Dune: Part One

The audiovisual experience of the year. A regular movie theater is too small. Any imperfection on the screen and the weak sound are painfully obvious. Putting this book onto the movie screen at this moment in time makes perfect sense and creates the necessary counterbalance to most of today’s movie production. Civilization as a relic that needs to be cleansed of the lives of unbelievers in a holy war made to thrill the fighters of ISIS and their supporters. And the indication that men aren’t so absolutely useless as we first thought is also very audacious. Underneath the traditional western-geared topics, we sense Herbert’s fascination with the Middle East. Villeneuve does his very best at depicting the world and its mechanisms. The movie is bristling with ideas, e.g. technical details, Harkonnen songs or the Scottish bagpipes. Comparison to Star Wars is relevant only in terms of scale, and in this respect ⊃∪∩⪽ is much more realistic. The acting is top-notch from all of them. Emotions bubble under the surface and aren’t needlessly displayed. The only trouble is that it’s terribly short, even though what takes place in the first part covers material that fills more than half of the original book. Zimmer is darkly thundering. (10/20/2021)

Dune came to the film industry at the right time to support struggling movie theaters and generate interest in grand epic spectacles primarily designed for the big screen. For this category, the choice of the Canadian visionary as director is ideal, and it must be noted that Denis (not only) fulfilled expectations to a T. The film looks and does not function exactly as I anticipated. My relationship with the source material was shaped by my encounter with Lynch's Dune, which was very problematic even during filming and now, years later, looks painfully tacky and ridiculous. The motif of almost half-kilometer-long worms traversing the sand dunes and devouring giant mining machines is unbearable to me in any refined presentation, and above all, I generally do not have a liking for fantasy combined with caricature of the sci-fi genre. Spaceships and intricate machines combined with mysticism and magic, which infected and devalued a significant part of the sci-fi genre, irritate me, and I see the origin of this degeneration precisely in Dune. Unfortunately, I cannot praise Herbert for that. It is true that Dune is not Star Wars, at least not in the sense that the SW world is intended for a childlike and childish audience, whereas Dune aims to appeal primarily to more mature teenagers. But thanks to Villeneuve's top craftsmanship, it is possible to consider it the ideal family entertainment of the present. As I mentioned before, when a screenwriter presents me with a "voice" or "power," I turn the other way. I do not like the use of religious motifs such as the coming of the Savior. Additionally, Dune is clearly influenced by Islamic apocalypticism. My last complaint is that I do not like the cinematic world where elite super-fighters are attacked only to be subsequently massacred in personal combat by a hero who, mind you, is an ultra-super-cool fighter. So why the weak 4-star rating? Because I appreciate Villeneuve's ability to create monumental images and an equally monumental soundtrack, and I am a big fan of Villeneuve. Because I understand that world cinema needed Dune. Because going to the cinema this time was a social event for me in the form of having my daughter with me, whose enchantment with the film has somewhat transferred onto me. Overall impression: 70%, with the understanding that I will not be present for the sequel to Dune. It has nothing more to offer me, nor does it have anything to surprise me with. (11/07/2021)

I didn't think that I would end up agreeing with the more reserved reviews of Villeneuve's Dune (it was by far the most anticipated film of the year for me too). After all the colourful crappy blockbusters from Disney, Marvel and Netflix, it's really refreshing to see something expensive and adult in the cinema that doesn't try to pander to stupid teenagers. Dune is also definitely well made in terms of craftmanship, visual effects, and production design; there is no question that this is an exceptionally refined work in terms of aesthetics – looking at those paintings is a treat, even if their beauty is quite austere. And yet, I can’t bring myself to be thrilled. The first half still offered hopes of it with the introduction of the space politics, the various secret plans and intrigues, which had me reliably hooked and looking forward to seeing how it all would build up. But in the second half we suddenly end up looking into the desert and the film lost me. And that’s probably due to the fact that it failed to establish any kind of bond with the characters; they are all so cold; I just couldn’t enjoy it, even with Chalamet, whom I otherwise like a lot. The character played by Jason Momoa is apparently supposed to serve as the "heart of the film", but we don't really get to know him at all! His relationship with Chalamet is built purely on the basis of a few friendly hugs, otherwise, we don't get know anything about him because we haven’t gone through anything with them. And that's how it is with everybody, and it's hard to develop an emotional bond with them. The only thing you can potentially grasp in the first Dune are emotions, because the "plot" manages to start but doesn't come to anything ("It begins" is a really fitting slogan for the poster). But action is not one of Villeneuve’s strengths. (10/21/2021)

Spaceships galore, but bringing a little water from Norway to the planet in gratitude for spices…just no! As a non-reader of the book, I enjoyed the second viewing more, at least the first half of the half-film. The second, “desert” half, however, was more drawn out in its dreaminess taken to the point of would-be profundity. A key question: If there were no books and only this screenplay existed, would there have been any reason at all to film it, especially in such an expensive production? Besides cool giant worms, what would it bring to today’s world of cinematic sci-fi? Furthermore, if visual splendour without emotion and with phrases having no connection to the philosophical questions of real human life is considered to be art today, I want to go back to 2001-2003, when spectacular cinematic journeys into fantasy worlds based on books could make me cry and fall in love with their characters. I’m giving this a purely IMAX fourth star for the excellent cast, for which this project had been waiting perhaps as much as for the creative visionary Villeneuve, for the display of costumes and make-up par excellence (Skarsgård!) and for the film’s breathtaking audio-visual immensity, boosted by the “heavier” Zimmer. After I listened to it in the car for the first time, I was sure it wouldn’t be the last. It wasn't, and I'm looking forward to hearing the track “Leaving Caladan” on Zimmer’s upcoming concert tour! (10/20/2021)

This will sound biased, but go see the new Dune at the cinema. Only there will it properly roar and fulfil its essence as an extreme sensory work. The imposing sights of gargantuan proportions, where the human characters’ smallness is manifested in relation to the vast surrounding space that they vainly attempt to conquer, are combined with a practically constant mass of sound, which completes the tangible crushing effect and poetic beauty of the worlds contained in the film. The rigorous aesthetic dramaturgy perfectly holds all of the creative talents of the film’s individual elements on the reins of the paramount vision. This is what comprises the essence and exceptionalism of Villeneuve in comparison with most other directors of big-budget projects in recent decades. Filmmakers such as Luc Besson and even George Lucas are easily intoxicated by their collaborators and populate their films with an overabundance of details that draw attention to themselves at the expense of the whole. Villeneuve, on the other hand, bears comparison to Stanley Kubrick, David Fincher and other filmmakers who are able to set out a unified vision and make full use of others to fulfil it. The central storyline is basically simple and mainly presents the potential for subsequent development and even subversion in accordance with Herbert’s saga. The seemingly simple story about the coming of the messiah is topped off with the motif of faith and religion as a power construct working with prefabricated stories in which the personalities of individuals are diluted and subjected to a defined and indoctrinated destiny. In his previous film, Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve had already brilliantly shattered the myth of the “chosen one”, which to a large extent forms the essential foundation Western (pop) culture. In the case of Dune, however, he conjures up a sprawling epic, in which the first film plants the seeds from which the trees of the next film (or films) will grow. It thus shouldn’t come as a surprise that the director had concerns that in the current situation the film would not make money in the cinemas and that the overarching vision developed through several films would be nipped in the bud. This is indeed just the beginning and it is so exciting to be a witness to it. (10/20/2021)