2024-03-06 19:28:18
Perhaps it has never hurt so much to hear a human body hit the ground in the cinema. The second part of the science fiction epic Dune begins in the desert on the planet Arrakis so intensely that it almost has no comparison. The skirmish of several individuals among the sand dunes has a hallucinatory intoxicating effect and welcomes the audience to a world that is beyond Hollywood standards.
Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has completed his almost six-hour diptych. More than two years after the first part, Czech cinemas started showing Dune: Part Two this Thursday. And it can be stated right away that the risky plan worked. The film is once again magnificent, deafening and set in an original world, which, although it bears familiar imperialist features, is nevertheless radically different from the usual fictional universes of well-known fantasy or sci-fi sagas.
At the same time, many broke their teeth on Frank Herbert’s almost six-hundred-page novel from 1965. In the 1970s, director Alejandro Jodorowsky did not get past the phase of fascinating sketches by artist HR Giger, among others, and wild ideas that the central villain Baron Harkonnen would be played by Salvador Dalí. When creating his adaptation, David Lynch struggled with producers, a giant crew of 1,700 people, and his own greatness. Later in the book, he commented that he underestimated whether such a large book could be compressed into a single film.
Villeneuve’s version of the story of space clans fighting for power stands out because it brings a whole new intensity of experience. The first part revolved around the treachery with which House Harkonnen tries to subdue the rival Atreides, and was deliberately slow paced. The camera lingered in each environment long enough for the viewer to absorb the fresh design and let themselves be absorbed by the vast area and the weight of the local architecture. Along with the feeling of something beyond human in its enormity, he also absorbed extremely strong emotions, mainly sadness, mourning and doom. The result was a picture that was almost physically painful to watch.
The hero Paul Atreides, who is supposed to be a kind of chosen one, and other characters were presented in a way that relies on understatement. It did not fill all the gaps of the universe in which it took place. So all the feelings were created without drawing too much on any detailed psychology of the characters. Creators seem to materialize experiences in a kind of pure, external form. All this also applies to the sequel. With one difference: the predominant emotion here is rather anger and a vision of revenge.
Paul Atreides finds himself among the wild Fremen, a desert nation awaiting the coming of the messiah. The strongly religious natives know how to move among the dangerous dunes, from which a giant worm can emerge at any time and devour everything in the vicinity.
Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet, becomes a kind of psychedelic avenger in the desert. | Photo: Niko Tavernis
Timothée Chalamet in the main role again gives a strangely fragile impression, as if Paul does not want to be a savior. But the crowds decided otherwise. The Fremen are exhausted from fighting the Harkonnens who want to mine their planet, and a body-deceiving alien seems to be their only hope.
It doesn’t sound very original. But director Villeneuve turns a simple plot skeleton into a painful torment through a dark, inhospitable wasteland that, thanks to Greig Fraser’s camera, Patrice Vermette’s design and Hans Zimmer’s thundering music, is akin to hell.
Set on a distant planet, Dune unsettlingly mixes mysticism and archaic tribalism with advanced technology. It’s a world where it’s not pleasant for even a second.
When watching the first part and first coming into contact with the gaping toothy mouths of the desert worms, one was reminded of the ominous Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings. It can be elaborated: the planet Arrakis looks like all of Middle-earth turned into Mordor. And Paul Atreides’ journey through this inhospitable, parched land hurts at every turn.
The second Dune is more action-packed and epic than “one”. After devastation and mourning comes revenge. But it is revenge in the universe, where even breathing is difficult, where meditation and other spiritual-mystical practices resemble a struggle for life rather than a peaceful Zen rest.
Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in a black and white sequence from the world of the evil Harkonnen. | Photo: Niko Tavernis
Dune is also the most monumental Hollywood epic today. And as such it will divide. Denis Villeneuve filmed the opposite of the photogenic worlds of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.
The local architecture charms, but at the same time falls on the audience. Everything here is shrouded in shades of grey, black or tan, or in an unsettling black and white when the plot shifts to the Harkonnens with their bare skulls, fascist views and extremely violent behavior.
At the same time, the director created a specific aesthetic, a kind of hyper-monumentality that forces the audience to work with emotions in a completely different way. Hollywood often slips into excess or pathos. Duna is overblown throughout, it rides on the edge of audio or visual excess, in places it resembles footage from an experimental film rather than the mainstream.
The first part worked with sadness in such a way that it filled all the space on the canvas. Paradoxically, the creators did not avoid pathos with silences or nuances, but quite the opposite: gloom and doom radiated non-stop to the audience.
The second part similarly works with anger. Paul Atreides is a special savior. Despite his pretty face, a fierce, angry, risk-taking young man, convinced of his role, who has gone through a series of initiation rituals and becomes a kind of psychedelic avenger. He acts by taking companions and enemies by surprise with his actions.
The second Dune is more action-packed and epic than the first part. Pictured are Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. | Photo: Niko Tavernis
A fascinatingly paradoxical film was created. Full of intoxicating action scenes, whether it’s the liquidation of Harkonnen mining equipment, or a ride on huge desert worms that transitions into abstract shots. It is something unprecedented, but it is difficult to say whether a genre classic destined for repeated viewing from the comfort of the living room has been born.
Denis Villeneuve has created a cinematic event so intense that it goes beyond the usual types of experiences that we want to dive into often and repeatedly. But it is also an event so tied to the giant screen of the IMAX cinema and the local surround sound, properly booming, that home projections make it quite problematic.
James Cameron’s Avatar may not have been as enjoyable at home without the proper height, width and depth of space, but it still offered a beautiful, colorful world as if from some alien National Geographic, which also looked good on TV.
Villeneuve offers exactly two scenes in the second Dune that evoke a brief sense of pleasure. He winks deliberately at the audience as he serves up a close-up of a desert mouse, the epitome of cuteness. Just to emphasize: no, I’m not filming this. And then he throws the audience back into a world that either engulfs them like a maelstrom, or they refuse to stay in it and choose the safety of distance. Duna offers no choice but between the two extremes.
Science fiction has already received many definitions. People often talk about the sense of wonder that true visionary science fiction can evoke.
The most magnificent picture of Denis Villeneuve, as much as one can marvel at many scenes, but it rather perfectly fulfills the idea of theorists Sean Redmond and Leon Marvell, who coined the thesis that a sense of danger is key to science fiction. Duna embodies this reasoning every second.
Film
Dune: Part Two
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Vertical Ent., Czech premiere on February 29.