About a year and a half ago, the first trailer for Denis Villeneuve's Dune came out. A good movie made out of that classic sci-fi book is like the white whale of cinema, so the excellent first trailer got me excited enough to not only finally read the book (it's good, not great) but also watch the David Lynch version (it's a silly, unwatchable mess). The first book came out in the 60's, so it's kind of sad that it took until 2021 for a decent filmed version to come out. One of the reasons why Dune has always depressed film buffs is not only because the Lynch version was a disaster but also because of Alejandro Jodorowsky's never filmed version. His version is so infamous someone even made a documentary about it. It was supposed to have music by Pink Floyd and star Orson Welles and Mick Jagger. What people don't realize, however, is that Jodorowsky's Dune would have been fucking terrible. Jodorowsky has admitted to never reading the book, which is one problem. The other? His movies are awful!
Denis Villeneuve, however, has actually made some good movies like Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049. Villeneuve also made the smart decision to cut the book in half into two films. And while Blade Runner 2049 was gorgeous, the reason it never achieved greatness was because it was all cool visuals with a lame story. Dune, however, is actually a really good story. So...could it happen? Would it happen? Would someone actually make a good movie out of Dune? It didn't help that the film was postponed an entire year thanks to the pandemic. And it certainly is quite cruel that it's been released in 18 countries before coming out in the U.S. next month.
The book was first published in August of 1965. I can officially say that it's September 2021 and finally a worthy film version has arrived. Denis Villeneuve's Dune is phenomenal. It's everything you want to see in a film. I'm so shocked that it's actually good. The one reason the David Lynch version was so terrible was because it was silly. And probably the one reason why Denis Villeneuve's version is so great is because it's not silly. And I'm guessing, unlike Jodorowsky, Villeneuve probably actually read the book.
The basic story is that the Atriedes family is powerful and runs a whole planet. They're assigned to go and take over a desert planet, Arrakis. The problem? Arrakis is a "death trap." But Arrakis has spice, which helps power spaceships going long distances across the galaxy. Arrakis is, quite basically, Tatooine from Star Wars (one of George Lucas' many rip-offs in that film). Arrakis has giant sandworms. It also has thousands of mysterious desert people. So the Atriedes family go to Arrakis. The problem? The Harkonnen run Arrakis, and they're not too happy about being kicked out. While all of this is going on, Paul Atriedes, played by Timothy Chalamet, in his best performance yet, is having strange dreams about a girl and about his destinty in the world. He also happens to be learning a powerful force not unlike The Force in Star Wars. But unlike a film like Star Wars, Dune isn't a crowd-loving popcorn type of a film. In fact, I'm guessing the majority of Marvel superhero movie fans won't like this Dune. This is definitely more arthouse than blockbuster. There are no elaborate action sequences. There are no humorous sidekicks. There are no jokes. This is art. It's serious. It's gorgeous. Hell, even the Hans Zimmer score is beautiful. This is all probably one of the main reasons why Dune was never a big, Hollywood franchise like Jurassic Park or The Avengers. I can't even fathom how this got made. The scope of this film is vast. While most of it is CGI, it's all still epic and grand. The spaceships are the size of skyscrapers. The sets are Cleopatra-like. There are armies of thousands. And all of this is serious, poetic, and dream-like. Shockingly, everything works. The film is fantastic in almost every aspect. It has the feel of high drama, of watching a great, big, old-school Hollywood epic with a cast of thousands and a budget unheard of. The kind of thing you start watching and you feel goosebumps. It definitely goes beyond mere cinema into something else, something rare. You just don't see films this big that are this good very often, if ever.
While the acting is all top-notch, from Oscar Isaac as Paul's Father, to Batista and Stellan Skarsgard as the evil Harkonnens, to Josh Brolin and Jason Mamoa as Atrides soldiers, the real reason this film is so good is because of how it looks. The thing is quite the sight to see. Everything is larger than life, but it's the details that make it stand out. That one beautiful, eerily creepy shot of the soldiers in white quietly descending down to the ground. The ripple of sand when a worm is approaching, and the way the earth starts to give way. That beautiful shot of Chalamet holding onto Josh Brolin at the edge of the spaceship as they look down at a sandworm devouring a harvester. I could literally just look at pictures from this movie and be impressed. But the story it tells works as well, as you become transfixed in this world, this journey. And it certainly helps that the films only covers the best part of the book, which is only about the first 1/3rd of it. But the final scene, with the soldiers marching across the desert to a future unknown, doesn't make you angry that the film is continued. No, it makes you dying to see the next part. And that's about as good as it gets. And this film is just about as good as it gets. It's been a long time, but we've finally gotten a great Dune film. ****
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