasons – because of my assiduity or curiosity about how my life would have changed if I had pursued Herbert and Heinlein rather than Nabokov and Genet in the past – recently I read Herbert’s book. Yeah, the prose is bulky and the dialogue often bulkier; nevertheless, I was interested in much of it, especially the way it knitted its social commentary with sufficient scenes of action and cliff-hanging tension to fill an ancient serial.
Directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script of his corporation with Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts, the new film adaptation of the book pictures those scenes gorgeously. As you may know, “Dune” is placed in the faraway future, where human beings developed in many scientific aspects and transmuted in many spiritual ones. The people in this scenario aren’t in any places on the Earth, and the royal family of Atreides is, in a power play we aren’t completely familiar with for a while, assigned governing the desert planet of Arrakis. Which makes something named “the spice”—that’s natural oil for you eco-allegorists in the viewer—additionally causes multivalent dangers for people out of the world (that is Westerners for you who create geo-political allegory in the viewer).
It would be a minimization if I say I have not respected Villeneuve’s previous films. However, it’s undeniable when saying he produces a more satisfactory movie than the book. Or, it’s better to say, two-thirds of the book. (The filmmaker claims that it’s just half of the book but I still assume my estimation is correct.) It is called “Dune Part 1” in the opening title, and although this movie brings a bonafide epic experience to the audiences in two and a half hours, it’s modest to say that there’s more to the story. Herbert’s own vision is so compatible with Villeneuve’s own storytelling passion that he evidently did not feel forced to insert his own ideas to this work. Moreover, whereas Villeneuve has been and possibly stays one of the most joyless filmmakers alive and the novel also doesn’t aim to make audiences laugh, and it’s beneficial that Villeneuve commemorated the light notes in the script, which I guess they came from Roth.
Through the process, working with the filmmaker are great technicians including cinematographer Greig Fraser, production designer Patrice Vermette, and editor Joe Walker, tries to balance between magnificence and superiority in between such shameless thrilled sequences such as the mysterious Gom Jabbar test, the spice herder saving, the anxiously thopter-into-a-storm situation, and various sandworm meetings and attacks. These listings seem like nonsense if you do not understand “Dune” deeply, and probably you read other reviews complaining about difficulties to follow these sequences. If you pay attention, it would not happen, and the script does a great job with explanation but doesn’t make it like EXPLANATION. Regardless, most of the time. However, similarly, if you are not a science-fiction-movie lover, there might not be any reason for you to be fond of “Dune”. The novel has a huge influence, especially regarding George Lucas. DESERT PLANET, humans. In the “Dune” universe, there are higher mystics having this small thing which they call “The Voice” that eventually turned into “Jedi Mind Tricks.” And so on.
Villeneuve’s enormous cast illustrates Herbert’s characters, who are naturally speaking more archetypes than individuals, very nicely. Timothée Chalamet almost depends on jejuneness in his early depiction of Paul Atreides, and displays it appealingly when his character is aware of his power and understands the way to Follow His Destiny. Oscar Isaac is aristocratic as Paul’s father the Duke; Rebecca Ferguson both mysterious and fierce as Jessica, Paul’s mom. Zendaya as Chani is an apt, greater than apt. Differing from Herbert’s novel, the ecologist Kynes is cross-dresser, and joined with harsh force by Sharon Duncan-Brewster. And so on.
Just a short time ago, opposing the Warner Media deal that’s going to release “Dune” on streaming simultaneously when it hits theaters, Villeneuve assumed that the movie had been produced “as a tribute to the big-screen experience.” At that time, I considered it as a slightly dumb reason to create a movie. After seeing “Dune”, I understand more what he really meant, and I kind of agree with. There are numerous cinematic allusions in the movie, mostly to shots in the tradition of High Cinematic Spectacle. Of course, there’s “Lawrence of Arabia,” because of the desert. However, “Apocalypse Now” also appears in the scene presenting Stellan Skarsgård’s bald Baron Harkonnen. There is “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Even arguable outliers but absolute classics including Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” in 1957 and Antonioni’s “Red Desert.” appear in this movie. Christopher Nolan is prompted by Hans Zimmer’s let’s-test-those-subwoofers score. (His music is also suitable for Maurice Jarre’s “Lawrence” score and György Ligeti’s “Atmospheres” from “2001.”, as well) But Nolan and Ridley Scott’s visual echoes also contribute. These will tickle or inflame particular cinephiles depending on their nearest mood and general preference. I found them entertaining. And the movie’s main brief was not lessened by them. I’ll always like “Dune” of Lynch, a harshly compromised dream-work (not incredible provided Lynch’s own inclination) was almost useless for Herbert’s messaging. But “Dune” is Villeneuve’s movie.
