I saw Dune twice: once in crystalline 3D on a multistory canvas that accentuated every frame of director Denis Villeneuve’s vision and once on HBO Max’s glitchy small-screen machine. To say that the latter is inferior is to understate the distinction by several orders of magnitude. So immersive is Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic, so sweeping is its visual grandeur, that the theatrical version is practically a different movie.
Set in the year 10191, Dune tells the story of warring clans on the planet Arrakis, a desert world that is the lone source of a prized narcotic known as “spice.” As the film opens, the emperor has just decreed that administration of the planet shall henceforth belong to House Atreides, a noble family led by Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) and bound by traditional notions of honor. Removed from stewardship and unhappy with their demotion is House Harkonnen, a bellicose tribe commanded by the immensely fat Baron Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgard). For whomever controls Arrakis, an unignorable complication is the presence of the Fremen, native inhabitants who live in underground caverns and worship the giant sandworms that are endemic to the planet.
It is within this baroque framework that Dune constructs a more personal narrative of adolescent self-discovery. Paul (Timothee Chalamet), the teenage son of Duke Leto and heir to House Atreides, is a reluctant ruler-in-training when his family is visited by Gaius Helen (Charlotte Rampling), a representative of a powerful religious cult. Convinced that Paul is the long-hoped-for messiah, the priestess subjects him to a painful test and predicts an approaching trial by fire. Unbeknownst to House Atreides, a battle for survival is indeed coming, as the Harkonnens are preparing a brutal revenge. If Paul is to live, he will have to shake off his youth and master an arcane method of reality-manipulation known as “the Way.”
As with most high fantasy, to summarize Dune’s plot is to risk repulsing those viewers who are allergic to swords and sorcery. Like its spiritual cousin Game of Thrones, however, Villeneuve’s picture not only transcends the genre’s limitations but demolishes them altogether. For every toe that it dips into the source novel’s rococo mythology, Villeneuve’s script (co-written with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth) keeps an arm and a leg in the realm of earthy emotion. Dune’s world may be an entirely invented one, but the movie knows how heavily expectations can weigh, what betrayal feels like, and what it means to torment a defenseless child.
Aiding Villeneuve in the cause of verisimilitude is his success in two areas of production that can easily sink a picture of this kind, whatever its triumphs elsewhere. The first, casting, hardly needs to be explained, so prominent was its role in the demise of the Star Wars franchise. (Hayden Christensen, don’t call your agent.) The second, diction and tone, is an altogether subtler business but an equally significant one. Where the former is concerned, casting directors Jina Jay and Francine Maisler have put together an ensemble that is simply flawless. Though Rampling and Skarsgard walk away with their scenes, not a single performance here is in any way showy, mannered, or obtrusive. In the case of the latter — the actual words spoken by the actors — Villeneuve and his fellow screenwriters have hit upon a fertile middle ground between the pidgin King James characteristic of the genre (e.g., “How came thee here?”) and the dude-bro anachronisms with which that problem is occasionally “corrected.” The result is dialogue that feels idiomatic and ageless rather than campy and contrived. However its reputation evolves, my guess is that Dune’s speech will still sound right in 50 years.
Of course, none of this would matter were not Villeneuve so skilled a master of visual filmmaking, a stature earned with 2015’s Sicario and secured with follow-ups Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. From House Atreides’s dragonfly-inspired “ornithopters” to the shafts of spice-flecked light piercing subterranean pathways, Villeneuve has filled his shots with images of such striking exoticism that nearly every frame holds something to awe or surprise. As viewers familiar with Dune’s setting might expect, the film contains some of the most gorgeous desert footage ever captured, with vistas that rival Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of The English Patient (1996). Villeneuve’s greatest gift, however, is his ability to move seamlessly between the epic and the intimate. A scene in which an Atreides vessel rumbles up from the ocean bed is perfectly arranged and photographed. So, for that matter, is a sequence in which Paul considers his grandfather’s bullfighting paraphernalia, and thus his own heritage and responsibilities.
Like Arrival, Villeneuve’s best and most cerebral movie, Dune is interested in the idea of a future that can be perceived as clearly as the present. A young man long beset with visions, Paul sees himself among the Fremen, caught up in “a holy war spreading across the universe.” Featuring heavily in these dreams is the alluring Chani (Zendaya Coleman), who wields a bloody knife and seems to be beckoning Paul toward something. By the time the movie begins to fulfill these premonitions, its run time is nearly over, and the work of setting up a now-confirmed sequel has begun. Consequently, and as others have noted, Dune is almost entirely rising action, a slow burn that won’t ignite completely until part two arrives in 2023, God and COVID-19 willing.
To be clear, this is not to say that Villeneuve’s film is poorly paced or that watching it is in any way frustrating. Indeed, I was struck, on both viewings, by how easily the film held my attention despite my complete lack of interest in Dune the novel. This, I think, may be the ultimate proof of Villeneuve’s achievement: that his movie works splendidly for even the anti-fantasy snob who wouldn’t know a sandworm from a Silmaril. See it on HBO Max and enjoy a finely crafted work of cinematic art. Or see it in theaters and be reminded of why the big screen exists in the first place.
Graham Hillard teaches English and creative writing at Trevecca Nazarene University.
