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Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson excel in Denis Villeneuve's marvellous Dune |
The set-up in Herbert’s books is labyrinthine, but one of
the film’s great skills is to boil it down to something digestible and
understandable. It helps as well that, unlike Lynch’s film, this focuses on
roughly the first half of the novel only. 10,000 years in the future, mankind
travels through space – but space travel is dependent on a spice that can only
be mined on a sand-covered planet called Arrakis, populated by colossal worms
and a race of mysterious sand-dwellers called the Fremen. Control of the mining
operation of the planet is taken from the brutal House Harkonnen, and its
patriarch (Stellan Skarsgard), and granted to the more moderate House Atreides
and its head Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac). However, this is just a ruse to trap and
destroy House Atreides, whose popularity endangers the Emperor. On arrival on
the planet, Leto’s son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) is believed by the Fremen
to be a long-promised messiah – and Paul is plagued with strange visions of his
future. Can he, and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), survive and fulfil
their destinies?
Dune is a complex, sprawling piece of world-building
– the sort of book so stuffed with unique words, concepts and language that it
includes a full glossary to help the reader work out what’s going on.
Villeneuve’s genius here is to work out exactly how much of that world building
to build into the script, and how much to leave out. Where the Lynch Dune
tried to cover everything in this universe and seemed to introduce new
characters and concepts in every scene (right up to the end), Villeneuve’s Dune
is far more focused. It gives enough tips of the hat to readers of the book to
be faithful, but doesn’t bother the more casual viewer with what, say, a mentat
is or who the Space Guild exactly are. The overload of information that crushed
Lynch’s Dune is skilfully avoided here.
What we get instead is a wonderfully focused, coming-of-age
story that places the young hero front-and-centre – and filters our experience through
his eyes. This not only helps give us a very clear human engagement with this
world, it also makes for a highly relatable central arc to build the rest of
the world building around. After all, we understand the “chosen-one-finds-his-destiny”
story: using that as a very clear framework, allows the wider universe to be
slowly and carefully drip-fed around that. It also plays very well to the
reader (who will know the unspoken detail and enjoy subtle references to it on
screen) and to the initiate (who won’t need to know every last detail of every
last character’s background and won’t be overwhelmed by those references).
On top of which, Dune is, in itself, a sumptuous and
visually beautiful example of expansive world-building. Fitting a series that
has spawned dozens of novels and an entire universe of expanded storylines,
endless care and loving attention has gone into creating every inch of this
world. Jacqueline West’s costumes brilliantly capture the mix of medieval and
space-punk futurism in the world’s design (this is after all a universe which
is effectively Game of Thrones in space – one of many franchises to owe
a huge debt to Dune) and Patrice Vermette’s set design superbly
contrasts the different planets aesthetics. The imagery carefully contrasts the
greens and blues (and water!) of the other worlds with the striking yellows and
dryness of Arrakis – it’s beautifully filmed by Grieg Fraser – and the scale is
epic, re-enforced by Zimmer’s gothic choir inspired music.
Villeneuve marshals this all into a story that is part world-building set-up, part conspiracy thriller and eventually becomes a full-on chase movie. Each shift in story-telling style flows naturally into the next, and Villeneuve keeps the pace and sense of intrigue up highly effectively. He also understands that films like this need a touch of wit and human warmth: Herbert’s book, for all its strengths, is also a po-faced and slightly pretentious read, with every event and character consciously carrying a massive sense of importance. Dune recognises this, and makes sure to mix lightness and touches of humour to avoid the operatic seriousness tipping into being a little silly (as it did in Lynch’s version).
Villeneuve is helped in this by a well-chosen cast. Chalamet
is perfectly cast as the naïve Paul, growing in statue and wisdom as the film
progresses: he is effectively vulnerable but also a determined and mentally
strong hero, one we can have faith in but still feel concerned about. Ferguson
is the film’s stand-out performance as his conflicted mother, determined to
protect her family. Isaac is perfect as the charismatic and noble Leto, as is
Skarsgard as the viciously bloated Vladimir. Sharon Duncan-Brewster is terrific
as an official with split loyalties. Charlotte Rampling has a highly effective
cameo as a mysterious priest while Jason Momoa gives possibly his finest
performance (certainly his warmest and wittiest) as a larger-than-life warrior.
The film glosses over certain elements – in particular the
plot against House Artreides, and Leto’s suspicions of it are wisely simplified
and stream-lined – and wisely revises or avoids elements of the book that have
dated (most notably the slight stench of homophobia around the bloated,
predatory Vladimir). In some ways it’s a beautiful coffee-table version of the
story, but it’s careful enough to suggest anything we are not seeing
from the book is still happening, just off-camera (I await the inevitable
Director’s Cut with even more Mentats, Conditioning and Weirding!). However –
based on the cinema I sat in – this has worked a treat to win converts over to
the story.
A sweeping, impressive and epic version of a huge novel, it’s
a triumph of directorial vision and skilful compression and adaptation. By
trying to make Dune work for a larger audience, without sacrificing its
heart, rather than laboriously include everything and everyone, it successfully
makes it into a crowd-pleasing space opera with depth. Catch it on the big
screen!
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