Long hailed as a book that could not be translated to film, I can find myself only in greater agreement after watching Denis Villeneuve’s latest masterpiece. It is ironic that in sacrificing so much of the book’s core political intrigue, character development, and philosophical teachings, Villeneuve’s Dune has come closer to Frank Herbert’s vision than a detail-by-detail adaptation could have ever come.
One does not “understand” Villeneuve’s Dune as much as one feels it. The movie — in shedding so much of its source material’s inner dialogues (a serious LYNCHpin [no pun intended] for previous adaptations of Dune) — embraces a kind of vision-like experience, where one feels as if they are walking through one of the protagonist’s (young ruler Paul Atreides) dreams right alongside him. The sheer perfection of the visuals and the predictable (yet always valuable) presence of Hans Zimmer as composer for the film’s score makes 2021 Dune one of the most expressive films I’ve had the pleasure of seeing.
What is most fascinating to me after watching Dune is its portrayal of the conflict between the political houses and the suffering of the natives of the desert planet Arrakis — the Fremen. While at first glance Dune seems to appear as a creative reframing of Herbert’s politically realist novel as a post-colonial commentary, the nuances of where power lies in the world of Dune make all the difference. Unlike the political landscape of the Middle East directly following the Sykes-Picot Agreement of the early twentieth century, Dune is far from a cut and dry story of imperialist houses gobbling up “undeveloped” worlds, but rather a cosmic, neo-medievalist nightmare in which all parties are held prisoner by the complex, overlapping, and shared sovereignties of the different players involved. The Great Houses Harkonnen and Atreides (Houses meaning important political families) evoke images of unshackled European rule. But, in reality, they are hamstrung by the religious and political omnipresence of the secretive matriarchal order of the Bene Gesserit, the exorbitantly wealthy and powerful Spacing Guild (which holds a total monopoly over faster-than-light space travel), and the Machiavellian Imperial court, which finds itself in a constant game of cloak and dagger with the other houses to maintain its control over the political system of the galaxy.
Some have also pointed to Atreides as a case of the common “white saviour” trope in fiction, but this is a misjudgment that can easily be attributed to the film’s sacrifices of key scenes and dialogue. Paul Atreides is a man who is being pulled by destiny into the role not of a saviour, but of a genocidal Emperor — a theocrat of untold proportions who would lead a religious conquest with tens of billions of casualties. Herbert’s novel is a sharp criticism of the very idea of messiahs, and Atreides is his magnum opus of the danger of believing in them.
Dune thus represents a simultaneous regression and acceleration of human technological, sociological, and political advancement, and this is represented in the visuals of the movie. The oppressively large warships used by the Houses are juxtaposed next to the intimate violence found in the ancient and medieval tactics of swordsmanship and battle formations. The Da Vincian designs of the helicopter-like ornithopters buzz and zip, while the brutalist blocks and spheres of the transport ships speak to a human race that has shrugged off the necessity of art in design for the sake of pure pragmatism. The grotesque and dystopian debauchery of Giedi Prime, the home planet of House Harkonnen, stands in stark contrast to the idyllic and naturalistic planet of Caladan, the planet ruled by the benevolent Atreides family.
The movie does stumble at times, especially when compared to the near-perfect pacing of its source material. Key plot-driving scenes and moments of pinnacle character development are left aside, leading viewers who may not have read the books to be left confused and wanting more. The themes mentioned above may be lost for many without either a keen eye or supplementary knowledge, but to appreciate Dune, one must watch it not as a direct adaptation of the book, but as one might an adaptation of Shakespeare into a film. When every line feels like a poem unto itself, the sacrifice of a single quip or scene may be seen as an unnecessarily brutal compromise, but in the end, the incredible emotional, visual, and thematic results of Dune speaks to Villeneuve’s masterful balance between accessibility and integrity in his filmmaking.
