Sand, Ships and Sounds - Dune, Reviewed

In 2017, I was very glad to discover that Denis Villeneuve, director of Arrival and Blade Runner: 2049, was going to be helming a new cinematic adaptation of the classic science-fiction novel Dune.

Adapting as beloved and thoughtful piece of work as Frank Herbert's novel, where the traditional sci-fi stalwarts of physics or engineering take a back seat to ecology and sociology, was never going to be easy - past adaptations and attempts can attest to that. But Villeneuve's love of the source material, and his reflective and insightful work on the two aforementioned films really made me hopeful that this Dune would show onscreen some semblance of the scenes constructed in my mind's eye many decades before.

And let me tell you, he is off to a wonderful start.

This is a very faithful interpretation of a story about the conflicts between powers - natural, familial, and emotional - in a world both like and very much unlike the one we live in.

Villeneuve brings an impressive sense of scale to almost every scene in the film, from the massive, skyscraper-sized spaceships with hundreds if not thousands of occupants paraded in front of it, to the arid and sandy landscapes of the titular planet named Arrakis. See this movie in IMAX if at all possible for the full (and often intimidating) effect!

The movie enjoys a distinct and palpable sense of elsewhere - despite the feudal trappings and historic influences in everything from sculptures and architecture we see, there is a sense that life more than 10,000 years in the future is very different from what we know. The exoticism and strangeness is enhanced by the various factions we encounter and their unfamiliar names, like the Bene Gesserit witches and inscrutable Spacers Guild that we glimpse only briefly at an early ceremony on the Atreides homeworld.

The costumes by Robert Morgan and Jacqueline West go a long way to establishing the unique feel of the film, making it seem wholly natural that Duke Leto Atreides and Gurney Halleck (Oscar Isaac and Josh Brolin) should wear futuristic plate mail made from some exotic material, while the mentat Thufir Hawat (Stephen Mckinley Henderson) wears a uniform that wouldn't look out of place in the People's Liberation Army of 1949. The ceremonial spacesuits obscuring the faces of the Spacers engender as much curiosity as fear at what may lay beneath, and the tall headpieces and trailing robes of the Bene Gesserit add both stature and menace to their presence.

But what makes Villeneuve a brilliant director is not just his ability to depict exotic dune seas and immense sandworms threatening mobile factories the size of a NASA crawler, but the skillful way in which he can pick out moments of intimacy and familiarity within such a tableau.

The moments between Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his father the Duke reveal a genuine familial affection that is complicated by duty and the demands of a dangerous and combative universe. Likewise the scenes featuring Paul and his mother Jthe Lady Jessica (a concubine rather than a wife, in a nod to the neo-feudalism that governs the major houses of the future), a woman contesting her love of family with the demands of the Bene Gesserit order she emerged from.

Even within the physical realm of sets and props, for every massive spaceship or walled city we encounter there is an ornate coffee service or fastener on a fremen stillsuit that must be checked and adjusted, or boots that are worn desert-style.

It is a lot to balance, but it all came across to my family clearly enough this past Monday when we watched Dune, and none of whom have read the novel. Villeneuve and screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth have wisely left out some of the minutiae that adds so much flavour to the novel (Suk conditioning, laser and shield reactions, etc.) but would have brought very little to the story onscreen.

The challenge is that with so much time to establish all these relationships and this future world of rival fiefdoms and modern-style commerce, after two-and-a-half hours we are barely at the midway point of the book. 

Unlike even The Fellowship of the Ring, there is no big climactic battle to round out the experience on a high note. Much of the story of Dune revolves around Paul's relationship with the desert-dwelling Fremen, who we barely see until the very end of the film. I worry that there is not enough happening to satisfy casual movie-goers expecting a bit more closure, even from a movie whose title screen calls itself "Dune - Part One."

But now that the studio has finally greenlit Part Two (with a release date only two years away, shockingly!) I can tell people who ask me that, yes, Dune is definitely a film worth seeing, provided you don't rest too much of your cinematic experience on closure or resolution. Dune involves an almost unprecedented amount of world-building and scene-setting, but provides an experience that is not only dramatic, but almost experiential, like travel (ah, remember travel?). There is an almost palpable sense of having been elsewhere when leaving the theatre, and I will be glad when October 2023 rolls around and we can once again return to Arrakis.

As Chani (Zendaya), the Fremen girl who haunts Paul's dreams, tells us in the trailer, "This is only the beginning."