The Dark Herald Recommends: Dune I
BUMPED 3/02/24. I‘ll be posting my review of Dune II on Monday, so I decided to bump this review of Villeneuve’s first Dune movie. Obviously, the stuff about there possibly not being a sequel no longer applies but I decided not to edit it out.
Frank Herbert’s Dune always makes the list of greatest science fiction books of all time. And unlike Foundation and 2001, it actually has business being there. It was a book that was genuinely for the thinking man. Dumb people have never been into Dune.
Herbert’s inspiration was another book* The Sabres of Paradise (1960) by Lesley Blanch, it was a romanticized account of Imam Shamyl, “The Lion of Dagestan,” and his decades-long war against Tsarist expansionism.
With Islamic holy war on his mind (decades before it became fashionable with contemporary Muslims) Herbert set his new work in a world that was heavy on Islamic tropes. “Padishah” was an Islamic term for Tsar. “Kindjal” the name of the knife used by Imperial aristocrats in Dune, it’s also the name of the knife favored by Islamic tribesmen in the Caucasus region. There were several other words like sietch, chakobasa and Kanly, that came from Sabres of Paradise. As well as the ever-popular Jihad. The Atreides banner was green and black, (remind me, what are Muslim holy warriors’ two favorite colors?).
The main enemy was the distinctly Russian sounding, “Vladimir Harkkonen.
There were also some phrases lifted directly from Sabres of Paradise. “Killing with the tip lacks artistry.” “Polish comes from the cities, wisdom from the (hills) desert”.
Then there were Dune’s long and evocative descriptions of harsh, brutal, and unforgiving landscapes, this is also a prominent feature of Blanch’s seminal work.
Now let me be clear, Herbert wasn’t a plagiarist. There is a big difference between inspiration and intellectual theft. The truth is, there really aren’t that many stories in the world. We writers mostly just find new ways of smashing the existing ones together. I myself am working on a story based on the comedic, disaster of the Second Russian Pacific squadron in the Russo-Japanese War.
Herbert’s masterpiece is greater than the sum of its influences.*
The same really can’t be said of the previous two screen adaptations of Dune.
Dune (2021) is as vast a sweeping, motion picture in the grand tradition that demands to be seen on as big a screen as you find. French director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) has probably shot his masterpiece because this one is going to be damn near impossible to top (I’ll get to why later).
Dune is the story of… Forget it.
If you read this blog you know perfectly well what the plot of Dune is and Villeneuve followed it faithfully. This is not to say he didn’t include anything new. As you are used to me saying by now, a story succeeds or fails in the style of its telling.
Villeneuve agreed to this project only on the condition that he would be cutting the novel in two. Although, this is pretty much just the first act, and it takes two and half hours to watch. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was hoping to turn his duet into a trilogy, with contingency cutbacks in the plot if it doesn’t blow the doors at the box office.
This movie is mostly about the fall of House Atreides. The whole film is built around its inevitable doom.
Paul’s parents are largely co-equals to him in terms of screen time. Jessica is played by Rebecca Fergusson and Duke Leto by Oscar (Why Did I Sign Another Contract With Disney?) Isaac.
Fergusson’s Lady Jessica comes across as a strong but mentally unstable woman. Whether that was her intention or not that is what it feels like and it fits the character. A completely sane woman would not defy the entire Sisterhood and deliver a son when she had been ordered to birth only daughters for Duke Leto. To say nothing of taking the Water of Life when she knew she was pregnant.
Isaac carries this first movie. He surpasses himself as he brings the noble but doomed Duke Leto to life. He does the best job with the character that I’ve seen and he has some stiff competition. The first shot of Leto we have is when the Imperial envoy formally charges Leto with taking control of Arrakis. Leto’s character is immediately established as honorable and sympathetic by delivering a speech about his great house and it’s received by his audience with serious faces, they know he’s telling the truth about House Atreides. And he embodies it. Villeneuve included some major plot elements from the novel that Lynch (to the best of my knowledge but who knows what got cut) never used, in order to paint a picture of a great man who felt he was overshadowed by his father. The “Old Duke” Atreides was killed in a bullfight and there are a number of references to this, which are mostly visual. Showing, not telling. Getting killed in a bullfight is one of the most macho ways to clock out that there is. One of the first images you see in this movie is a gigantic portrait of the “Old Duke” dressed as a Matador. Another early image that is frequently seen is a small impressionist sculpture featuring a bullfight and the bull’s horn is barely touching the Matador’s abdomen. And finally the stuffed and mounted head of the bull that killed the Old Duke. The Old Duke’s overshadowing presence was a feature of the book, and it was brought masterfully to the screen by Villeneuve. As great and respected within the Imperium as Leto is, somewhere inside he feels like a fraud. He feels he doesn’t measure up to his towering father.
The final use of the bull’s head was brilliant. Leto’s house had fallen, his armies were shattered and the Baron is pictured underneath the bull’s head. It was one of those, “you didn’t notice it but your brain did” moments.
Timothée Chalamet did fine as Paul. It wasn’t exceptional but it didn’t need to be given the material he had to work with. His performance was more understated compared to the massive events that were going on around him but that was Villeneuve’s call.
Understated but brilliant would describe Stellan Skarsgård turn as Vladimir Harkkonen. Usually portrayed as a sort of deformed infant. Skarsgård’s Baron is much more sluglike in appearance. Old, sick, and dripping with menace. A sybarite who is at the end of a life that was so devoted to the vulgar senses that he can no longer feel much pleasure in anything.
No surprise whose performance was weakest, Dave Bautista alternately scowls like a Neanderthal and bellows like bull moose as the Beast Rabban, admittedly that is probably all that is ever needed for the role. Rabban is not a layered character.
There was talk of Bill Skarsgård as Fyed but the Harkkonen heir and Paul’s final boss battle isn’t in this one at all. Honestly, at two and half hours the movie was long enough as it was. And the character didn’t do much until after Leto was dead anyway, so another good call by the director.
The surprise standout (and I’m not even joking) was Sharon Duncan-Brewster as the diverse Kynes of color. Liet Kynes was both race and gender-swapped for this movie but she actually carried it. I’m completely serious. I was shocked by the quality of her performance. Woke token casting shouldn’t have been that good.
I suppose having brought up Kynes I should mention Chani. Zendaya played Chani. That’s it, she’s barely in this one. There wasn’t enough performance to judge.
I should also mention in passing Nigerian actor Babs Olusanmokun as Jamis. Jamis is a character in the book who is more defined by his absence than his presence. We find out about the impact of his life on the lives of others only after Paul kills him in a dual. Villeneuve included a few scenes with Jamis prior to his death, establishing him as a reasonably sympathetic character in the mind of the audience member.
Use of huge imagery to convey the impact of a truly epic motion picture is a frequent feature of this film. Caladan was shot in the forests and fjords of Norway, in sweeping panoramic vistas. This film also has the best use of desert cinematography since Lawrence of Arabia. Easily better than the Lynch version. The downfall of House Atreides is a vast plain of fire.
Arrakis outside shots are done with just the right amount of too much light, giving it a feeling of harshness. Villeneuve was painting on a very big canvas. There are also some callouts to previous versions, the still suits are copied from Lynch’s Dune and the Baron’s palace has a strong resemblance to Gieger’s concept art for Jodorowsky’s movie-that-never-happened.
And then there was Selusa Secondus. Allow me a moment’s digression.
Frank Herbert had some intriguing thoughts about politics and economics in the Dune series. However, his ideas about the military were utter crap. The Emperor’s Sardukar were the descendants of criminals or criminals themselves, depending on which book you are reading. Career criminals are defectives. In my experience, they could never stop being criminals and they invariably got kicked out. If you’re desperate for bodies to absorb bullets, fine, but at the end of the day they are not the best bone stock to start with, I don’t give a shit what you’ve seen in the movies.
The Sardukar’s environment and training were so brutal that six out of every thirteen recruits died in training. Look, a harsh environment can potentially make for hardened warriors, but a fifty percent casualty rate in basic training will result in your brand new soldiers being PTSD drenched long before they go into their first battle. Additionally, good warriors are rarely good soldiers. That is all societal. Gurkhas are warriors from a harsh environment who make great soldiers. Arabs are warriors from a harsh environment who make terrible soldiers.
And I’m not even going to touch the Fish-Speaker army.
Anyway, the background material for the Sardukar is ridiculous, so Villeneuve didn’t use it. He recreated imagery from Triumph of the Will, but it was part of Sardukar’s religious ceremony with quite a bit of human sacrifice being thrown in (which I don’t remember being in the books). But the part that was really good was their language, which is spoken in throat-singing. It was a nice touch that made them seem not entirely human even though humans can obviously do that.
The music score may well be Hans Zimmer’s best work. In keeping with, uh, some of Frank Herbert’s chemically fortified inspirations, the score is deliberately hallucinatory in nature. While various instruments from third-world countries are used in the score, he fed them into his pet synth-wave mixer until they were unidentifiable. The rest of his score is driven by female vocalists. These segments are used whenever any member of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood or Chani is on screen.
This also allows Zimmer to trawl for another Oscar by going on and on at length about how women are magical, and nobody ever noticed one until 2021. It will probably work.
As I said before, this is the movie that Dune fans have been waiting decades for and sadly, I’m not certain that it won’t be left as an orphan of a trilogy that never happened. There was no sequel even in pre-production when Covid hit. Warner was rightfully concerned about how big of an audience this movie was going to bring in. Truthfully, they were right to worry, this is a film for thinking men and there just aren’t that many of them. Dune’s core audience is never going bigger than Star Trek’s.
This is not an action movie. There are some fight scenes that meet the current standards but they would never have been the reason people wanted to see this movie.
Dune had an opening weekend of $40 million in the US. It’s been released in foreign markets for a while so the global cumulative is $220 million. It will probably top $300 million, which is nowhere near enough to earn out.
But that might be viewed as just good enough during the “current movie-going climate.”
Denis Villeneuve has said that he was promised there would be a sequel if it did well enough on HBOmax. But who knows how much is good enough? The Snyder Cut was their biggest title ever on streaming and there are absolutely no plans for a sequel to that. And who made him that promise? Because there has been so much turnover in Warner executives over the past five years that they installed revolving doors on every top-floor office.
My prediction is that there will be a sequel, but it won’t be anywhere on the scale of this movie. Which will be a crying shame.
In any case:
The Dark Herald Recommends with Enthusiasm.
UPDATE: The Drinker’s take.
2ND UPDATE: Legendary Films has formally announced there will be a sequel to Dune. Tentative release date of 2023 but who know for sure?
