Frank Herbert’s game-changing 1965 science fiction novel finally gets the grand, big-screen adaptation generations of fans have been waiting for, thanks to director Denis Villeneuve’s engaging and dramatically enthralling vision.
The film thunders into your ears with its rattling surround sound and envelops your eyes in the majestic vistas of Jordan’s fabled Wadi Rum desert, care of cinematographer Greig Fraser.
Villeneuve’s film is the real test of whether the big screen spectacle can save cinemas in the wake of the devastation wrought on the industry by Covid 19. It succeeds because of Villeneuve’s dedication to Herbert’s story and landscape construction and his ability to use these as jumping off points for the creation of onscreen worlds that are both loyal to Herbert but also allow space for present-day allusion.
In the year 10191 the galaxy is divided into fiefdoms that vie for the attentions of an omnipotent Emperor who divides resources between these different houses. The planet of Arrakis is home to the precious resource of spice, which is necessary for intergalactic travel and acts as a potent psychedelic on those exposed to it. There, the House of Harkonnen — brutish, sun-shy and gluttonous — are relinquishing their 80-year control of the planet and its astronomical profits to the militaristic, more benign House Atreides on orders from the Emperor.
Leto (Oscar Isaac), the head of House Atreides, sees this new posting as a chance to change the political and economic relations on Arrakis, looking to negotiate with the planet’s native inhabitants — the desert-dwelling, hard-fighting Fremen — in an effort to initiate a more benign form of colonialism.
His teenage son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) is excited but also cautious about this new adventure because, thanks to the training of his mother — Leto’s concubine Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), a member of the powerful female sect the Bene Gesserit — he has gained powers of prediction that show him, through fever-induced dream snippets, a very different future.
Upon arrival on Arrakis things quickly turn pear-shaped for House Atreides. Paul and Lady Jessica find themselves in the unforgiving landscape of the Arrakis desert, destined for a fateful meeting with the Fremen that will possibly change their lives and the future of the planet and the galaxy forever.
By carefully corralling the cinematic elements of his vision to serve the dramatic interests of Herbert’s story, Villeneuve manages to pull off what hasn't been possible until now — bringing a version of Dune to the screen that satisfies diehard fans and newcomers.
There are politically tricky questions that arise from Herbert’s vision of Paul as a white, male, coloniser and saviour of the Fremen but these, like other aspects of the book, are left for the planned second film to deal with.
This film is Dune Part One and it ends about halfway through the novel. What it offers up to that point are all the pleasures of big-screen cinema in their ecstatic glory: spectacular widescreen cinematography, Hans Zimmer’s stomach-thudding score, the ethereal costumes designed by Robert Morgan and Jacqueline West, the towering sets of Patrice Vermette and, most importantly, a slew of strongly crafted performances. Everything to love about big-screen movies done right is here.
If there's a hunger on the part of audiences to see something new, ambitious and provocative, this is the film that offers everything needed to sate that appetite.
Watch Dune on as a big a screen as you can find and then do that again, and again. The future of the movies and Dune Part Two are in your hands — vaccinate, wear a mask, sanitise and remind yourself, in Herbert’s oft-quoted words, that “Fear is the mind-killer.”
• 'Dune' is on circuit.
