Dune
The second cinematic stab at Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic is perhaps more impressive than emotionally engaging or thrilling.
Dune is one helluva impressive movie. From the costumes and production design to the cinematography and eye-watering locations in Jordan, it screams Prestige Production. Indeed, its director, Denis Villeneuve, is probably just one of three filmmakers alive today who could mount a film of this size (budget: $165 million) with so many intelligent choices. The other two artists, Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan, have made their case. Villeneuve proved his sci-fi chops with Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and has attempted to consign David Lynch’s ill-fated 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel to the dustbin of history. The first book, published in 1965, is a keystone of sci-fi literature and doesn’t so much have its fans as its fanatics. Woe betide anybody who should mess with Herbert’s sacred text.
It helps if one is already familiar with the details of the author’s allegorical universe, with all its worlds, sects and characters with funny names. Most viewers, having just about got on top of Tolkien, the Star Wars ennead and Harry Potter, will find a new mythology a challenge for the little grey cells. And so the unsuspecting viewer – who will represent the lion’s share of the multiplex millions – will be launched into a headspace that includes the Houses of Atreides and Harkonnen, the Bene Gesserit and the Imperials, and a variety of beings from the Mentat to the Fremen, all operating in the year 10191, which is a long way into the future. And it’s a future that has seen the human mind develop exponentially, while new technologies have emerged to deleterious effect.
In a crowd of singular personalities, Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica stands out for being the most human, in spite of her supernatural powers. She is at once feminine and maternal and all the more beautiful for appearing to be devoid of make-up. Poster boy Timothée Chalamet is a little dull and wet as the young hero Paul Atreides, still grappling with the power of his dreams. More interesting is his mentor Duncan Idaho, played by a clean-shaven Jason Momoa, who reasons that, “dreams make good stories, but everything important happens when we’re awake.” Yet in spite of Dune’s massive canvas and intoxicating visuals, a sameness settles in during the later stages that invites a dreaminess more conducive to sleep than emotional engagement. There is a measure of self-importance that makes much of the film ponderous. The real scene-stealer is Stellan Skarsgård, who plays a morbidly obese Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the film’s true villain, and Skarsgård steals liberally from Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (complete with the way he strokes his bald pate). More of this might have perked Dune up a bit, long before the closing line, “this is only the beginning…” But who knows when the second chapter will materialise?
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, David Dastmalchian, Babs Olusanmokun.
Dir Denis Villeneuve, Pro Denis Villeneuve, Mary Parent, Cale Boyter and Joe Caracciolo Jr, Screenplay Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth, from the novel by Frank Herbert, Ph Greig Fraser, Pro Des Patrice Vermette, Ed Joe Walker, Music Hans Zimmer, Costumes Jacqueline West, Sound Theo Green, Dialect coach Brett Tyne.
Legendary Pictures/Villeneuve Films-Warner Bros.
156 mins. USA/Canada. 2021. Rel: 21 August 2021. Cert. 12A.
