Returning to Arrakis

The 4K disc of Dune Part Two arrived, allowing a return to Denis Villeneuve’s sprawling adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic novel. I was in two minds about the film when I saw it at the cinema, enjoyed it much more now, second time around. I think this is the problem with film adaptations of books I have read, same thing happened with the Lord of the Rings films; one can’t help get distracted by thinking about the source and any changes, divergences both good and bad. I think subsequent viewings you can relax somewhat, but first time around… can’t help but remember your own ‘minds-eye’ version that ran in your mind when originally reading it.

Which makes me recall, for the first time in years, negative reviews of Blade Runner back in 1982, by people who had read PKD’s original book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a book I didn’t read until after seeing Ridley Scott’s film. Thinking about it now, the book and film are so different -similar in many ways, utterly dissimilar in so many others- that such a negative view of the film seems inevitable. I wonder how many of those guys warmed to the film, eventually. How many years it took.

Dune Part Two is such a brilliant achievement, it gets so much right, and I know I keep saying this, but we take so many of these visual effects sequences for granted now, as if its so easy doing this stuff so well. Objects, places, things so impossible looking so real…. its like Villeneuve takes some kind of twisted delight in making it look so mundane, ordinary, understated. He did the same thing with so much in BR2049 too. He has a great eye for making visual effects look almost completely in-camera, its rather ridiculous. Compare that to how so  many sci-fi blockbusters so deliberately draw attention to their effects.

I still don’t think the Dune films are what they could have been, or are in any way as perfect as I’d hoped they would be, but I guess he gets 90% there and that’s a formidable achievement in itself, of course. The cast are largely perfect. The art direction perhaps more muted than I’d have hoped- something set 10,000 years in the future should look more alien and strange, I think, but maybe that’s just me. But yeah, still pretty amazing. The ending of Part Two still feels rushed, too much of that final battle occurs off-screen (perversely, is that budget limitations, I wonder, as this clearly, no matter how big it was, wasn’t some madly-indulgent $300 million epic?). I suspect Villeneuve sees this whole story as three films and Messiah may yet be the grand conclusion that seems to have escaped him in both Part One and Part Two.

In any case, now that we have Part Two at home, I can indulge in a Part One & Part Two marathon session someday. I think that will be very interesting. Or am I fooling myself, too old for such madness? I remember a Star Wars trilogy marathon back in the 1980s, Star Wars, Empire, Jedi…. (it was getting rough, midway through Jedi)  couldn’t do that now, for sure….

Dune again

I am endlessly torn on Villeneuve’s Dune Part One. He’s possibly my favourite working director, made a brilliant sequel to my beloved Blade Runner, and has somehow been given the chance to finally do Dune right, over two films, with a great cast and huge budget.

But something doesn’t quite work. Maybe it will finally click with Part Two, and one day seeing the films as one big story that does the book justice. I’m one of those hugely frustrated at where he chose to end Part One, feeling that its the worst possible ending he could have chosen. I struggle with it whenever I have returned to the film. Every time I watch the film (which isn’t as often as you’d think or I’d have expected) I ask myself “what the hell were they thinking?”

David Lynch’s Dune is a misfire. Its a painful lesson in not squeezing all of the book into one movie. But it does such a lot of things very right- the prologue, setting the story up, the Great Houses, the planets, its brilliant shorthand. If only they could have managed to pull a similar trick with its last hour (had it been a three-hour film, I think the film might have worked very well indeed). And the sets, the art direction- glorious. I think it casts a big shadow over Villeneuve’s film because his film… well, that brutalist ‘look’, the dour cinematography… it should be big, huge, spectacular, wildly colourful, Dune is set so far into a future so alien to us it should be like a Giger painting but with every colour of the rainbow. Kubrick in the land of Oz.

Well, okay maybe not that far, but you know what I mean. Its an aesthetic choice of Villeneuve’s that I regret, and whenever I watch Dune Part One and they are on Arrakis I marvel at how I just don’t feel the heat. It never feels ‘hot’; there’s no blinding light from dazzling sun or massive heat shimmers over the desert, sweat pouring off faces, eyes dazzled, folks collapsing from sunstroke/exhaustion. In contrast, I imagine seeing Paul out at night in Arrakeen under a blue-night sky, bright silver moonlight, cool sand… maybe with his father discussing the tension of their predicament, then jump-cutting to blinding, dazzling light, noise and heat as they go out in the Ornithopter to see their first worm. You know the desert scenes in Lawrence of Arabia, how you can feel the heat? I don’t think Villeneuve captured that. Characters mention things like ‘you can’t stay outside here’ or ‘we have to get inside’ but I don’t think its visualised, put across sufficiently. Maybe that’s nit-picking, but its telling that even on the 4K disc they dial down the HDR completely; its clearly by choice how Arrakis looks.

I don’t think the music really helps either, its okay but… I think Dune needs something big, symphonic, romantic and strange  like Goldsmith or Horner or Vangelis. I know, I know, they are all gone now but it just needs an aural character, soul, not such typical Zimmer muzak/ sound design. Some of the music-spotting… for instance, it annoys me when Paul is taking the test with the gom jabbar and his hand is in the box and suddenly that music cue drops in with that wailing woman like its some kind of super-hero ‘ta-da!’ moment. Pulls me out of the film every time.  I almost prefer the Toto score, at least it gives Lynch’s film a fairly unique identity. Its funny how only today can they really pull off the visual effects to bring Herbert’s novel to life  but at the same time they have lost the musical talent and style/substance that films used to have which could have elevated this film. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a largely broken film but my God that score it has, still lifts it up to some other level.

I’ll see Dune Part Two on Monday. I’ll see if that fixes things or not (I’m avoiding all reviews etc) but… I guess what I’m saying in a long-winded way is, I don’t LOVE Dune Part One and I should. Its one of my favourite sci-fi novels so the film should be right up my street, and yes it does so many things right but there’s just something missing. Maybe I’ll find it in Part Two and it’ll finally be one huge sci-fi masterpiece, and come the summer or winter with both films on 4K it’ll be an epic night in. We’ll see.