Not Over Yet
Sorry, folks, but this is part 2 of 3, even if it kinda isn’t. Brace for incompletion.
Dune: Part Two
Director: Denis Villeneuve • Writers: Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgård, Everybody
USA • 2hrs 46mins
Opens Hong Kong February 29 • IIA
Grade: B
I’m sorry. I’ve tried. I really have. But Timothée Chalamet simply does not scream “ruthlessly driven leader of armies.” When he “fires up” the troops before the Battle of Agincourt in the dull as dishwater The King, he looks like a child playing in his dad’s armour. Sadly in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, as Paul “Muad'Dib” Atreides, Duke of House Atreides and Fremen Prophet, he looks like a slightly older child playing in his nerd dad’s stillsuit. That wouldn’t be such a big deal were it not for the fact that this is the manling that overthrows a corrupt empire and brings freedom to Arrakis. We’re supposed to fist pump at everything he says when the instinct is to point out all that sand can’t be good for his hair. No amount of sudden voice raising helps.
Villeneuve’s sequel to the lush, sprawling, impeccably constructed Dune: Part One brings back the visual worldbuilding of the first film – bigger and more of course – but it’s almost as if Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts forgot there was a shitload of politicking and philosophising that needed to go into Part Two. Where Part One felt like a cohesive whole, albeit half a story, Part Two feels disjointed and more reliant on its aesthetics. There are scads of spectacular moments, but Paul is a narrative island, as are the characters that finally get more to do, particularly Paul’s Fremen lover Chani (Zendaya), current Arrakis overlord Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) and Fremen religious nut Stilgar (Javier Bardem). They share screen time, but there’s a distinct feeling the connective tissue is missing.
Javier awaits Part Three
Dune: Part Two is a harder movie to just slip into, mostly because the welcoming tone of Part One is absent. The story picks up exactly where we stopped, with the Fremen hiding in the desert and the Harkonnen closing the iron fist on Arrakis. Among the Fremen, Stilgar and Paul’s pregnant Bene Gesserit mother Lady Jessica (a gleefully sinister Rebecca Ferguson) are stoking the fires of fundamentalism and taking advantage of prophecy to fuck up Harkonnen shit. In the capital, The Baron grows displeased with Glossu Rabban’s (Dave Bautista) spice management and calls up his psychotic nephew Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler, Elvis) to restore order. Elsewhere the Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) – who helped wipe out the Atreides – and his daughter Irulan (Florence Pugh) are jockeying for position among the great houses given the quagmire on Arrakis.
What’s Bene Gesserit? Where’s Arrakis? Spice. Like cumin? That’s just a fraction of the plot Villeneuve and Spaihts cram into the film, and in fairness, given author Frank Herbert’s original text it’s amazing the film is as coherent as it is. Familiarity with Part One is essential (duh); book knowledge is a huge bonus. The film is strongest when exploring the underlying idea of faith being weaponised as an object for control, and when Chani gets a few minutes to be the sceptical voice of the Fremen as Paul embraces his inner Jesus. It’s strong whenever Butler and Bardem are on screen too. They’re the pillars this time around, with Butler adding a touch of camp to Feyd-Rautha’s menace. It makes him the most interesting person to watch at any given moment, and Bardem laces Stilgar’s religious fervour with just enough humour to pull the mania back from the brink of lumpen.
But then Villeneuve turns around and drops an action sequence on our asses and makes it easy to forget the clumsy bits: when Chalamet earns a fist-pump during his ascension to Fremen God after harnessing a sandworm for the first time – it’s thrilling; when Chani and Paul sabotage a spice harvester (those things take a while to fall from the sky); when Feyd-Rautha goes full psycho gladiator in the arena (even if the crowd is painfully CGI); and when Feyd-Rautha (again) and Paul hash it out in a knife fight. And really, the deserts of Jordan, Namibia and Abu Dhabi have never looked so entrancing. The scope and spectacle are something to behold, and production designer Patrice Vermette nails the dichotomy between Imperium and Dune, science and spirituality.
Like Part One, Dune: Part Two feels unfinished. This is very much the middle chapter of a trilogy Villeneuve hopes to finish with an adaption of Dune Messiah and neither stands on its own. We can assume that characters played by Pugh, Léa Seydoux, Anya Taylor-Joy as Paul’s sister (who has roughly 30 seconds of screen time) and Zendaya, who just mostly gazes into Chalamet’s hair, are being positioned for big things in Dune: Part Three. Here’s hoping Chalamet finds a good deep conditioner. — DEK