Area Man Watches Dune (Part II)
Twice the Dune, twice the fun
Watching
[Previously: Area Man Watches Dune]
Dune (1984)
As time comes for us all, so Dune (1984) comes for every David Lynch fan. Lynch’s much-maligned adaptation is nothing if not a dutiful depiction of the book’s main plot points, all squeezed into a little under two and a half hours. Never boring exactly, Dune doesn’t leave much room to breathe, except for some reason whenever it turns to see what the pustulated Baron Harkonnen and his nephews are up to for grotesque comic relief. The special effects are hokey by 2024 standards, and, I suspect, also by 1984 standards.
Uncharacteristically for a Lynch work, Dune was shot on a soundstage (several of them!) with an enormous crew. I couldn’t quite decide if I thought the film looked cheap or expensive, so I split the difference and concluded that it’s like a production by the world’s most well-financed community theater. In the film’s earnestness to get as many of the details of the story right as possible (including that damn talking two year old), it overlooks things like “emotional investment in characters” and “serious exploration of themes.”
There are better ways to spend your time, but Dune isn’t totally without value for certain viewers. In the film’s occasional dream sequence, you can glimpse the seeds of some of the aesthetic that Lynch would develop to great and disturbing effect for similar montages in Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. And even if it’s a failure (which, to be absolutely clear, it is), there’s enough distance between us and Dune now to admire it as a curio in Lynch’s career, an exclusive look at how he would handle vastly different production circumstances than the ones he ultimately prefers.
Dune Part 2 (2024)
When we last checked in with Denis Villeneuve’s take on Dune I was left wondering how any of the big ideas animating Frank Herbert’s novel would play out in next installment, so let’s start there. Front in center in Dune Part 2 is the messianic fate of Paul “Muad’Dib” Atreides (Timothée Chalamet). The Fremen of planet Arrakis await the coming of a savior figure—though not universally. The Fremen of the North whom Paul and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) have fallen in with are less given over to superstitious rumblings, excepting pack leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem), a true believer if there ever was one. Paul’s love interest Chani (Zendaya), by contrast, doesn’t have time for any of this nonsense.
For the Fremen of the South it’s another story. The Bene Gesserit, the scheming intergalactic witches who count Jessica among their ranks, took advantage of the South’s poverty and long ago seeded the idea of a messiah by sending one of their own to start hyping it up among the Fremen. Part 2 is very concerned with how cultic figures rise to power and religious movements get off the ground, and with regard to how it handles this I think the movie is quite smart. While we’re (theoretically) cheering for Paul and Jessica to get their revenge on the Harkonnens for killing all their family and friends in part 1, in their roles as ascendant messiah and his enabler they’re more like the villains of the story.1 I understand this might not be the most popular reading of Dune but, well, the movie is at pains to remind us in 30 minute intervals that if Paul fulfills the Bene Gesserit’s plans for him then billions of people will die.
Part 2 feels cut from the same cloth as its predecessor, which is by and large a good thing2. Sort of in the style of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, there’s a continuity to the scale and shape of the Duniverse between the two films. This part is mostly a sandstravaganza, though there’s also an interlude off-planet, giving us just a taste of other worlds. We get to spend some time with the Emperor (Christopher Walken) and Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh, in a part that’s more of an audition for what I assume will be a larger role in Dune Messiah, similar to how Zendaya was used in part 1) on their greener home planet. Then there’s my favorite sequence, featuring a walk-on role for Léa Seydoux as Bene Gesserit Margot Fenring, who visits planet Harkonnen—rendered fully monochromatic under the rays of a black sun—to scout out the sociopathic Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler, doing another voice) as a potential messiah alternate should Paul fail to rise to the occasion. The machinations of the infamously eugenicist Bene Gesserit make for some of the most darkly compelling elements of Part 2, and provide some of its best one-liners. “There are no sides—you of all people should know,” Charlotte Rampling’s Reverend Mother telepathically and portentously hisses at Jessica in the finale.
One of the clear advantages Villeneuve’s version of Dune has over Lynch’s is the verisimilitude you get from shooting on location with extra-wide shots instead of boxed-in sets. Like in the previous installment, Villeneuve and DP Greig Fraser’s shooting philosophy lets awe arise as a natural response to the totally immersive coverage instead of imposing it on the viewer with #OnePerfectShot-ready frames telling the viewer to Feel Awe Now. The one time where I feel they miss the mark is in the otherwise well-executed scene where Paul rides a sand worm for the first time. The lead up is tense but then when he actually mounts the thing you…like…don’t see it? I know I can’t be crazy here but they cut away to the Fremen cheering him on without actually showing the worm once he’s on it, right? (This is not a problem in the Lynch version.)
Another advantage Villeneuve’s Dune has over Lynch’s is its investment in its characters. Part 1 has a pretty big cast to introduce us to (before killing most of them off), so Part 2 finally gets to devote attention to what happens to those who remain. I think there’s a clear Star is Born moment for Timothée Chalamet here—you’ll know what I’m talking about, and it isn’t about the sand worms. More curious is what to make of Zendaya. Chani in the film gets much more to do than book-Chani, and as the primary locus of doubt surrounding Paul’s destiny as the leader of interplanetary jihad she has to play both lover and objector to an increasingly emboldened Chalamet. Do Chalamet and Zendaya have chemistry? I mean I guess as much as you can have under the water-restricted circumstances. Can Zendaya hold her own? I think ultimately yes—Villeneuve certainly believes in her, as he gives her the final frame and, with it, the last emotional punch3—but you’re basically in suspense the whole movie to see if she can get there.
I do plan on reading Dune Messiah so I’m ready for whatever Villeneuve cooks up for us next, but in the meantime I have one parting question: how the hell do the Fremen make their clothes?
Apparently people online are mad that Jessica spends most of the movie dressed in Arab-ish garb, as though cultural appropriation isn’t entirely the point of her character’s plot to get the Fremen to accept Paul as a messiah.
Exception: Hans Zimmer’s score, while it never doesn’t work, also just feels pretty phoned-in at this point. The (computer-generated?) vaguely Middle Eastern wailing ladies are back, there’s a returning leitmotif from the first film, but otherwise there aren’t any striking new themes this time around, which is a real missed opportunity, at least in my opinion.
The choice to end the movie with Chani going her own way after Paul’s betrayal—in contrast to the book where he reassures her that marrying Princess Irulan won’t come between them in any meaningful way—is yet another warning against uncritically taking Paul as the hero of this story.