Dir. Denis Villeneuve, starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Javier Bardem and Austin Butler. 12A. Seen twice in cinemas.
Rating: 8.8/10
I am going to begin this film review with a somewhat unusual statement:
I didn't really like Dune: Part 1.
While I thought that it was an ambitious film, full of amazing audio-visual storytelling, production design and effects, I feel like it fell a bit flat for me. Its pacing is incredibly slow, its performances often subdued, its main character an uninspiring, boring adolescent who seems about as confused by everything as you are. Even with my personal bias against Timothée Chalamet and his acting skills, I feel that his character of Paul Atredies was a sloppy, unconvincing subject of Dune: Part 1.
My biggest peeve with it, however, was that it was a film that could not exist on its own stead. It felt similar to Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse to me in this way. It is a film that is so devoted to setting up a second part that it feels like it lacks its own unique identity and a self-sufficient storyline. Neither of these films do the cardinal sin of splitting a film into two halves for the sake of a 'cash grab' (like The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, or The Hobbit parts 2 and 3, which simply don't merit their excessive runtime). But nonetheless, I feel like good films shouldn't have to exist 'around' other ones, especially when many two or three part films (or series of films) manage to interconnect while holding their own. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, for instance, manages to both introduce the stunning fantasy world of Middle Earth and give us a fleshed out story in its own right. So does Avengers: Infinity War or Kill Bill: vol.1; one of my favourite films of all time which doesn't merely stand separate from its second volume, but seems like an entirely different and unique film.
Nevertheless, I am a big fan of Denis Villeneuve's films and I had heard many great things about Dune: Part 2, so I decided to go and see it in the cinema with one of my housemates. I jumped into it somewhat blind; I hadn't paid much notice to any trailers and promotional videos for it, nor had I read the book or watched the first part since its release, so I was expecting to be somewhat confused by the plot.
Having picked the biggest screen we could find, loading up on snacks and taking an obligatory loo break before tackling the 2 hour 45 minute behemoth, we sat waiting through the trailers.
Then it began.
The first things you notice, or are forced into, is the sheer scale of noise and colour saturation. The film instantly sets itself up as something bold and you are thrown right into the deserts of the planet Arrakis. Unlike the first part's loud and terrifying opening Harkonnian chant of "Dreams are messages from the deep", which fades as the plot is slowly and intricately pieced together, this part, stating "Power over spice is power over all" feels more sure footed in its initial trajectory; like a Fremen warrior sand-stepping through the desert itself. It carries this momentum well, while slowly weaving new arcs and deeper themes into the mix. More on those later.
The film is unafraid to use intense soundscapes and moments of brightness, but every time it does so, it seems to do it with purpose and effect in mind. I found myself often surprised by the interchanging sounds of the film, from the macro to the microscopic, and even squinted my eyes at times when the film cut from dark underground temples to bright desert dunes or the entirely black and white Harkonnen battle arena scene. It really adds to the conflictual and unfamiliar atmosphere of the film and had a surprisingly simple yet original effect. In this way, the cinematography and sound design of the film is subtly brilliant, especially upon re-watching certain scenes.
Yet even Dune: Part 1 was not weak in these areas, so how was Part 2 more standout as a film? For me, it had to be the nuanced advancement of themes from the first half. It enhances the first part's bigger themes of Empire, ambition and adventure into the realms of cultism, martyrdom and lunacy through fate; the deeper implications and messages on power really rose to prominence in this film. It became less of a 'show off' blockbuster sci-fi film and more of a genuine epic in the true sense of the word. Towards the end of the film, I consciously thought to myself whether I was watching the modern day equivalent of an epic novel or a Shakespeare play, examining the tyranny of King Lear or the pride of Macbeth through the film form and the sci-fi genre.
You can only examine themes like these in such depth through great characters with brilliant arcs and presence, and I must admit that Chalamet really takes things up a notch. He starts to unfurl what lies behind the surface of the timid and quiet Paul Atredies who we see in Part 1 as he continues to see visions and be praised as the 'Lisan al-Gaib' (which beautifully translates to 'Voice of the Outer World', or 'Messiah'). The Paul we see at the end of the film is completely different to the one we see at the start, but the process behind his change seems so fluid that it is completely believable, just as it is to the Fremen people whom he manipulates. Javier Bardem and Austin Butler support his role perfectly, while also having their own brilliant quirks as characters; Bardem begins to seem lost, then convicted and finally indoctrinated, and Butler is just downright grim and evil. Rebecca Ferguson is the Lady Macbeth to Chalamet's Atredies, delivering a freakishly knockout performance too.
Christopher Walken and Florence Pugh have fairly basic and half-baked characters, though the rest of the film is so good that their (limited) presence doesn't really matter. If anything, Walken's role as the Emperor of the galaxy is nicely subverted through his limited screentime; for such an important figure, he is really outshadowed by Atredies as the whimpering puppy underdog- turned desert pitbull.
While I think there are many genius editing choices on the small scale, my only wish for this film would be for it to be edited better on the whole, though this ties into my feelings that the first part is too expositional. If Villeneuve had made the first part shorter and blended it into the second half better, leaving more time for the grand finale of the second half, I feel like it would be a nearly perfect duology. However, this is far easier said than done when working on a project of this scale alongside thousands of crew members and big name film studios and I'm sure that some people would disagree with me on this or see it as an impossible challenge when adapting such a long and complex book.
*Edit- having re-watched both films, I do think it is more seamless when watched in succession, though a tad jarring towards the end of the first part. Part 2, which I saw in IMAX with my great friend Baron Kelton Welch™, flew by upon a re-watch and I almost wish it was 15 minutes longer.
In the bigger scheme of cinema, however, this film has really reiterated the point in big budget cinema to me. Recently, I have been more on the side of admiring small or medium budget films which punch well above their weight and allow auteur directors to shine, such as Sean Baker, Robert Eggers, Charlotte Wells and Mike Leigh. This has especially been the case since Marvel turned into an unpassionate, money grabbing, mouse-ified CGI shitstorm of a production company, throwing money into the most unimaginative (and therefore, in my eyes, uncinematic) films ever seen. When this money is entrusted with one of the most passionate, brilliant and creative directors working right now, phenomenal things can happen. Dune: Part 2 proves this (as did Godzilla: Minus-One, winning the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects against a stacked field of big budget Hollywood flicks).
If you aren't already convinced to go and see it, let me put it like this. I recently taught a lesson on storyboarding in one of my English classes, where we compared the sand worm scene in this film to Villeneuve's storyboards for it which he began to draw at 13 years old. My class of what some might incorrectly call the 'short attention span i-pad generation' were hooked to the board for the whole 7 minutes of the slow and brooding scene. Upon reflection, one pupil quoted:
"Nothing is happening."
Damn right. But even when nothing seems to happen, the film manages to hook you in and immerse yourself; never letting go.
Comments