FILM REVIEW: Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" is top-tier science fiction
Frank Herbert’s original Dune novel, a beast of a sci-fi story painted on the largest canvas – that is, the canvas that exists in the collective mind’s eye – filled with political intrigue and weighty philosophical concepts, was a frustratingly impenetrable read for me. I’d say it was down to its prose, in which things are explained so thoroughly and often that it was somehow just as confusing if it was under-explained. But the imagination radiating from the work is irresistible and compelling; certainly it’s irresistible to Hollywood, where various creatives attempted a slew of adaptations that pleased a few but not hitting the mark.
Enter French Canadian auteur filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, who’d recently pulled off the impossible with style and grace by making a worthy Blade Runner sequel in Blade Runner 2049. Once again, he’s done what I thought impossible and translated this ponderous tome, with extreme fidelity, into a thrilling piece of science fiction cinema.
A quick plot summary for the uninitiated: Dune is set 8000 years in the future. Humankind has spread out amongst the stars but a vast monarchy based in feudalism is the dominant government. There’s the Emperor and beneath him are several royal Houses – really, colonial forces – who’re powerful in their own right but must answer to him. The lifeblood of the galactic-sized economy is a valuable substance known as the Spice Melange, which is what allows for interstellar travel, extends lifespans, and grants visions. The Spice is an obvious stand-in for oil, but Dune is canny enough to not spell it out to the audience so vulgarly. The spice can only be mined from the dune planet Arrakis, where the indigenous Fremen live along with some giant sandworms. This planet is the stage for two colonial forces, House Atreides and House Harkonen, to battle it out. An ancient religious sect called the Bene Gesserit operate behind the scenes, sowing the seeds of conflict for an unknown grander plan.
A large part of its brilliance is down to Villeneuve’s directorial choices. The operatically staged visuals of warfare, mining and spacecrafts, and scenes of whispered exposition in gorgeously designed sets, are perfectly balanced which grants Dune a particularly unique rhythm. It isn’t slow, it isn’t fast; rather it’s a hypnotic display of overwhelming imagery, permeating with paranoia and doom.
The minute details are fascinating but the broader story of various factions brutally, nobly, sometimes even impotently, attempting to impose their wills in an unsympathetic universe rings true as anything you’d read in a history book. It’s all so impressively hewn and imbued with reverence.
