When I go to the opera, I take what my music history professor used to call “the opera bargain” where you suspend your disbelief and let yourself be immersed in the sincere and serious spectacle. It takes discipline, but the payoff is like none other.
Dune Part 2 was such an experience. It is a deadly serious 2hr 45min sci fi tragedy. Instead of trying to capture the full scope of Frank Herbert’s ecological, political, military, sociological, and religious vision, Villeneuve and his co-writer Jon Spaihts are wise to take the thinnest version of the plot possible and blow it up to epic proportions.
In fact, the story is so thin, it can slip through your fingers like grains of sand: political exile Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet, so close to finally looking like an adult man) joins an oppressed desert tribe, learns their ways, falls in love, wrestles with his destiny, and reluctantly accepts his fate in order to fend off the extremely evil bad guys.
And boy, are they evil. The villainous Harkonnens are equal parts horrifying and disgusting, clad in Geiger-esque BDSM attire. In case there’s any doubt about their ethics, they routinely kill for sport and their home world is shot in stark blacks and whites to remind us there’s absolutely no nuance or subtlety to their murderous greed. Given that choice, no wonder Paul’s ascendancy is treated as a godsend. Wait, you’re not gonna vote for the plucky upstart with a moral compass just because he’s leading a genocide? Have you SEEN the other guy?
When Trump rose to power through (largely) the support of white evangelicals, I thought often of 1 Samuel 8 where Israel asks for a king, and their prophet reluctantly installs one, being careful to list all the specific ways in which this leader will oppress and tyrannize them. To no avail. Other nations have an authoritarian leader and they’re doing pretty well, they said, so give us one too. The Paul Atreides of Dune Part 2 sees himself filling this role as the best of a lot of bad options – the limits of power, the novel’s most coherent message – and the scene where he fully commits is as horrifying as it is emotional. He can’t sit by when those he loves are about to be destroyed, no matter the cost.
And that’s pretty much it for story. It’s still more than a 5 hour opera might have, and its emotions and story beats are just as big, each rearing a dramatic head as gargantuan as the gaping mouth of a grandaddy sandworm.
As for spectacle, I haven’t seen a war movie this good in a long time. There’s four to five action set pieces that had me on the edge of my seat (god help you if you get close to Zendaya when she’s holding a rifle). The combat scenes shot from the ground are so visceral, you almost feel the bodies of the Sardaukar bearing down on our rebel heroes. As in the first film, Villeneuve proves he’s adept at shooting full on battles in a cogent and gripping fashion that Game of Thrones directors could only dream of. Even in the ultimate showdown between Feyd and Paul, music free, their silhouettes dancing before the sunset, I knew the outcome and I still couldn’t breath till it was over.
Villeneuve’s somber vision of Frank Herbert’s galactic struggle is fully fleshed out with Jacqueline West’s gorgeous costumes. As with the first film, they are my favorite part of the production. Florence Pugh gets to sport some metallic headwear and the Bene Gesserit manage to make giant box hats look anything but silly. Truly Shakespearean. Charlotte Rampling really sells her dour calculating nun from behind the perpetual black veil. Special shoutout to the hammerhead costumes worn by the Harkonnen coliseum soldiers. I’m not sure what that was about but it was really fucking cool.
Shot on location in Jordan and Namibia, the ugly desert orange and yellow hues are somehow inviting next to the cold stone castles of the aristocracy. The soft curves of desert rock contrast nicely with the sharp, bruatlist buildings of the emperor’s residence, the Harkonnen coliseum, and the sacred underground pools of the Fremen, like there’s a risk to order and a beauty in nature that is ineffable.
The cast is uniformly excellent but a little imbalanced on how much they’re on screen. I wanted more time with Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica but she takes a backseat to the other Fremen for much of their sequences (probably off filming Mission Impossible in another section of the desert). We miss some of the complexity of her performance that carried the first film. Instead, Villeneuve focuses his camera on Javier Bardem’s Stilgar, a zealot leader convinced with Morpheus-like conviction that he’s found and trained The One, a key cog in the wheel that will power Paul’s bloody rise. I’ve never been a Chalamet hater and I think he has real chemistry with his entire supporting cast, especially Zendaya. I was pleasantly surprised that her performance becomes the emotional core of the film. Her character represents the most personal cost to Paul’s choice and she fully rises to the occasion. Villeneuve’s closeups of her tough and angry facial expressions capture the angst of their teen romance that simply can’t withstand the obligations of adult leadership. She keeps their love believable. Though her perfect skin was a bit distracting – desert fighters aren’t supposed to look that good! – it didn’t matter. There’s all kinds of epic films where the stars have unrealistic beauty. It’s the best performance I’ve seen from her.
On the villains side, the screenplay deals a bad hand to Glossu Raban, but Dave Batista does an absolutely fantastic job with it, a perfect blend of bewilderment and rage in his glassy eyes. I have to note that Austin Butler was merely asked to play a psychotic killer who revels in sadism, a character that is extremely tired in cinema, and I think he did quite well, even buried under all that latex. It would be so easy for a young actor to misstep here. His Feyd speaks with a guttural snarl, like he’s imitating his corpulent uncle, and it really works.
By the end of the film, I was ready to start watching it again and never watch any other movie or feel any other emotion ever again. I cannot be objective about a movie like this, so deep is my love for science fiction and the, uh, Dunis Villenuniverse. If you’d asked me to guess the final shot of the film, I never would have believed what he chose, but it makes so much sense, priming us for the mystical sorrows of Dune Messiah. This movie gave me the feeling I get when I see Tristan und Isolde or any of the entries in the Ring cycle. It wears you down and blasts you apart. I couldn’t help but succumb to it. I already have tickets to go back next weekend.