‘Dune’ or — An Oddly Spiceless Melange?

For the first hour or so I was really digging Denis Villeneuve’s stab at bringing ‘Dune’ (2021) to the big screen. It has scale, scope and a muscular sense of where it is going. “Ooh, this is looking good!”, I thought to myself. There was even a nod to Jodorowsky’s ‘The Holy Mountain’ (1973) and any blockbuster movie that does that is automatically going to excite me.

Until I suddenly found myself underwhelmed, bored and deeply and intensely unsatisfied. Was it the fault of the movie? To an extent but it could also be down to the fact, as a big fan of David Lynch’s original, I was heavily biased and carrying a lot of baggage, and that’s before factoring in my own churlish and personal beefs with the flick. But only an idiot would explore those.

My Own Churlish and Personal Beefs with ‘Dune’ 2021 –

1/ It’s only a bit of a movie.

This one really shocked me as I knew going in this was only Part I but by the end I was so unsatisfied that I felt actively annoyed. Where’s the rest of the experience? It’s like going to a restaurant, ordering your food only for the chef to come out, show you your meal then immediately take it back into the kitchen before you can take a bite. Buyer beware, I guess.

2/ An almost total and utter lack of mystery, weirdness or the fantastical.

Villeneuve is great at spectacle but he’s also a slave to “realism”. This is great in some aspects as it means ‘Dune’ drips with believability and verisimilitude. But Villeneuve’s obsessive and aggressive minimalist aesthetic might enhance the utilitarian aspects of ‘Dune’ but practically annihilates any of the WTF-ery, batshit weirdness or plain bonkerosity that Lynch mined from the novel.

So here there’s no eyes sown shut, no rat strapped to a bald cat, no heart-plugs, no worms floating in a tank of gas who can fold space by shooting glowing shit out of their noses. Instead, it all just looks so… so… sensible and well-behaved?

Take the Heighliners, those huge ships that allow interplanetary travel. In Lynch’s version they are vast, glittering cylinders with ornate, gold entrances that only hint at the vast wealth and power of the Spacing Guild. In ‘Dune’ 2021 they’re just massive, empty, functional tubes so it’s hard to feel any sense of awe when you’re looking at something that’s nothing more than an oversized, used toilet roll.

This means that, for me, ‘Dune’ never felt otherworldly, never felt that there was a crazy, vast universe beyond the edges of the screen containing insane wonders. In pursuing believability Villeneuve has become a prisoner of his own adherence to good taste. This could be why, despite the excellent production design, I frequently felt that watching ‘Dune’ was exactly the same as looking at a load of Bang and Olufsen stereos buried in some sand. Tasteful but not very imagination-stirring.

3/ How come ‘Dune’ 2021 is over TWICE the length of Lynch’s film but I know less about many of the characters?

So ‘Dune’ 2021 has vastly more breathing space than 1984’s, so how come I felt as though I didn’t get to know many of the characters any better or, sometimes, almost not at all?

For example, Dean Stockwell’s Dr. Heuy, Brad Dourif’s Piter De Vries, Linda Hunt’s Shadout Mapes and even Kenneth McMillan’s Baron Harkonnen all made way more of an impression on me in Lynch’s film than the same characters did in Villeneuve’s. Some, such as David Dastmalchian’s Piter, hardly register at all. How can that be possible given all the extra time provided?

4/ Toto blow Hans Zimmer out the water.

Say what you want about Lynch’s film but Toto’s soundtrack as least provides a sense of grandeur and awe. Zimmer, on the other hand, resorts to his usual gimmick of simply flattening the audience into submission with a sonic bombardment that doesn’t so much power the imagination as renders any form of thought impossible. I never felt the same tingle up my spine here as when I did when, in the 84’ version, Stilgar declares “Usual has called a big one!”, only for the music to rise up as the sandworm erupts from the desert and the camera violently shakes from the immense power. It’s an excellent shot. Also, on another musical point, I missed Gurney’s Chapman Stick.

Anyway, apart from that I thought it was ‘Dune’ 2021 okay, even if I came out of the cinema feeling as though I’d just been robbed in broad daylight and genuinely not giving a damn if I ever saw Part 2. Lynch’s film might be a mess but there’s more legitimate spacey-ness, otherworldly bizarreness and rampant imagination in its first ten minutes than many sci-fi films contain in their entire running time. It’s also a testament to the fact that if you want an epic space-opera then have it designed by Italians, with Italian flair and Italian visual excess.

Villeneuve ‘s ‘Dune’, on the other hand, looks more like a cement works at Clacton Beach. Big and believable, yes, but not exactly dripping with mystery or excitement.