Denis Villeneuve helped the science fiction classic “Dune” to its first convincing film adaptation – even if the Wagnerian epic is only the overture
Some novels, it seems, just don’t want to be made into a film, and yet somebody tries again and again. For example, “Don Quixote”, which overwhelmed Walt Disney, Orson Welles and finally Terry Gilliam, simply doesn’t want to become a good film. A similar curse seemed to weigh on Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. David Lynch’s 1984 version is taken by lovers off the shelf every few years to see if there isn’t a good movie hidden somewhere. This first film version probably attracted as much dust as half a desert planet in its countless – in many ways differing – VHS and DVD editions.
Two “Dune” miniseries turned out to be more understandable, but artistically so obscure that they only contributed to the fame of another and, as it now seemed, the ultimate version: The film avant-garde Alejandro Jodorowsky came up with them in the 1970s together with the illustrator Jean Giraud. Your only disadvantage: It was never shot.
But now the curse is broken. The Hollywood studio Warner Brothers was ready to risk what Jodorowsky had once been denied (even in-house): an appropriate blockbuster budget for an artistic approach. As a thank you, a critic of the “New York Times” raised doubts on the occasion of the premiere the week before last in Venice as to whether Warner would see the money again. Well, let’s carry it in small portions to the reopened film palaces. And be it as a donation so that great cinema continues to be worthwhile.
Director Denis Villeneuve had explained in advance that no screen was big enough for the dimensions of his film – as if he could delay the evaluation on streaming platforms for a long time. In Venice he added that he wanted to shoot a kind of “Star Wars” for adults. Perhaps the other way around it will turn into a shoe: George Lucas shot a kind of family version of Herbert’s novel. Which doesn’t mean that this is necessarily an adult movie now.
The parallels to the first Star Wars film in particular are amazing, and Denis Villeneuve highlights them: in fascinating desert landscapes, mysterious ruling dynasties, prophetic visions, the high-tech Middle Ages and above all: the story of the initiation of a young man.
Timothée Chalamet embodies the Duke’s son Paul Atreides as a central figure like an alternative Yedi knight (the cool black Gothic outfit, however, fits better with the dark side of power). With his father Leto (Oscar Isaac) and his concubine Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), he landed on the Arrakis desert, known by the locals as “Dune”. There is a unique mineral treasure there, the hallucinogenic “Spice”, which makes interplanetary travel much easier, and not just in your mind: Anyone who steers a spaceship under the influence of the substance is safe on the move even at the speed of light.
But the colonial adventure also arouses the desires of others: The villainous noble house Harkonnen, which has exploited the planet in the past, would like to continue doing so – and devastate the desert planet even more. All of this at the expense of the Fremen cave people who live on Arrakis. Stellan Skarsgård plays the massive Baron Vladimir Harkonnen like a Michelin man who has mutated into evil.
Herbert designed a complex portrait of society full of class contradictions; but Villeneuve is more interested in visual details. Spaceships glide across the wide screen in elegant ballets. It is impressive how the Canadian refuses to accept the fast cutting frequency and abundance of effects of the usual blockbuster cinema. What he sets against it is a theatrical pathos, monumental and yet minimalist – in front of a backdrop like in a Bayreuth production by Wieland Wagner from the fifties: The word space opera takes on a new meaning. Hans Zimmer’s music underlines this modernist claim in the interior recordings with lead-heavy harmonies. For action scenes he switches to the folkloric-rhythmic soundscape of his perhaps best-known score, “The Lion King”.
It is a luxurious furnishing film that takes the landscapes so broad that the people in them act like extras in “Lawrence of Arabia”. Every scene wants to tell us: How nice, we are finally back in what will hopefully be a big cinema. Even if the nicest thing about it might be even more effective on a theater stage – the Oscar-worthy costumes in their new romantic style.
In fact, the desert worm alone, which only provides the first action scene after an hour, should measure several hundred meters. The spaceships are like flying cities. And the time also has a tremendous effect in the 155-minute prelude to other “Dune” chapters. It is quite possible that everything that is missing in this epic exposition will be explained in the following parts. You don’t buy a six-volume cycle of novels in order to miss out on the possibilities of a multi-part “franchise”.
At the beginning of his initiation, the noble hero has to put his hand in a box at the behest of Charlotte Rampling’s mother superior of the court sect Bene Gesserit. What is in it he wants to know and the answer is: “Pain”.
A truly revolutionary spirit probably refused this test of courage, which at the same time offers itself to a power-hungry sisterhood who is looking for their messiah. But this question already arises with Frank Herbert – as well as later with George Lucas: How could martial space epics lead completely humorlessly into feudal knight worlds in a time when alternative forms of life determined pop culture? Every encounter with “Dune” is also a journey back in time to the sixties, when the first two volumes were published. In any case, a connection to the hippie era is obvious: If you’re going to war, at least it’s about a drug.
Dune. USA 2021. Regie: Dennis Villeneuve. 155 Min.
