Going For The One
I just want to say at the outset I wanted this film to be not just good or excellent, but to be great. I had made allowances in my heart for it to utterly eclipse the 1984 David Lynch version which on the one hand I love, but I have felt much frustration with for many a year. If Denis Villeneuve was going to pull out all his show-stopper moves and make a great film, this one ought to have been it. Alas, as with 'Blade Runner 2049' before it, Villeneuve comes at a very important subject matter for a movie and somehow manages to under-deliver. Is it a good film? Yes. Is it an excellent bit of entertainment? mostly. But is it great? Ah, no. And that's a little unfortunate.
But it is very thought-provoking so there is that.
What's Good About It
It's nice to see a rendition of Dune that is closer to what the book describes. I'm not sure about the gender swap of Dr Liet Kynes turning into a woman, but in most part the film looks a lot more like what was described in the book. If you're a purist visionary (I'm not) it's a good thing. The specials effects are up to date, and the action sequences are fluid and succinct. The wardrobe is fabulous, while the surrounding casting is also a little closer to what was described in the book. Because the film only needs to cover the first half of the book, it is paced more evenly than its predecessor. And maybe that's the problem with this film. Everything in it can be scrutinised against the previous entries, whether it be the Lynch entry in 1984 or the Sy-Fy channel TV series which also traversed the sandy terrain across Frank Herbert's pages.
It's worth mentioning that the casting of Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho is inspired, especially if they think they can make these films go deep into the world of Dune with sequels. The casting of Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica is also very apt, although it had me wondering if it was as good as casting Francesca Annis for the role in Lynch's movie. It also makes you wonder if Oscar Isaac really is a better bit of casting than Jurgen Prochnow (maybe, maybe not), or whether Timothee Chalamet is a better bit of casting than Kyle MacLachlan (I tend to think not).
My best joke about the casting is that compared to Lynch's version, everybody looks shorter.
What's Bad About It
There's nothing outstandingly bad about it that one ought to complain about. It's a well made bit of movie entertainment. Because I've read the book, and Villeneuve has read the book, and the principal actors have all read the book this time, there are no surprises. In fact the film plays out like it's in its own groove, and nothing is out of place or surprising. The performances are archly mannered, and there is no hint of spontaneity in it anywhere. It generally feels portentous without really going anywhere - but then we know all the ground-shattering revelations are in the second part of the book, so we have a way of just accepting all of it as is. The film is not going to pay off with a big action cue. It's a joyless exercise, but then it's not exactly a joyful book.
For what it is - a blockbuster science fantasy based on a big fat book - it had very few moments of excitement. It also offered absolutely zero insight about what the book had to say about this world in which we live. It may have been the most -non-socially-conscious telling of this story.
What's Interesting About It
The most interesting thing about it is the comparison to the Lynch version. More often than not, you're watching Villeneuve's choices as opposed to Lynch's choices - and the differences are genuinely interesting. Villeneuve comes to the project as a fan of the book and himself well into his 50s. Lynch came at the project as somebody who hadn't read the book until he was approached to do the project, as his second feature film. For his turn, Lynch got a lot of flack for making a film that was largely incomprehensible and still long at 2 hours 17 minutes. Villeneuve gets the luxury to make 2 films, and the first instalment alone is 2 hours and 35 minutes.
As an aside, it was reported in the making of Lynch's Dune that the best cut of his film was a 4 hour 40 minute version - which sounds positively worth reviving if they could find all the components and whatnot. It probably won't happen, but it seems if we're really going to compare apples, then it's worth having the whole of the Lynch apple. I do have a 3 hour TV cut somewhere which, interestingly enough, Lynch disowned. Lynch disowning the whole Dune might be because of his distaste when remembering the arduous post-production and politicking. Nobody seems to have talked to him much about Dune, and he probably is shunning those interviews for all sorts of reasons.
The crucial difference seems to be Lynch had a cineaste's vision for the weird and wonderful, while Villeneuve seems to have a Sci-Fi fan-boy's love for the original text combined with an easy facility for shooting a generic high end budget blockbuster. In Villeneuve''s vision, guild navigators are human-looking enough. In Lynch's version, they're disfigured and bloated embryo monsters floating in a tank of spice smoke. Villeneuve doesn't bother showing you folding space while Lynch uses the weird sequence to show us the power of imbibing space for the Guild Navigators. Villeneuve is not interested in pushing those boundaries of the human-weirdness in the way Lynch was in 1984, which is a shame.
Lynch worked very hard to have a heterogeneous sense of production design. Villeneuve's version feels more like a monolithic singular vision for the entirety of future civilisation. Lynch accentuates the contrasts and strangeness of people's affect like a German Expressionist. Villeneuve hones in on very internal feelings against the monolithic setting he places his characters against.
Paul Muad-Who?
Unlike Lynch's Expressionist take on the raw passions underlying the weird tale, Villeneuve seems more interested in an introverted, almost navel-gazing take on the coming-of-age story. Having seen Kyle MacLachlan's Paul Atreides as looking too old, Villeneuve cast an older Chalamet who manages to play a younger looking Paul. A number of people have told me this fits the book better but I'm not really sold on Chalamet's Emo vibe as a better fit. MacLachlan's Paul comes at you straight, with an aristocratic bearing. Chalamet's Paul slinks along the wall, diffident and strangely disaffected.
(NB Postscript. I've been corrected. Born in 1959, McLahchlan was also 24 turning 25 when he played Paul Atreides)
I'm not sure Paul being 14 at the beginning of the book is as important as the tyrannous, commanding figure he becomes at the end of the book. I don't know who is going to play Feyd Rautha in the next film, but it certainly won't be as maniacal as Sting was in the Lynch movie. Ultimately whoever faces Chalamet's Paul is going to have to be menacing as hell and scary as all fuck to make the suspense work - but I fear they won't find such an actor. As somebody joked, whoever it is, they've got a big cod piece to fill.
Anyway, the point is, when Kyle MacLachlan's Paul got to the end and squared off against Sting's Feyd Rautha, it was a knife fight between men. Watching Chalamet, I'm not convinced he's going to get there, as a man.
The Baron Vladimir
Is it just me that looks at the name Vladimir these days and thinks of Putin? Psychologically speaking, Putin might be the most Baron Harkonnen-like ruler we've got going, followed by Kim Jong-Un and Chairman Xi.
Kenneth McMillan's portrayal of the Baron as this unhinged, pustular fat man floating around and barking orders seemed like the ultimate in perversity way back when (if only we'd known about the Trump presidency to come back then). It's a performance for the ages. Stellan Skarsgaard is a fine actor and can play all kinds of villains and conks, but I don't think he was anywhere near as chaotic, or threatening as McMillan's Baron. He comes across as more intellectual - even his brand of vileness seems considered. After all, the Baron is a thoughtful villain, but therein lies the problem with Villeneuve's version: This Baron is boringly rational. Everything horrible that flows from him is still rational. He doesn't seem like a man who would get overwhelmed by his own impulses and enthusiasms.
Certainly, it's arguable that Villeneuve's version is a lot more repressed. Lady Jessica is voluptuous in Lynch's version. My high school friend joked that he wanted to be reincarnated as the inner lining of Lady Jessica's still suit. Rebecca Ferguson is a sexy woman. Somehow all that sexiness gets hidden away and we're treated to her doing a lot of histrionic acting. The Oedipal complex that is inherent to the text is repressed hard and instead we're given a drama that is devoid of base passions.
In the books, we learn that the Bene Gesserit breeding programme that leads to the Kwisatz Haderach goes through the House Harkonnen. That is to say, Lady Jessica is the daughter of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen - unbeknownst to herself - but this fact eventually manifests itself as a problem through her daughter in 'Children of Dune'. The text is shot through with an embrace as well as anxiety over incest, and somehow Villeneuve's version of Dune is devoid of these psychological problems. Lynch at least had a fine radar for the grotesque. This is why the moment Alia the Abomination confronts the Baron in the last part of his film is so evocative and satisfying.
The 'White Saviour' Critique
There was this critique going around that the problem with 'Dune' is that it's just another movie about a white saviour. Here's a taste of that line of critique.
Despite the vision Dune evokes of a foreign invader whom the population welcomes, House Atreides’ purpose for coming to Arrakis remains selfish. Duke Leto knows that by controlling spice, the planet’s natural resource, House Atreides will grow fabulously wealthy and powerful.
The parallels between spice, found only on Arrakis, and oil, are plentiful: in the 1960s when Herbert wrote Dune, most of the world’s oil supply came from the Middle East. Transportation in each context is wholly dependent on spice/oil. By establishing relations with the Fremen, Duke Leto demonstrates a colonizer’s knowledge that he can more easily exploit the planet’s resources if he is on good terms with the population.
Yeah right. That's like a Year 10 reading of the book. This isn't what makes Dune an interesting story. Cripes. How obtuse is that reading?
What makes Dune interesting is that the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood set up the myth of the saviour and plants it into primitive cultures. They put them there because at some point in the future, it might help to activate them. And so the Bene Gesserit manipulate the gullible in to thinking they're seeing a messiah. And along comes Paul who activates it in order to survive, but unwittingly unleashes a galaxy-wide jihad.
In other words, Frank Herbert the author doesn't believe in messiahs. Paul, his main character does not believe in messiahs, even as he rides on the force of myth set loose by the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. Paul to his horror cannot stop the metaphorical runaway freight train once it leaves the station. The only people who believe in the messiah in the book are the ignorant, pious, and gullible. Yet there are many of them - enough to unleash their own set of horrors. If anything, the book at least is about how untenable the saviour is, white or not. If you believe in saviours and messiahs, or that Paul's placement in the narrative is that he is a first order Saviour character without any self-awareness or irony, you're not much smarter than the gullible folk in the book who believe in messiahs and saviours. That, is Herbert's very mid-20th century modernist view.
It amazes me that I have to spell it out, but no, 'Dune' is not in favour of the colonialism inherent in the West's purchase of oil. Herbert's narrative is fully sceptical about the merits of an economy that rests on the back of one commodity. It is not about a white man who goes to be a saviour unto the barbaric towel-heads of the far future (and I mean that with the utmost irony thank-you-very-much!).
The problem I have with Villeneuve's version is that I can't shake the suspicion that he believes in messiahs and saviours. It's the same problem I had with his Blade Runner sequel.
Visions of Future Past And All That
Having seen 3 iterations of the fall of House Atreides as well as imagined it when reading the book, I can't help but think maybe we've seen too many versions of this story already. I'm not really all that excited about the second part of this rendition. It all feels like a chore to get us to the next bit, which is Dune Messiah, followed by Children of Dune - which all might never happen. The gods of studio filmmaking are worse than fickle, they're like gay people at the Mardi Gras after-party after 3 eckies, but with less propriety. So, there's no guarantee we would get there.
The thing is, the 1984 Dune sort of ends the way it does because they couldn't really conceive of a sequel. Getting the first book made in that form was an accomplishment an achievement enough. It left not much to the studios to think about. Certainly, the thinking back then was, if a film did well, the sequel can expect to gross about 70% of the first. That means the third instalment would be about 49% of the first and that's probably the limit to the diminishing returns. Lynch's Dune flopped so it had no future with sequels. If I had my druthers, I'd really want to see Lynch give us a 'Dune Messiah' with Kyle MacLachlan playing Paul. Talk about things that never will be.
Villeneuve's version is something else. It clearly has an eye of pushing it out to the subsequent books. I don't know if he can get there. Would they be any good if this is the base from which we are working? but then again, Ridley Scott was able to make 2 terrible, horrible, no-good sequels to his 'Alien' on the strength of ... I don't know what, that franchise has been moribund since the late 90s ... so you never know. To that end, I sort of support Villeneuve doing all this. Let's say this: I'd be mighty happy to watch his take on 'The God Emperor of Dune' because boy, as sure as fuck nobody else is going to have that one up on screen in a hurry. So if this film is phase 1 in the plan to shoot entire Dune series, I still give it my thumbs up.
