Despite my worries about the high numbers of coronavirus infections, I bit the bullet and reserved tickets to Dune’s opening night on IMAX last Friday, curious too see how this new adaptation by Denis Villeneuve looks on the big screen, and whether it can live up to the source material. As I wrote before on my blog, I had low expectations that he can deliver on the richness and subtlety of Dune – his previous movies that I watched, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, left me with the sense that Villeneuve is more adept at creating grand and stunning, yet impersonal and detached, imagery, less so at depicting raw, personal drama. And this impression has not changed after watching his latest Dune: Part One.
As I have read all six of Frank Herbert’s novels (twice) and rewatched the previous adaptations over the past year, I will not shy away from spoilers in this review, nor from comparisons with previous movies or the book.
The visual aspect of the experience was indeed awe-inspiring. I was thoroughly impressed with the ornithopters, possibly the most accurate element compared to the books – I wished these flying machines would be real, so that I could one day ride one! The visual effects surrounding shields were perfect as well, with colors and lights highlighting their interaction with incoming weapons. The depiction of the Voice and the Atreides sign language were very well done and felt natural. I also liked the short appearance of a small desert mouse, called muad’dib by the Fremen, in his short interaction with Paul. As a minor complaint, a day after watching the movie I realized that scenes on Arrakis never felt ‘hot’, as they were supposed to; I think it is because heated air can create mirages via refraction, and there were no traces of them in the desert scenes.
Underneath these opulent visuals and thunderous sounds, the story itself feels slight, sanded down to bare bones to make room for epic battles and images of huge vessels emerging out of water, irrelevant to either plot or character building. The scenes are highly variable in quality, and a lot of dialogue and character interactions were simply discarded or changed for no apparent reason. On reddit, most fans are rationalizing these choices by claiming that it streamlines the source material to fit limited screen time, that a lot of backstory is not needed to follow the action, and so on, but I’m not sympathetic to such arguments…
It’s surprising how cheesy the new “Dune” looks. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel seems less like a C.G.I. spectacle than a production still waiting for its backgrounds to be digitally filled in or its sets to be built. David Lynch’s version of “Dune”, from 1984, was a profuse film, teeming with sets and costumes as intricate as they were overwhelming, making extended and startling use of optical effects, and, in general, displaying an urgent will to turn the fantasy worlds of the story, which is set in the year 10191, into physical and visceral experiences. Villeneuve’s interests appear to lie elsewhere. He puts the drama and plot first, avoiding details that could be distractions and appearances that aren’t explained (or explained away) in dialogue or action. The bareness with which he depicts the story doesn’t resemble the shoestring production values of nineteen-fifties sci-fi cheapies, but it instead suggests merely a failure of imagination, an inability to go beyond the ironclad dictates of a script and share with viewers the wonders and terrors of impossible worlds.
Richard Brody
My disappointment began with the opening: compared to the ominous and enigmatic introduction to the Lynch movie, it starts off with one of Paul’s visions of the desert and Chani. The way the movie handled Paul’s visions of the future felt odd and dissatisfactory to me. Many of them were moved forward in time – in the book there were no visions during the spice harvester scene, the revelation of Jessica’s pregnancy comes later, after the two fled into the desert, and visions of the Jihad come much later if I recall correctly, after Paul starts rising in prominence among the Fremen. Visually they were weird as well, accompanied by gold shimmering in the air – evidently spice, but spice can be ingested through meals as well, and its effect is not more potent when airborne, quite the opposite.
The amount of material left on the cutting room floor is simply staggering: there’s scarcely any reference to the Spacing Guild; no scenes from the Imperial Court (we get instead a stiff opening scene where nameless envoys deliver the Emperor’s proclamation to House Atreides); no mention of the role of Mentats, or of their guild throughout the movie (hardly surprising considering the minuscule amount of screen time for both Thufir Hawat and Piter De Vries); the Harkonnen are underutilized and we largely experience their atrocities second-hand through Paul’s visions of Fremen struggles. The time between the arrival on Arrakis and the Harkonnen invasion, in the book rich in character interactions and political intrigue, almost flies by in the film, as we’re rushed into massive explosions, death and destruction.
I love scifi names. That's Stilgar, the Naib of Sietch Tabr. That's Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the ruler of House Harkonnen. And that's Paul.
— Emma Berquist (@eeberquist) October 22, 2021
Were you craving backstories, characters with complex motivations, morally flawed and forced into painful compromises? Better head back to the source text because the film has precious little time for that. Gurney Halleck displays visceral hate towards the Harkonnen, but the reason was not deemed important enough for the screen (Villeneuve instead found the time to squeeze in a cheap quip about Gurney not smiling enough). Did you know Harkonnen are slave owners? That bit of knowledge alone would be enough to characterize them, but you won’t find out about it from this movie. How about Suk Doctors, who should be immune to bribery and coercion? Of course not, because Dr. Yueh is afforded barely five minutes of screen time and ten words of dialogue before brutally betraying the House he should have loyally served to the death.
I did enjoy some scenes above others. The final confrontation between the Baron and the Duke was masterfully done, and having Leto stripped bare at the table was a fine touch: it underlined his utter defeat at the hands of the Baron, and I suspect hinted at the Baron’s twisted homosexuality from the books (absent on screen). The movie promptly ruined the moment though with the follow up scene, showing the Baron submerged in a dark oily pool “to recuperate” – I mean, how is he supposed to breathe inside that thing?! The Sardaukar invasion of the sietch was also impressive, with troops landing in eerie silence before the bloody battle with Duncan. The role of Kynes was handled well, one of the few appearances true to the books, despite minor changes to his story and the major change of his gender – her death scene was one of the highlights of the film.
Dune: “People use space drugs to travel through space and gain super powers”
— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) October 24, 2021
Me: “Alright”
Dune: “Space drugs are only on a dirt planet with giant worms and also the new space messiah”
Me: “Pretty reasonable”
Dune: “There’s a character named Duncan Idaho”
Me: “okay hold on
The low points of the movie for me were a couple of things that felt completely forced and out of place: the random appearance of a bagpipe – a genuine wtf?! moment; Paul calling himself a ‘freak’ – the term feels too contemporary and American-centric, thus an anachronism in the Dune universe; and the final scene, when Chani articulates ‘This is only the beginning’ as if to remind audiences that the tale is not finished – in case they didn’t get the hint from the ‘Part One’ dangling at the end of the title. Even without that ridiculous closing line, the ending is inevitably weak because it stops without delivering a full story, absent even the reassurance that we will see the conclusion onscreen.
Part Two was formally greenlit in the meantime, with a tentative launch date of October 20, 2023
The movie flowed effortlessly from scene to scene, in fact in the cinema I barely noticed time passing for the first two hours, but as you think back there is little substance supporting the spectacle – or at least I found less than I expected and had known from reading the original text. Perhaps I am judging the movie too harshly, between my long and deep connection with the Dune universe, knowing in advance how the plot would unfold, and the lingering concern around spending almost three hours in a cinema during a pandemic. Others not familiar with the universe were certainly more excited, especially to see Timothée Chalamet in the leading role. But I left the movie theater feeling no emotional connection with this version of the characters, no anticipation for the second half. That is a stark shift from the Lynch movie that inspired, almost compelled me, to read the books in the first place.
Perhaps this personal impression will change after rewatching the movie, or after seeing the proper ending (but realistically, that might be some three years away…). For now, Dune: Part One remains a monumental movie, just not a monument to the original story, but rather to Denis Villeneuve’s vanity.
Post a Comment