DUNE PART I
Timothy Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgard. Dir. Denis Villeneuve, Warner Bros., 2021Sometimes the films hardest to write about surprise me. DUNE makes a good example. I've read the novel a ridiculous number of times since 1984. I've seen David Lynch's flop version an equally ridiculous number of times, (though never the miniseries.) It ought to be a breeze to assess Denis Villeneuve's new version, right?
Wrong, and for the simplest of reasons. It's only the first half. Whatever Lynch got wrong he did manage to compress the entire book into 137 minutes. With Villeneuve's two-part take, it's harder to make pronouncements, particularly of characters, because the audience can't say or see how their story arcs conclude, nor do we know how Villeneuve plans to complete the saga. Timothy Chalamet did not sell me on his viability as Paul Atreides, but with another three hours to go he may yet turn into the epic hero I want him to be.
Which may make Villeneuve a genius director, because I found myself saying, repeatedly, "Gotta give it benefit of the doubt - whatever doesn't thrill me here may redeem itself by the conclusion of Part 2." DUNE is not necessarily proof against critique but it mutes my inclination toward same. Comparing the new film to Lynch's becomes almost impossible, because I don't have a fair basis of comparison. Whether intended or not, it buys Villeneuve some breathing room which Lynch did not enjoy.
As I've said before, part of my standard for judging films is whether I'm still thinking about them the next day(s.) Until I decided to write it up yesterday, I cannot say I thought much about DUNE even a few hours later. Which does not mean I didn't like it, but rather that it failed to achieve the impact I anticipated. I thought about the Lynch version the day after seeing it and I'm still thinking about it 38 years later.
Frank Herbert's 1965 novel sprawls out so much - introducing not just a world but an entire universe - it's inevitable a film director/writer will have to excise large swathes of the original text. Why, then, I wonder about both, did Lynch and Villeneuve ADD scenes/ideas not extant in the novel. Lynch created the "weirding modules" concept, missing the point that the Fremen didn't need a special weapon to win in battle - the harshness of their world honed them to deadly fighters. Villeneuve decided to have the sandworm chasing Paul & his mother, Jessica, come to rest atop the sand and show a sort of obeiescence to Paul, as if recognizing his divinity long before anyone else. Given that the worms do, in time, submit to Paul's godhead, following his emergence as the Qissatz Haderach, doing that in Part I will rob that scene in Part 2 of its power. Villeneuve also adds a beat featuring Stellan Skarsgard's Baron Harkonnen recovering from a poison gas attack in a tank filled with appears to be petroleum. It doesn't make much difference to the story's outcome, but it doesn't add much, either.
That does it for the negative part of my critique. DUNE may not have stayed in my thoughts long but I liked what I saw for the most part. One thing Lynch's film fails to do is get the sense of scale right. While I suspect that owes to both the limitations of practical effects and budget, Villeneuve's use of CG allows him to convey the enormity at work in the novel, particularly with respect to the Guild heighliners, which transport House Atreides from Caladan to Arrakis. Described in the novel as being so massive the whole of House Atreides fits in one corner of the ship's hold, Villeneuve's heighliners look as huge as Herbert's description, the landing craft emerging from it tiny by comparison. That sense of scale encompasses the new keep occupied by House Atreides, the city of Arrakeen, the Shield Wall protecting the city, and the sandworms.
Villeneuve's greatest achievement has to be the cast. Lynch worked with his traditional stock cast, much as John Ford & Clint Eastwood have over their careers, regardless of whether specific actors made sense in their roles. Lynch liked working with Dean Stockwell so Stockwell played Dr. Yueh, who is clearly descended from Asiatic stock, even though Stockwell is not. I liked Stockwell, and most of Lynch's cast, well enough, but Herbert's novel features a diverse cast descended from most of Earth's peoples. Lynch featured a lily-white cast, which became especially problematic with the Fremen, who were intended to be Arabic/Middle Eastern. A pale white troupe of Fremen on a desert planet ruled by a blazing sun doesn't make much sense. Even with protective clothing, I'd expect them to at least have tans.
Villeneuve may not feature many/any Middle Eastern actors as Fremen but at least they're brown, distinct from the offworlders occupying their planet. He also uses better actors. I've enjoyed Everett McGill's work in the past - particularly in TWIN PEAKS - but the character of Stilgar is written as kingly, posessed of such confidence and charisma he can treat his new ducal ruler as an equal without arrogance or bluster. McGill just doesn't have that kind of presence. Javier Bardem does.
Whether or not Bardem is a better actor than McGill strikes me as irrelevant. Comparing acting ability makes as much sense to me as comparing how much & how far people can pee - too many outside variables exist for the comparison to have much validity. Bardem makes a better Stilgar than McGill, however, because he appears to have a better sense of the character. I couldn't take my eyes off Bardem when he appeared, which is the impact his character needs to make. As ever, Bardem makes it look effortless, which the role also demands. Stilgar rates as nobility among his people as much as Oscar Isaac's Duke Leto among his, both commanding fanatical devotion while seemingly unaffected by the weight of others' expectations.
Isaac may have the most thankless role in Villeneuve's film. The character plays an influential part in his son and his adopted homeworld's destiny despite being killed off in the first half of Part I. Isaac is so good an actor it feels almost unfair we will not see him again (unless Villeneuve adds some flashbacks in Part 2.) One of my favorite parts of the Star Wars sequels, I always want more of Isaac than I get, including in DUNE.
Space and length make direct comparisons between each cast member in the two directors' films both unwieldy & undesirable. That said, I enjoyed PART I's cast more, overall, than Lynch. Stephen McKinley Henderson, playing Thufir Hawatt, continues his late-career rennaissance as an in-demand character actor. Josh Brolin's Gurney Halleck rivals Patrick Stewart's, and if Villeneuve follows the novel as close in Part II we may get what we never got from the Coen Brothers - a chance to watch Brolin & Bardem onscreen at the same time, a dizzying prospect for this fan of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. I've not seen AQUAMAN, but Jason Momoa impressed me so much as swordmaster Duncan Idaho that I think I have to break my superhero-movie embargo.
Of the rest, I thought Rebecca Ferguson's Lady Jessica an improvement over Francesca Annis, which I would not have imagined. Unfamiliar with her other work, I now want to investigate Ferguson further and hope DUNE leads to even more roles. PART I gives too little of Chani to draw any comparison between Sean Young & Zendaya but at least Zendaya is the right hue and age. My only serious concern lies with Timothy Chalamet's Paul. Though never bad, he didn't convey to me the natural charisma Herbert's Paul has even before his ascendence. I appreciate that, like Zendaya, he's age-correct for the role but so far I remain more impressed with Kyle McLachlan. Still, we have another three hours to go, so Chalamet gets full benefit of doubt from me. By the end of PART II I may well say, "Kyle who?"
Villeneuve's other casting achievement is DUNE's villain, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Both Herbert and Lynch used Harkonnen as comic relief, a strange choice for a character who presides over the slaughter of thousands without flinching. Stellan Skarsgard transforms the Baron into an ice cold sociopath, an embodiment of pure evil. I didn't quite buy that his physical size requires the use of antigravity to support his mass, but I also did not spend much time worried about it, preferring my delight in his performance to quibbling over details.
I think the last three grafs give the lie to my assertion about space & length vis a vis the cast, but there's also not much left other than to wrap up. Critics complained that DUNE was too humorless, but I admired that choice. A compulsively readable novel, Herbert's DUNE is also without (much) humor, whereas most of the more comic scenes in Lynch's film didn't make sense in a story about planetary genocide and jihad.
In my writeup of the novelization of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD I praised Quentin Tarantino for telling a story which added up to more than the sum of its parts. If Villeneuve's DUNE has not yet delivered that, it is - crucially - not less, either. I liked DUNE, but I can't yet say I loved it. By the conclusion of PART II I suspect I will feel differently, but the main knock right now is that for such an epic, well-made film, DUNE did not make nearly the impact I might have hoped. I am harder to impress as I get older, though, which may account for that. I'm willing to believe, for now, that it does. Bring on PART II.
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