A- | The surviving members of House Atreides integrate themselves with the Fremen of Arrakis and seek revenge on House Harkonnen. Directed by Denis Villeneuve Starring Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, and Rebecca Ferguson Review by Jon Kissel |
The first hour of the film tracks Paul and Jessica’s integration within Fremen society, as he fights alongside them to earn their trust while she is forced to become a reverend mother. Jessica spreads the prophecy amongst the Fremen before traveling south, where the most fervent believers are. Paul stays in the north to fight the planet’s colonial overlords, the Harkonnens, and becomes proficient at desert survival and controlling the giant sandworms that make Arrakis so inhospitable. The ideological battle within his family plays out amongst his closest allies, between tribal chief Stilgar (Javier Bardem) who’s certain that Paul is the lisan al’ghaib who will return Arrakis to a green paradise and Chani (Zendaya), a fierce warrior who doesn’t believe in anything but the inevitable victory of the Fremen over their invaders, not because it is fated but because it is just. Paul learns from and respects both, falling in love with the Fremen culture, warrior ethic, and Chani herself. His battlefield success forces a Harkonnen shakeup, and the clumsy Rabban (Dave Bautista) is replaced by the sadistic Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), himself a possible kwisatz haderach. Feyd-Rautha destroys Stilgar’s underground city, forcing the fighters to regroup in the south. Paul’s visions have made him reluctant to join his mother there, but with little choice, he crosses the planet’s equatorial sandstorms to consummate the fate he fears.
Slower and more contemplative than its predecessor, Dune: Part Two has less exposition to establish and can deepen its characters. Jessica no longer is in protection mode with Paul, and can more fully embrace her lifelong goals. Paul can relax and fold himself into the Fremen culture. Stilgar becomes less mysterious and distant, and develops a reflexive affirmation of Paul that gives the film needed comic relief. Most vitally, Chani, restricted to visions and a brief introductory scene in Part One’s final minutes, grows into the heart of the film. Not only must the romance between her and Paul be convincingly portrayed, she becomes the only character not committed to the mystical, power-hungry vision that every other character gives themselves over to. Her resistance is ultimately ineffectual, but the character becomes the film’s most important as whatever bleak future that the film brings into being finds its counterpoint in her.
Chani is not only the romantic co-lead alongside Paul, but she is the antithesis of one of Herbert’s guiding principles in writing Dune. Herbert believed that there was something in feudalism that humans were drawn to, specifically the elevation of a few leaders who absolve everyone else of the stress of making decisions. There’s a quote whose origin I can’t remember said by someone around the European revolutions in 1848, describing freedom as a powerful horse that some want to ride, but most are intimidated and prefer to walk. Most characters in Dune, even the ones who appear powerful, are finding reasons to walk. Paul is maneuvered into place by events, even as he openly tells Fremen who want to believe in him that it’s all a trick. Things that are supposedly foretold are being willed into reality by the same people who did the foretelling. Chani resists it all out of an insistence that the Fremen avoid manipulation. She sees the horse/sandworm and wants to ride, but the tragedy of this section of the saga is that a people as impressive as the Fremen prefer to give up all their decision making powers, thus submitting to their manipulation into a fate that probably uses them as cannon fodder in the coming war.
The most impressive part of Dune: Part Two is how Villeneuve creates in the viewer a dichotomy between the intellectual and the visceral. It’s surprising that this film is being as rapturously received as it is when it’s coded as a deep tragedy, the initial steps in billions of coming deaths. There’s nowhere to hide as the film ends, with Paul embracing the strictures of a hierarchical empire to make himself the emperor and kicking off a war whose ultimate purpose is little more than revenge over the death of a fancy space lord. However, all that is contained within overpowering scenes of apocalyptic speeches and fascistic acclaim. Once Paul has leveled up his powers, his speech to the Fremen is one of conflicted commitment, as he taunts the Fremen with the terrible realization of their dreams. He’s going to take them as far as they’re willing to go, and it’s a powerful display of poison-pill leadership from an actor who does not otherwise project strength. At the same time, the arena sequence on the Harkonnen homeworld is straight Reifenstahl under a black sun, a geometrically precise descent into full-throated hell. This too is perversely thrilling. From a distance, the Harkonnens in the stands are having the best day of their lives, hooting and chanting in unison as Feyd-Rautha conducts a rigged gladiatorial fight. Some of my favorite movies operate on this level, where the director is giving the viewer the thing they’re not supposed to want.
As satisfying as Dune: Part Two is, there is a sense of looseness that’s missing from Part One. The military maneuverings between the Fremen and the Harkonnens feels like it’s on rails, where the success of Paul and then Feyd-Rautha occurs not because of their particular innovation but because the plot needs things to happen. The film is more interested in the political/religious part of the story at the expense of the practical, and it leaves an incomplete aftertaste. The same occurs in the climactic battle, where the addition of sandworms to the Fremen army seems like something that should’ve happened a long time ago. Everything seems overpowered as the film comes to the end, from Paul himself to the average Fremen fighter. I’ve seen the final knife duel between Paul and Feyd-Rautha twice now, and still couldn’t say exactly how it ends. These complaints aside, Villeneuve has at least equaled if not improved on Part One by making a more complex film that avoids the difficult pitfalls of the Lynch version (thankfully, Anya Taylor-Joy is only seen in cameo and not as a deadly toddler). He certainly beefs up the druggy aspect that I felt was missing from Part One. Who knows how the next ambitious sci-fi project will turn out, but the critical and commercial success of Dune: Part Two ensures that it will come soon. A-