Trying to write about a film like Dune in a critical context over two years after it was released feels a bit… pointless. I mean, the film was a hit (albeit by mid-pandemic standards); and if you did miss it first time round, the hype around the sequel has surely already piqued your interest and/or left you cold, in which case what I say isn’t likely to be a deciding factor. Of course, yay/nay recommendations are not the only reason for critical writing — far from it — but, if you’re looking to do more than that, you better have something to say. So I confess here and now, for the sake of any readers looking for that kind of article, that I don’t think I have a unique or revelatory or even particularly insightful take on Dune — or Dune: Part One, as I’ve insisted on calling it ever since the wonderful surprise of seeing its opening title card (and sites like IMDb have finally got on board with too). All I can offer is how the film struck me personally, from my particular perspective; which is not nothing, but is what it is.
So what is my perspective? Well, I’m far from a newbie to the world of Arrakis, though I can’t now remember in what order I first encountered the various texts related to it that I’ve experienced. So, going chronologically, I have read Frank Herbert’s original novel. Famously, it’s a doorstop of a tome, so I must have been relatively young because, for whatever reason, I’ve struggled to get through long books for the past couple of decades (I’ve tried Lord of the Rings two or three times and never got much further than Tom Bombadil; I started Shogun over four years ago and my bookmark still sits about halfway through it — and I did enjoy both of those! I just don’t have the staying power to get to the end). But I can’t have been that young, given the book’s subject matter and style, and the fact I enjoyed it. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say it’s one of my favourite novels. I’ve never read the sequels. I’ve long intended to (see: previous comments about lack of staying power when reading).
I’ve also seen the 1984 David Lynch film, naturally — an interesting but fundamentally flawed endeavour — and the 2000 miniseries (and its 2003 sequel), which I remember being widely acclaimed — and I would have agreed with that sentiment — but it does look rather dated now, and so I’m somewhat wary of rewatching it (though I recently bought an expensive Blu-ray edition imported from Australia, so I certainly intend to at some point). The point of listing all that is this: I do not approach Dune free of expectation. Quite the opposite. And yet, I also didn’t have a specific vision in mind. And when you’ve got a director like Denis Villeneuve in charge — a director with a very definite and particular style — you know you’re going to get his interpretation of the material, so the more open-minded and receptive you are to that, the better. I mean, unless you’re on his exact wavelength, your imaginings are not likely to be the same as his, especially if you’ve allowed them to be shaped by one of the previous films, or even the concepts from unmade versions, like the one so interestingly documented in Jodorowsky’s Dune.
All of this a very long-winded and self-centred way of arriving at my point that, on first viewing, Villeneuve’s Dune took some adjusting to, because it wasn’t quite… right. Having said I went in with no expectations, clearly I had some, buried somewhere in my mind. And yet, the film also felt like exactly what one should have expected from Villeneuve if you’d seen his previous work, not least the sci-fi film he made immediately before this, Blade Runner 2049. The worlds of Blade Runner and Dune are very different, but, as filtered through the mind of Denis Villeneuve, there are distinct aesthetic similarities, most apparent in the brutalist influence in much of the world design. That starkness is quite at odds with the fanciful, sometimes even downright weird, takes on the material that came from the minds of creatives like David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky; or even the miniseries, which, while I little more staid and constrained by a TV budget, is seemingly as influenced by fantasy TV of the period as by its science-fiction stablemates. With most previous visualisations of Dune leaning into such fantastical choices, Villeneuve’s (for want of a better word) realist take was, initially, a shock to the system.
That’s a slightly disorientating feeling to be dealing with when watching a film for the first time. Thanks to the story and characters and scenes being so familiar, the mind is freed up to focus more on the surrounding decisions. Even when trying to be open-minded about them, there’s then some kind of disjunct between things that are very recognisable being presented in a very unrecognisable way. There’s also a kind of tug-of-war going on between the feeling that Villeneuve has been allowed to interpret the text exactly as he sees fit, and that’s a good thing because we’re getting his vision across the project, and the sense that it’s something of a shame to miss out on the craziness present in previous interpretations. After all, Dune is set 20,000 years in the future (you may recall it’s set in the year 10,191, but that’s not AD, it’s numbered from an in-universe event — look, let’s not get into the backstory here; but when you see articles mindlessly parrot “Dune is set 20,000 years in the future in the year 10,191”, know that the article writer is mindless because they haven’t bothered to query the maths, not because they’ve done the maths dramatically wrong) — think how different technology has made our world from three or four thousand years ago, so how much wilder and weirder could things get if you multiply that by a factor of five or six? None of which is to say Villeneuve’s choices are wrong, or even that I don’t like them, but they took some getting used to. On my recent second viewing, with the benefit of awareness of what I was about to see, I was able to enjoy the overall experience much more; it settled the qualms I had from my initial viewing and made it easier for me to appreciate the magnificence of the achievement.
Another point of contention (if we can go as far as calling it that) was where the film broke off. I’ve read some retrospective reviews recently that expressed their disappointment when the film suddenly ended mid-story, which I guess goes to show how not all marketing and information reaches all people — I thought it was well-known that this was to be Part One, and that a followup conclusion was dependent on its box office success (hence my pleasant surprise when the film so brazenly declared it was just Part One on its opening title card, not even saving that fact for a ‘surprise’ reveal on a closing title card, a la It), but there were definitely people who went in not knowing that and found it frustrating. Should it have been made even clearer? Should the film have formally been titled Part One in its marketing? Well, the reaction to various “Part Ones” released this year (like Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Fast X, and Across the Spider-Verse) suggests that audiences don’t really like only getting “Part One” ever; but, conversely, their acceptance of it depends on how it’s handled — how satisfying the movie leading up to the break is, and how the moment it stops is handled. But this is a whole side debate that I’ve stumbled into without adequate preparation (I’ve not even seen two of the three films I just mentioned), so I’m going to swiftly redirect us to Dune.
Where Dune: Part One ends is, frankly, where I always thought it would. Other fans were more surprised by its choice, so perhaps it’s just too long since I’ve read the novel or watched another version and I just couldn’t remember a better break-point at approximately the halfway mark. The screenwriters could, though, because apparently the film originally carried on a little further in the story, before the endpoint was moved in the edit. It’s not the most dramatic place to pause the story or end a film — it doesn’t come after some big action sequence or major plot twist, nor on a cliffhanger of any kind — but I think it largely works. It reminded me of The Fellowship of the Ring, possibly the greatest “Part One” film of all time, in that in no way whatsoever does it feel like the end of the story — we’re definitely only in the middle somewhere, and there’s clearly a whole lot more to come — but it feels like a solid place to pause; like we’ve experienced the whole of a part, if that makes sense.
There was some minor brouhaha the other day during the press for Part Two when someone asked Villeneuve about telling the story over two films — I didn’t pay it too much heed and it didn’t really blow up, so I forget the precise question and answer — but, as many pointed out, adapting Dune in a single film has been attempted before and famously didn’t work out, so doing it in two on this re-attempt shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Certainly, as a fan, I’d rather a two-part adaptation that gives the story the necessary screen time, even if that means a somewhat limp end to Part One, rather than have the whole book in a rushed three-hour single shot. And if early reviews of Part Two are to be believed, it’s paid off overall.
But more on that ‘next time’, when I see Part Two myself and offer my verdict — hopefully in a more timely fashion than this, rather than waiting several years until the hoped-for Dune: Part Three, aka Dune Messiah (I’m not sure which title I’d rather they go with if/when it happens…)
Dune: Part One was #176 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021. It placed 5th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2021.
Dune: Part Two is in cinemas worldwide from tomorrow and will be reviewed in due course.
100Films.co.uk 