Dune: I'm Neutral

 

DUNE: PART ONE (2021)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Warner Brothers, 156 minutes, PG-13 (violence, language)

★★★

 

Go figure. The 1984 film version of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel Dune was a box office dud even though it had a famous director (David Lynch) and a cast of well-known actors. Denis Villeneuve directed the 2021 version and though he’s no hack, he’s certainly no David Lynch and his cast lacks the box office power of its predecessor. Yet the new Dune has raked in nearly $400 million.

 

We’ve learned that Dune can be popular, but it remains an open question whether it’s akin to Don Quixote and simply can’t do justice to a complex book. Villeneuve is certainly giving it his all, as the current 156-minute blockbuster is but the first of three installments. Will it be the next Lord of the Rings, which made $3 billion, or will it run out of steam? It might boil down to whether the measure is quality or what people will pay to see.

 

I’m already trending toward skeptical on the quality front. Villeneuve’s first film is a visual feast, courtesy of Greig Fraser’s cinematography, especially his sweep of geometric shapes carved by shifting sands. It is, however, more Star Wars than cultural anthropology, the latter being one of the things that made Herbert’s novel a cult success. I hope Villeneuve will delve deeper into the religious mysticism and meeting-of-cultures that made the novel so intriguing, but will that resonate with those who want to see things blow up and spaceships blasting away at each other? I liked, but didn’t love Part One, but then I’m more of a Star Trek fan than Star Wars, a way of saying I’m more into relationships than watching things go boom.

 

As a refresher–those who hate sci-fi won’t care–Dune is set in the distant future. Interstellar travel is common, though it relies upon the spice sands of the planet Arrakis to make warp speeds possible. The plot line involves warring clashes between the Atreides House and the House of Harkonnen for the right to hold Arrakis as a fiefdom from the Padishah emperor. Think of Atreides as the white hats, Harkonnen as the black, and the emperor as the Big Cheese of the universe. Harkonnen has held Arrakis, but the emperor has ordered a transfer to Atreides. It’s a setup, but unless you’ve read the book or seen the 1984 film, you won’t yet learn who’s in on the fix.

 

Dune: Part One plays an awful lot like the original Star Wars film that saw the Rebel Alliance do battle with the arrogant Galactic Empire; that is, sandwiched between the action sequences we meet the tragic figures and future heroes and villains. In Dune this includes: Leo Atreides (Oscar Isaac), his son Paul (Timothée Chalamet), weapons master Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), swordmaster Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skasgård), his nephew Glossu Rabban (Dave Bautista), Dr. Wellington Yeuh (Chang Chen), and Imperial ecologist/judge Dr. Liet-Kynes (Sharon Duncan-Brewster). There is also the matter of Paul’s mother and Leo’s paramour Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), a member of the mysterious Benet Gesserit, and Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling), its Reverend Mother. Their loyalties are uncertain.

 

There are two wildcards in controlling Arrakis. The first involves sandworms and we’re not talking fishing wigglers; they are enormous, sensitive to vibrations, and deadly to machines or mortals that awaken them. The second is that the dessert planet has an indigenous population, the Fremen (get it?), who are hostile to both sides. (The blue-eyed Fremen are akin to today’s Tuareg tribes of Northern Africa.) We are introduced to Stilgar (Javier Bardem), the leader of Sieth Tabr (think rocky oasis), and Chani (singer Zendaya), who has her eyes on Paul.

 

To me, it seems like a two-and-half hours plus film should do more than have a lot of bloodshed and merely introduce characters that will be important later. To be frank, the sandworms are no better in this film than in Lynch’s effort and in my opinion, they are best left to the imagination. If I might contrast Dune to Lord of the Rings, the first LOR film developed full characters–and visually convincing villains–and the second devoted itself to battles. That makes more sense to me (even though the second film was my least favorite of the LOR series). Given that I already know what will happen from past brushes with Dune, my decision to view the next two will probably rest upon whim. I realize that’s not a ringing endorsement. Guess my neutrality is showing.

 

Rob Weir