Review: Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ dynamite | Culture & Leisure

It is, of course, rather cool to the touch. Villeneuve does more atmospheric exteriors than emotional interiors. In muted monochrome tones, rich textures, and deep soundscapes, his already familiar specialty in the deep shadows of Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049 invokes an ominous bass.

So Dune is a darker desert trip than, say, the fiercely frenzied Mad Max: Fury Road. Its story of oppression and messianic fervor, however, resembles the book that recalls Lawrence of Arabia. Instead of Peter OToole and his flaming blue eyes besieging Aqaba, we have Timothe Chalamet potentially seizing power over Arrakis. The. East. Another.

Herberts’ opus, forged from the Cold War and burgeoning fear of the environment, spawned a left-behind cottage industry but has so far made surprisingly little headway into wider popular culture. The 1984 film David Lynch ridiculed so much that even he disowned did not help. This release, which debuts in theaters and on HBO Max Thursday night, is a second shot at turning Dune into a big-screen event. And given the dozens of entries in the book series, Dune could just as surely as the spice in the sands of Arrakis be tapped for more. Dune is optimistically subtitled Part One, adapting only the first half of the 1965 tome.

The simplest criticism of the film is that it does not reach its climax but fades in the dunes. It bothered me less. I was transported enough to hope that Dune, which is worth looking for in theaters rather than at home, is doing well enough to lead to a second part.

Villeneuve streamlined the book into a screenplay by himself, Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth. It took away some of the quirks of the novel, but it also made an ambitious epic cohesive. Here, Dune is a lyrical parable of power and exploitation, with an ecological resonance that is all the more relevant.

With a princely sense of destiny, Chalamet embodies Paul, whose father, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) is the head of the Atreides house, one of the many ruling fiefdoms. The spice on Arrakis, which makes interstellar travel possible and has other mind-expanding abilities, has long been harvested by the fascist House Harkonnen, under the supervision of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (played by a grotesquely Stellan Skarsgard puffed up, with nods to Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now). But for unknown reasons, a switcheroo was ordered.

However, harvesting the spices is not an easy task. It is oppressively hot. There are mammoth sand worms. And the local Fremen (including Zendayas Chani) resent their foreign overlords. Leto hopes to start a friendly collaboration with the Freman but quickly finds their operation sabotaged at every step. When the going gets tough, attention turns to Paul, who was trained in sword handling by Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) and mentored by his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson, fabulous) in the sense of a mysterious power of mind control. The Freman believes he could be a prophesied savior. Whether Dune will change the White Savior’s setup will ultimately have to wait for a possible sequel.

The plot is enough for even a sand worm to digest. All of the world building leaves little room for anything very intimate in character development. Dune, like most of Villeneuve’s previous films, is a bit hollow under its pristine surfaces. But these surfaces! With cinematography by Greig Frasers and production design by Patrice Vermettes, Dune is so sublimely rendered that you can easily follow it without sound, without Hans Zimmer’s towering score. With an immense sense of scale ranging from mosquito to (Jason) Momoa, Dune renders a centuries-old history of palace intrigue and indigenous struggle in exaggerated cosmic outlines. Like any sand drift, Dune feels sculpted by elemental and primordial forces.

Dune, a Warner Bros. release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for footage of intense violence, disturbing imagery, and suggestive material. Duration: 151 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

This story corrects Denis’ spelling in the title.