Review: Dune, Part 1 (2021)

Spoilers ahead. I will also note that I read Dune many years ago, but have since forgotten much of it. Yes, I plan on reading the series again soon.

“DUNE?” More like, “DUDE, call a plumber.”

Score: 9/10

The Frank Herbert’s literary sci-fi classic was previously adapted for the large hypnosis machine movie screen with David Lynch’s interpretation, released in 1984, was, depending on whom you ask, loved or hated. Decades later, in 2000, the story was made into a miniseries for small-scale hypnosis machines TV with a special effects reach that exceeded its grasp. The franchise was primed for a grander treatment with the realism that modern CGI can provide. Enter Denis Villeneuve, whose filmmaking prowess is the origin of the initial 10/10 points of the rating. Dune (2021) isn’t perfect, and Villeneuve is paradoxically the reason I docked the score 1 point: Dune isn’t so much a film as it is a Denis Villeneuve Experience (DVE).

Visually and thematically, Dune sits in the middle of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049—Villeneuve’s previous two films, and can be considered a synthesis of the paradoxes seen in both. Arrival‘s world was one of shadows and subdued lighting, of mystical technology begetting humanity’s latent collective power to curve literal time. There was humanist-heavy hope in the dismal, swampy earth. The cheerful, saturated colors of Blade Runner 2049 was a candy-like sheen on the cyberpunk nihilism, birthed from the practical supertech of artificial human slave labor and controlled by corrupt power structures. Better or not, Dune was a rainbow gray area progressing towards redemption. The House Atreides is forced to a doomed mission on Arrakis as a matter of fealty, as seen in Paul Atreides’ struggle: is he fit to rule, with his mixed heritage as a member of nobility and with the commanding power of his Bene Gesserit mother? He reveals the desire and potential to act, yet his hand is forced only after the deadly invasion of the House Harkonnen,

Accommodating the film’s design language, especially in the case of House Atreides, was an ambiguity of purpose, operating on a few different levels. The viewer only knows what each House is like from the perspective of the ruling classes or rank and file military forces. We don’t get a sense of what each nation as a people is like: what is their life like, what do they think of their rulers, what do they hope for? We can only guess, but it would be a bad guess. Duke Leto explicitly follow orders from the Emperor (really, the Emperor’s emissaries). There’s no clear picture to be seen of his individual desires outside his concern for Paul’s future.

The lack of purpose is where the DVE paradigm comes into play. Villeneuve’s world-building dodges a lot of cinematic conventions, as only select slivers of the universe are shown, and sometimes exhaustively so in context of the common visual storytelling expression. There are lingering, pensive landscape shots, or special attention made to some vehicles, like the ornithopters and their hypnotic, vibrating wings‐the scenes featuring these shots “repeat” the same cinematic phrases to the audience. In the hands of less capable directors, the film would be close to disaster. Villeneuve transports the gray, blocky, minimalism of brutalist architecture into his bleak futurism, almost as a self-dare. An amateur could make Pandora look pretty, but it takes significant skill to frame ugly, uncomfortable, intrusive objects as appealing scenery. He makes it work.

About that worldbuilding: here’s an experiment. Watch this scene from the movie. Someone new to Dune’s universe can form a decent picture of what’s happening in the scene itself on a surface level, and infer some deeper meanings, like the type of culture that the people in the scene inhabit. Villeneuve accomplishes this in a few ways that I won’t take up space writing about. All of this from 30 seconds of film with no dialogue and no other context. This is what masterful visual storytelling looks like.

Though there is action in it, Dune is thankfully not an action movie as much as it is pure science fiction built upon political intrigue. This might let down some audience segments, and the pacing may kill their attention; the type of socio-political structure present will add to the detachment. There isn’t a whiff of liberal democracy anywhere, nor much in the way of Enlightenment thinking. The main course here is Paul Atreides’ psychology, set afire by his dream-like visions of the girl on Arrakis, his growing voice powers, and in later scenes, the effects of the spice and the death of Duke Leto. Paul, like all of Villeneuve’s protagonists, do not act in a traditional, thespian sense. They wander through the scenes, a detached entity awaiting the right moment to enter a proper role. Paul waits until a climax (a narrative one, mind you) is upon him to register an emotion. He does this, to significant degrees, twice in the film. This, again, is a DVE. Traditional protagonists will be beacon of charisma in their own way, shining light everywhere as the centrality of the narrative. Villeneuve chains and locks the hero up until he (Villeneuve) is ready to let him (the hero) loose.

The deviations from the source material are more omissions of secondary characters rather than significant alterations, though I am reading this from other reviews. One notable character deviation Dr. Liet Kynes, who was made a woman in the movie. From what I know of his character in the book, his sex wasn’t integral; his racial makeup, however, was. He was a mix of two distinct people in the book. Both Herbert and Villeneuve have Kynes as white and black, respectively, but it would’ve been a better idea to have the Kynes figure cast as ostensibly biracial (Erin Kellyman comes to mind quickly), to embody that aspect of her background.

The ending felt abrupt, as there was no Final Battle or Big Bad Confrontation tropes as traditional markers the third act. There was, however, a ritualized duel, between the callow protagonist and a belligerent, Lawful Neutral (?) party: a short and rather awkward grapple, unheard of in a crisis climax (there’s that DVE again). The outcome placed Paul in the good favor of the Fremen. In terms of the overall story of Dune as the first book, this happened somewhere in the middle or late-middle of the second act, where the hero receives the New Power that would eventually help him at the narrative’s ultimate climax. The implication here, with cutting the film in the middle of the story, is that part two would be made* if there was enough of a positive response. Looking at audience and critic reviews, this appears to be likely.

Video reviews:
Dune Review (2021) from IGN – IGN is mainstream, so of course they get their assessment all wrong. Thankfully, the commenters take them to task on it.
Dune (2021) Review | Quinn’s Ideas – Never watched any of his reviews before, but I like his observations.
Dune – Bold, Ambitious And (Mostly) Brilliant – The Critical Drinker – Drinker’s observations are also good, though I have a few disagreements, mainly his questioning of the protagonist’s age. Kyle MacLachlan, the actor portraying Paul Atreides in David Lynch’s Dune, was like a charismatic college graduate. Timothée Chalamet is roughly the same age as MacLachlan, but his slender frame and self-doubt sells sold Paul’s youth and inexperience well.

*Edit: Dune, Part 2 is confirmed.