Review: "Dune" Is The Cinematic Savior Of A Classic Sci-Fi Novel

In the great battle of David vs. Denis, visuals are the trump card.

May 1, 2022

The “cult film” is a strange concept. By definition, it implies a degree of fanaticism employed by a minority: the idea that people are so rabid in their affections it’s akin to the 900 people who drank poisoned Flavor Aid at a tiny Guyanese settlement in 1978. We’ve heard the tapes. Save a few dissenting voices, they are the final chapter in the chronicle of a madman, an auditory death book of such horror it demands to get heard as much as it begs to get shut off and buried miles beneath the earth.

But that was a cult just like any other. It began as the ambition of a lunatic seeking a flock to shepherd under his spiritual command and the people who joined the new world with a dream. They established and cultivated, communized and developed. They were a socialist movement defying the capitalist structures with which the United States government bound its citizens. They were revolutionaries.

Of course, we know now this was folly. There was no dream, no vision, at least not at the end. As with any cult, the dream turned into a nightmare, the vision went blind, and the end was nothing like it was in the beginning. After all, good things never end unless they end badly. So is it appropriate to equate that extremist zeal, the kind that sees mothers poison their own children, or a group of adults commit mass suicide to ascend to the afterlife as immortal extraterrestrials aboard a flying saucer orbiting a comet?

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Yes, yes it is.

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This is the fate of David Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” the landmark science fiction novel about a young man whose family gets tasked with ruling a desert planet, where the world’s most important substance is in abundance. As he comes to grips with his newfound powers and the world's complex political structures, he makes his way to greater understanding and ultimately the throne itself. It is a richly layered text with ageless themes: an examination of politics, religion, and the inherent will of humanity so intimidating of a cinematic prospect its history is riddled with misfires, both uncompleted and released to mass condemnation.

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Of course, Lynch’s film is only widely reviled. In the far corners of the earth, blasting their inflated views into megaphones for all the world to hear, his Dune has defenders. They, just like the purveyors of any “cult” film, are a band of overreaching, delusional zealots crowding around a shiny object unappreciated by the world so as to carve out a niche for themselves. Loving Lynch’s Dune is a projection of boundless egotism and crippling insecurity so untameable we could never hope to escape it. After all, until this year, it was the only Dune we had.

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No longer.

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It was Denis Villeneuve’s lifelong dream to adapt “Dune” for the big screen. At long last his dream is reality, with a star-studded cast and a list of technicians begging for Oscars. Timothée Chalamet leads the film with Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Mamoa, Charlotte Rampling, and Zendaya by his side. Hans Zimmer composed the score; Eric Roth, a five-time nominated writer, co-penned the screenplay; Joe Walker, twice nominated last decade, edited the film.

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In only adapting half the book, one cannot be too harsh in criticizing its lame handling of the book's thematics, but Dune foolishly relies more on the power of celebrity than the power of its merit. The stars are stunt casting more than a concerted effort at crafting a balanced ensemble. Isaac cannot reasonably be Chalamet’s father or Ferguson his mother. Mamoa is suckling at the Khal Drogo teat even now, just as Zendaya (in her very few moments on-screen) does at the hype surrounding her. The technical is always in conflict: there is no visual or auditory consistency. Arrakis is muted and dull, but the editing demands we pay more attention than the film is worth. The music, all bellowing bagpipes and scattered electronics, feels out of place for a movie reliant on a soft mood and subtle tension.

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It is limp from the beginning, its dialogue measured in mood and refined in use, but too insincere to make an impact. It’s like the words are ripped straight from the book. Characters feel like they’re searching for the words and speaking as though they’ve never spoken before. The film tries to build itself on the few thematic seeds it scatters in the soil with vague introductions to various abilities and backstories, histories and political machinations, but it can’t. A film cannot build a world on a book. A book can build a world on a book because the book is the world. It’s created with the first word and developed, expanded, and explored until the final chapter tells its final tale. A film drawing from a book is the equivalent of an alien force drawing from a planet. They invade because they cannot get what we have by observing and copying; they must steal it outright and better it on their terms.‍

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Dune does not do this. It makes its characters speak in abstractions to feign meaning and contemplation: an old trick even the newest, prettiest movie cannot convince us is inventive. It is only a beautiful river reflecting the sky without any stones with which to cross. It’s beautiful to look at, but should you get transfixed and lose focus, you’ll fall in and drown. You’d drown in beauty, but it’s drowning nonetheless.

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Why, then, is Dune so much more than it initially appears? No performance stands out. Chalamet is strong relative to the material and the blandness of this initiation to Herbert’s universe, but we’ve seen him better. Even subdued, whether it be his manipulative gaslighter in Ladybird or the quieter moments in his emotional seduction of Amy March in Little Women, he’s been more compelling. Mamoa is a cartoon; Bardem is a cutout; Ferguson gets too little to make an impact; Isaac simply comes and goes. The dialogue never realizes itself as the film progresses. It insists on ineptitude, never graduating to conciseness and thus more effective world-building. The story of Paul is distant in all the wrong ways: the words don’t appeal to our curiosity, beckoning us closer; they only force us into frustration.

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But when the shields come down as House Harkonnen invades Arrakis, Dune becomes a purely visual film. It tells its story to the eye. Where the early quiet pushed us away, now we’re drawn in. We don’t think so much as anticipate the next movement or progression: the hushed visuals command the screen. It is by their will the story moves forward. Paul, previously a snooze, becomes compelling. His visions, realizations, and fight for survival have stakes. Where before he put his hand in a death box to test him, a hollow moment considering the pain he endures seems only mildly uncomfortable, now we have glances and stares, vistas and contrast. Paul says more in the looks to his mother than he does when he speaks. The emptiness of the desert says more about their circumstances than musings on the political situation. There’s more in the dash to the rocks than Paul's many forced bonds. It is the eye that gives Dune value, not the mind.

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It is an hour that leaves little to say, which is what it should do. It’s a world we cannot understand because we get so little of it. It is but a fraction of Herbert’s vision, looking through a pinhole at his vast ambition. Behaving as though it has more to say than it does is foolish. We should only seek more, wondering what else there can be and how it will develop, what people will say as they unravel the mysteries and have their ideals clash with reality. What will become of these people and their stories? How will they intertwine and affect the greater outcome? What does it mean to be who they are and where they are and at that specific point in time? As the movie ends, with Paul and the Fremen walking towards the desert sun, we want more.

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It took Dune too long to realize that it doesn’t need to be a cult film. We don’t require the traps such movies lay as they seek to ensnare us in zombified devotion. We don’t need those vague abstractions and brooding generalities. We don’t need graceless hints at more by rejoicing in less. We don’t need to be kicked through the door and have it locked behind us. We just need quiet, a strong foundation on which to stand as we seek more. There is no Flavor Aid. We won’t kill ourselves to ascend to the cosmos as aliens. We are simply people thinking, curious about what the world has to offer, awaiting what’s to come. For what Dune plans to be, and thus what it is, it is effective, and that’s all we need.