“Dune” has been built up as a potential turning point of 2021 cinema since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. In the weeks since its release in October (simultaneously in cinemas and on HBO Max), that chatter has accelerated. In the wake of a successful box-office haul, the confirmation of a sequel, and predictions and concerns about the current state of western cinema, “Dune” feels momentous. That momentousness is not all for good, and not all in good faith, but “Dune has become, as is the case with films of this kind, something of a symbol for things that exist beyond it.
When I say, “films of this kind,” I don’t mean science-fiction – but commercially successful films. There’s a lot that’s hanging on “Dune” and whether it becomes a success. Not just a potential sequel, but depending on who you talk to it portends so much more. It could be a signifier of the ubiquity of Timothee Chalamet, who is headlining two major films this year from two very different directors. It could be a signifier of the future of science-fiction adaptations. It could be a signifier of what kinds of texts are adapted and readapted to the big screen. And it could be a signifier of the still complicated question about cultural representation and appropriation on the big screen.
“Dune” is many things to many people, which makes sense for a film that announces itself as an epic with very big ideas. But also, because this is a film based on a novel that comes loaded with swathes of context and consideration that exist way beyond director Denis Villeneuve.
In spite of that context, I went into “Dune” eerily ignorant of any it. It’s more happenstance than deliberate avoidance, but my knowledge of Frank Herbert’s novel (1965), the David Lynch film (1984) or the John Harrison miniseries (2000) was scant. My fledgling interest in the new adaptation was predicated more on my interest in Villeneuve’s work as a director, more than any firm opinion on the source itself. I managed to see “Dune” without even seeing a trailer. My entry-point to this story was filtered through the lens of Villeneuve. It’s only in the days since seeing the film that I’ve waded into the context, the complications, the ellipses and the tensions of that work. And in thinking about “Dune” – the film and the mythos – considering the contexts feels like its own adjunct to the filmmaking.
The film takes place some-time in the very distant future, where humanity has regressed emotionally while prospering scientifically. Earth is not the centre of this nebulous future, and although it’s some time before we understand quite where we are we come to recognise that a sandy planet (Arrakis) is central to this. An imperial family (the Atreides) are caught up in this intrigue. The Artreides patriarch (Oscar Isaac) is a noble ruler, his son Paul (Chalamet), is callow and uncertain but potentially heroic. Paul’s mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), is mysterious and potentially powerful.
It’s a science fiction text with explicitly realised tropes. You understand who everyone is from early on. The wise advisor to Paul. The unnerving older-woman who’s up to something. The female ingenue that will complicate Paul’s journey. We know these kinds of worlds even if we don’t know this world. The desert planet becomes a topic of concern for the main players, desperate for its wealth of spice. And soon an attempt at extraction becomes a game of political subterfuge. It’s not so much that plot isn’t important to “Dune,” so much that the plot isn’t necessarily built on twists that are out of line with our understanding of these kinds of stories.
The most significant narrative concern is Paul’s potential role as a messiah figure who might be able to put an end to the worst of the world by following his destiny. In this first part of the novel, this is all more set up than follow through as Villeneuve invites us into the world and it’s here that “Dune” is notably exemplary. A lot of this is on cinematographer Greig Fraser, who is conjuring grandiosity, mood, and tension in his collaboration with production designer Patrice Vermette. Dune looks good and the stills of it going around the internet echo that. Even better, though, is the way it sounds, a genuine recurring note of dread and anxiety pulsating throughout with some chilling work from sound designer Mark Mangini It’s a technical wonder and even if its detractors argue that it’s style with no substance, it feels like the style is the substance when the main preoccupation is a world that seems to seduce these characters.
It was curious providence that I was thinking of “Dune” in the same week that the Cave Hill campus in Barbados was holding the West Indian Literature Conference. The topic of Caribbean science fiction emerged during the conversation. The contours of western (and mostly white) science-fiction, the way that historically science fiction has been regressive on issues of race and gender. Why is it that futuristics imaginings are so limited by ideas of race? A number of major releases over the next few months are adaptations of pre-existing material, some of the original texts are decades old. Thinking of adaptation studies as a field, and the relationship between source and adaptation feels critical right now. Can adaptations really transcend their source? Can they ethically address issues that create complications today? Which works do we adapt? And why do we adapt them? These are questions beyond “Dune” and that “Dune” has fostered a return to this conversation is beneficial even if, like so much about “Dune,” it is complicated. Reading Herbert’s issue with race into Villeneuve’s “Dune” or reading them out Villeneuve’s “Dune,” is a complicated venture.
Denis Villeneuve is intentional about his filmmaking. But he cannot be a director onto himself. And he knows this. After all, his recent “Blade Runner 2049” attempted another complicated task of outrunning the shadow of the past with his sequel to Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner”. I need to sit with the contours of “Dune”. I am moved and haunted by its formal sharpness. The sand. The shots. The music. I can marvel at the sharp precision of Hans Zimmer’s score even as I wonder at the use of ululations in a film that seems still cagey at really embracing with Arabic culture. But then, this is a “future” world. Our contemporaneous cultures don’t exist in the future. But they exist now. And even if “Dune” is set in the then, it exists in the now. How do we wrestle with those paradoxes?
I’m not sure “Dune” has the answers for that, and it’s probably too much for a single film to answer. Villeneuve’s control of this world, and the sharp precision is wholly compelling enough so that the sheer scope and power of the spectacle feels enough. My ignorance of the context of “Dune” became a boon, for me. But with the recent announcement of the sequel, one wonders what the future of “Dune” might look if we engaged those queries. What kind of futures can we imagine for science-fiction?
