“This is only the beginning”
Long term readers of my deliberately non-spoiler film articles that ramble around a film rather than ruining and spoiling them, will attest that I’ve recently watched a Denis Villeneuve film from nearly a decade ago that’s based on a non-existent film that I’ve clearly made up, so perhaps you shouldn’t be here for a precise record and deep dive into this, his tenth all time feature length film. I believed his 2013 psychological drama Prisoners to be set within a lighthouse and nothing like the actual film he created! I’ve accounted for my liking (but not loving) of 2015’s Sicario, my unabashed love for Arrival a year later before, a year later still but based in the year of 2049, he created a worthy addition to the Blade Runner mythos.
So Dune should have been an easy sell but I watched 45 minutes of his latest creation a few months ago and with my disinterest growing, I switched off.
I’m a heathen and a let down to the film fan community I know, and combined with my real inability to write and appraise science fiction films without filling paragraphs with vacuous dross such as “It is a beautiful film”, perhaps I’m not the authority you should turn to on this film, but it is a beautiful film.
The problem is a personal one and that is I’m simply not a fan. It is a beautiful film (sorry, Film Editor), no doubt about that and with delightful echoes of the misty stillness surrounding the alien spaceship in Arrival. There’s a brilliant dark shadow inspired scene that reminded me immediately of Colonel Kurtz and Francis Ford Coppola’s opus to madness Apocalypse Now and the opening 45 minutes that I’ve now re-watched have a shadowy, claustrophobic feel of a Tim Burton film. The touching down of spacecrafts are shot in close up ala The Terminator or Alien, you have “The One” reference (and others) to The Matrix and the film is soaked to the skin in obvious links to the George Lucas behemoth Star Wars. From the lame and simple theme of good versus evil you also have the link back to a central warrior saviour, a God amongst men, the divine right of family rule, the receiver of “training” from an elder and the speaker of many tongues in secretive languages against a backdrop of an outer world of Empires, a ruling class, in-fighting, warring factions and the harvesting of a planet’s resources. Here the resource is “Spice” and without it, Empires crumble in the sand.
I wish I’d seen Dune at the cinema and on the glorious “big screen” we all love. I liked it but I have no real reason for loving it despite some strong central performances from an ensemble cast of actors and actresses of whom I cherish their cinematic and dramatic skills. Oscar Isaac will forever be the struggling put upon singer songwriter crashing from one wrong turn to another in the Coen Brothers brilliant Inside Llewyn Davis in 2013 or the creepy loner in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina a year later, rather than a Star Wars character or head of a family dynasty here and passer of the flame to his young son. Isaac is good but his screen son Timothee Chalamet (Interstellar, Lady Bird, The French Dispatch) is even better, and has to be. Aided by mystical powers, secret languages and the training, coaching and guidance of an elder (veteran Josh Brolin being typically grizzled and brilliant), we see the film politically, spiritually and often humanly via his eyes as well as those from an ostensible lover in waiting portrayed by Zendaya (Spider-Man franchise and The Greatest Showman). Rebecca Ferguson impresses again as familial Matriarch, Dave Bautista crosses over from the Guardians of the Galaxy to simmer thunderously, Jason Momoa (Justice League, Aquaman) brings a smiling humanity and two final character portrayals that must figure prominently in “Part 2” of this two part science fiction epic must fall to the unrecognisable Stellan Skarsgard as this franchise’s Emperor Palpatine and the brilliant Javier Bardem as a vaunted and respected tribal leader.
For there is a part 2, with a release date scheduled for 17th November 2023 and as Zendaya states with this film’s final line “this is only the beginning” and perhaps the start of another haul of Oscars in addition to the six Academy Awards that fell the way of Dune out of the ten overall nominations this year. Best achievements in Sound, Visual Effects, Production Design, Film Editing, Cinematography and Hans Zimmer’s original music score all won golden statuettes for a film that looks, feels and sounds like a beautiful film. I just didn’t love it.
I’m aware of the mythos surrounding the creation of the David Lynch film in 1984 and the subsequent documentary of its creation as well as the highly regarded book upon which all of these have used as the basis for their interpretations and creations. I just found Villeneuve’s creation beautifully befuddling, slow and uninteresting when stalled and static and, as you’ve gathered from the rambling introduction above, I was rather more interested in the links, deliberate or fancifully imagined by me, to other films and franchises from past and present.
But I will be seeing Part 2 on the cinema screen as there is only one place to see a creation of this spectacular magnitude, and that’s on the biggest cinema screen you can find.
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film articles are linked below or there’s well over 100 blog articles (with 300+ individual film reviews) within my archives from which to choose:
“Gold” (2022)
Dystopian Mad Max survival thriller without the thrills.medium.com
“The Seventh Day” (2021)
Training Day — For Priests!medium.com
“The Tender Bar” (2021)
George Clooney the Director strikes again.medium.com