There's always a place in my heart for David Lynch's extremely flawed adaptation of Dune. It never was a great movie and it failed to do justice for the book, but it was a visually good looking movie. As the story goes, the producer Dino De Laurentiis got cold feet after he saw how Lynch worked and demanded the movie be completed before it was completed. Then it was poorly stitched together from what Lynch had filmed and the rest is history. Before Denis Villeneuve, Dune has been adapted into miniseries as well, which covered the whole book, just like Lynch's Dune in its own disjointed manner. Villeneuve has taken a different approach by dividing the book into two movies, so Dune 2021 covers roughly half of the first book, ending with Paul (Chalamet) and Lady Jessica (Ferguson) finding refuge with the Fremen.
Planet Arrakis, or Dune, is a desert planet of immense value. Whoever rules Arrakis, is bound to be the most powerful entity of the known universe, as the planet is the source of the spice, a drug that can be naturally harvested from its sands and be used by the space navigators to find paths through space. The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, the ruler of the known galaxy, has given a decree, that the current house ruling Dune, the Harkonnen, is to step aside and give the fiefdom to house Atreides. This in itself is an elaborate trap to undermine the growing powers of the houses, as the emperor sees Atreides as a threat to his own rule. He knows, that by placing Atreides to Arrakis, he'll instigate a war between them and Harkonnen.
Even when Duke Leto (Isaacs) is keenly aware of the nature of his new appointment as the ruler of Arrakis, he knows there's no declining the call. The great house leaves their watery homeworld Caladan knowing the danger. Paul, Leto's son, feels uneasy, as he has been seeing dreams, premonitions of the future. This is because of the Bene Gesserit education Lady Jessica has been giving him. Against the orders of her organisation, she has taught her son to use the mystical arts only known to women of the order.
The Bene Gesserit have been conducting a long breeding program which has the goal of creating a perfect specimen, a chosen one who can field seemingly superhuman powers in both mental and physical. Jessica, who had been told to give birth only to girls, disobeyed her orders by giving birth to Paul. Before Paul leaves for Arrakis, the Reverand Mother Gaius tests him in order to see if he's a human or an animal. He endures immense pain, but he still endures.
At Arrakis, Duke Leto places in motion a plan to recruit Fremen to help him. Unlike Harkonnen, he's not a ruthless ruler, he values people over spice, knowing that Arrakis requires him to adapt to the strengths of the planet. There, he has the spice, but Fremen are more important as allies, the key to success. All these plans come to stop when Harkonnen launch a surprise attack, decimating the forces of Atreides. Only Paul and Lady Jessica manage to escape. And that's where the first movie ends.
Dune is a massive, impressive movie. It's by far among the best sci-fi movies done in ages. Villeneuve takes a story that is grand and epic in scale and has managed to turn it into a stunning movie, that will be a measurement point for any future sci-fi movie. Everything in it is massive and epic in scale and execution.
During the movie, an idea kept popping into my mind. It's not only because the movie is set in a desert world, but also how the movie looks and feels. Many times the way the narrative works and how the movie presents itself, Dune felt epic in the style of Lawrence of Arabia. There's a similar feeling of grandeur and majesty of the grand views of the sunbaked Arrakis and other planets shown. That's really the key to many of the visual elements, how grand and massive and epic everything looks and feels.
I truly hope Villeneuve gets to make his sequel. Dune is a massive success narratively and visually. It's a benchmark movie that will without a doubt get many copycats in the future in terms of visual quality. It's not a movie interested in easily digestible and forgettable fast-food entertainment, but a movie that is trusting the viewer's ability to focus and understand without being spoonfed. It takes its time to paint a picture unseen before instead of rehashing tropes seen million times before.
Of course, the themes of the story are familiar. The oppression of the indigenous people, the greed that overwhelms reason and morality, the distrust towards those in power and the seductive nature of fanaticism. They all are present, in the midst of the grand imagery, bringing more than enough of the human element in the alien nature of the distant future laid before our eyes.
Villeneuve's Dune is a once in a decade kind of movie you just know has the genuine possibility of becoming a classic. Whatever actually happens is another matter entirely and might hang on to the sequel. But even without it, remaining as an unfinished attempt, Dune still manages to bring worth a truly memorable experience. It's the Dune adaptation Lynch's Dune should have and could have been. Here's hoping we'll see the rest of it as it really deserves to be completed.
Comments
Post a Comment