'60s sociotechno psychedelia spices up '20s cinematic minimalism. Denis Villeneuve assembles his pieces in his desert, his Dune for us to see that the best laid plans of Muad'Dib and women aft gang agley.
Chalamet impresses as he continues Paul Atreides' metamorphosis from mousy-framed prince into prophetic leader and somewhat reluctant warmonger while Zendaya charismatically stares through the bullshit. There's an air of meet-cute between them, but their chemistry, at times, trends more to awkward than passion. Ferguson mesmerizes as the expectant witch-mother who communes with her unborn daughter to guide Paul toward the future she chose for him. Bardem, the true heart of the story, effortlessly drips welcome humor into his performance even as he tragically embodies the skeptical longing for the sublime we feel in our own lives. Still further well-named pawns – Skarsgård, Butler, Seydoux, and more – all command their presence on screen. Walken remains the only questionable choice, offering up a serviceable weak emperor, but perhaps plays it so feebly as to overpower the character with his own presence. One does wonder, though, if his swept back hair and dour face with pursued lips was an intentional gesture at Trump or merely coincidental.
The film's expansive running time avoids self-indulgence, instead giving viewers' eyes time to adjust to the austere beauty of Arrakis. We are encouraged to drink up the desert, become intoxicated with it. Ironically, however, the filmmaker reaches the near-height of his skill under the black sun of the Harkonnen home planet. ("Near-height" because I believe we will continue to see even greater things.) Confident in the powers of cinema, Villeneuve explains the alien sun's optical properties in one shot with a simple fading transition from color to inverted black and white as characters move across the screen from inside to outside. We see a close-up of Seydoux's pale, beautiful face looking through opera glasses at Butler's pale, distorted ugliness as he embraces his sadism in a gladiator pit; but then later we see such beauty, even under normal light, is just another knife here.
The action remains taut, well-choreographed, and tense, serving the story rather than offering mere amusement. Hans Zimmer, though, continues to obliterate everything on screen with noise.
The story, so straightforward that we are told it in advance, still surprises as the film intentionally shifts the landscape beneath us, leaving us with more questions than answers: Who are we? How do we make choices? Where did our ideas and beliefs come from? Summarizing further would be a wasted effort. You don’t understand the desert by inspecting grains of sand – you experience it. A heady mix of human ideals and pure cynicism.
Rated: liked.