Dune: Part One (2021)

Dune dramatizes the familiar maxim of Carl von Clausewitz that war is a continuation of politics by other means, along with the supplementary truism that politics is a continuation of economics by other means. Supply and demand, and the ability to control them, makes the galaxy go round, and the strong do what they can while the weak suffer what they must (to cite another relevant maxim). In the world of Dune, this means that the natives of the harsh desert planet Arrakis — a nomadic, Bedouin-like people called the Fremen — endure foreign occupation and administration of their planet by interstellar powers who come to harvest the rarest and most valuable substance in the universe: melange or “spice.” A psychotropic drug that doesn’t just give users a feeling of expanded consciousness, but can actually unlock precognitive powers, spice enables specially trained prescient users to pilot interstellar distances, giving the substance a value one writer compared to cocaine and petroleum combined.

The film opens amid a transfer of power. (A misleading opening title gives the year as 10190, but fails to specify that the schema is not A.D., but “A.G.,” after the founding of the Space Guild; the story is actually set roughly 20,000 years in the future.) By imperial edict, oversight of spice mining operations on Arrakis is passing from powerful House Harkonnen to a rival power, House Atreides — a transition the aggrieved Fremen reasonably expect to make no difference. (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. For some reason this movie puts me in mind of a lot of maxims.) Actually, the leader of House Atreides, Duke Leto the Just (Oscar Isaac), is about as honorable and fair-minded as an imperialist can be, and certainly a more reasonable man than the ruthless Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). More important in the long run, though, is Leto’s son, young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet).

As a Chosen One narrative, Dune is structured, almost presciently, as a critique or subversion in advance of the many cinematic Hero’s Journey mythologies that followed in its wake. Unlike orphaned Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter, raised in obscurity while dreaming of more, Paul Atreides is the privileged, conflicted heir of two lofty birthrights by which he seems more burdened than empowered. From his father Paul will presumably inherit leadership of House Atreides and responsibility for their planetary fief of Caladan, and perhaps for Arrakis as well. But Paul’s mystical mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) — Duke Leto’s concubine and a high-ranking member of a powerful, quasi-religious sisterhood called the Bene Gesserit — may have bequeathed him even greater potential. Jessica hopes Paul may be a long hoped-for figure of unparalleled powers called the Kwisatz Haderach: not a messiah foreseen in legends or prophecies, ordained by fate or providence, but the ultimate outcome of centuries of selective breeding orchestrated by the Bene Gesserit.

There’s a deconstructionist take on religion at work here. The film doesn’t throw out syncretic labels like “Navachristianity” or “Zensunni,” nor do we hear about the “14 sages” or the “Orange Catholic Bible,” an anthology curated from humanity’s great sacred texts. We are given to understand, though, that messianic expectations among the Fremen regarding a prophetic figure variously called Mahdi (an actual Islamic messianic term) or Lisan al-Gaib (said to mean “voice from the outer world”) have been planted in their culture by the Bene Gesserit. Dune also deconstructs the role of religion in so-called religious wars, underscoring the political and economic motives under the religious language.

Beneath the deconstruction are religious roots of various kinds. Herbert’s family was Catholic, and his devoutly Catholic aunts saw to it that he got a Jesuit education. Herbert has described the Bene Gesserit as “female Jesuits,” a sort of mashup of his aunts and the order he associated with them. (The name is also similar to the Hebrew term B’nai Jeshurun, meaning “sons/children of the righteous.” That may be a coincidence, but the term Kwisatz Haderach is certainly derived from the Hebrew phrase Kefitzat Haderech meaning something like “a jump of the road” or “contracting the path,” and having a sense of miraculous or instantaneous travel. Other terms are drawn from Hebrew and Arabic as well as other languages.

Both Duke Leto and Lady Jessica do what they can to help Paul find his way, though their affection for their son goes beyond their hopes for his potential. For his part, Paul is diffident about his lofty heritage and often seems too tired or not in the mood to practice the skills that go with them, from sword-fighting to use of the Voice, a Bene Gesserit skill capable of overriding the will of others. Not that those around Paul typically let him get away with indulging his reluctance. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them: three paths that converge, perhaps, in Paul Atreides. The subversion of the Chosen One motif is accented by the casting of Chalamet, with his slight build and delicate features. An early shot pointedly silhouettes Paul’s beanpole figure next to the massive outline of swordmaster Duncan Idaho, played by Jason Momoa with a breezy insouciance especially welcome in this earnest affair. Duncan gently teases Paul over his puny arms. Much later, when Paul finally begins to reach for his destiny, he is repeatedly scoffed at as a “little boy” or a “lost boy hiding in a hole in the ground.” It will take some doing for this unimpressive child of privilege to make good — a process that begins in this movie, though the real payoff awaits part two.

This is a weary, decadent world, perhaps beyond even the power of the Kwisatz Haderach to save. The emperor fears both House Atreides and House Harkonnen, and has pitted them against each other in the hope of weakening both rival powers. This is no good-vs-evil myth or fairy tale, although the story’s anti-imperalist and Islamophilic sympathies are solidly with the Fremen. (Despite the disanalogies to Star Wars, the parallels are eye-opening for this Dune newcomer: a corrupt galactic empire; a mystic society with precognitive powers and an ability to command the wills of others; a desert planet; predators who dwell beneath the surface; tribal desert people here evoking Tusken Raiders but later, perhaps, inspiring the tribal Ewoks rising up against Imperial forces; a morbidly obese [robber] baron; etc.)

For fans of the novel, one of the film’s great pleasures, it seems, is that it finally feels like the novel brought to the screen. Villeneuve’s Dune is not a bold reimagining or reworking of the story; he has simply filmed the unfilmable, and, as far as it goes, that’s enough. For me, while there are questions of theme, character, and story are ultimately overshadowed, if not overwhelmed, by the sheer ambition and scale of the movie’s visual and audio design. Watching Eternals after seeing Dune, I was struck by the paltriness of conceptually similar images like immense spacecraft hanging in the air. Even when a creature far larger than a sandworm begins to erupt from the Earth’s surface in Eternals, it lacks the emotional weight and sense of awe around the sandworm’s immense maw, like the mouth of a hookworm lined with barbs like teeth crossed with baleen.

Like Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, Dune draws inspiration from Brutalism — an architectural aesthetic tending to evoke both power and soullessness — not only for its soaring, slab-like architecture but also for its immense, wedge-shaped or cylindrical space vessels. While Brutalism in the real world is seldom to my tastes, onscreen it can create images of heart-stopping imaginative force. Along with the bright, remorseless sands of the Arrakian desert and the sepulchral creaking sounds emerging from the immense sandworms, the very shape and textures of the vast surfaces rising around the pitifully small human characters help define the world of Dune as one in which I very much would not want to live, but which I find unforgettable.

Borrowing a maxim from the Dutch philosopher and clergyman Gerard van der Leeuw (The Conquest of Illusion), Dune reminds us, “The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” So is art.