spoilers, for both films
On Commitment
At the very beginning of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One—even before the logo of Warner Bros. Studios or any other credit can be paid onscreen—we receive a chilling message in a garbled alien tongue, and subtitles that read: “Dreams are messages from the deep.” I had forgotten this before entering the screening for Part Two, or perhaps I had ignored it completely when I saw it for the first time in 2021. Its strangely early placement in the film, while running the risk of missing a viewer’s attention completely, seems to exist in a space outside the story itself. Perhaps it is meant to preside over the entire experience, Hollywood contraptions and all: a message concerning not just Frank Herbert’s story, but about movies themselves.
I was reminded of this when, seeing Part Two for the first time, we received a second message, in the same ominous guttural tone: “Power over spice / is power over all.” Quite specific, I thought, considering the more universal line from the first film; but perhaps it could be used as a key to understand Villeneuve’s real intention. Placing such a definitively in-universe concept as “spice” (the rare psychedelic drug essential for intergalactic travel) at the very beginning of the film, outside of any narrative trapping, confirms that Villeneuve is not trying to make any such lofty statement on “movies themselves” or to tell the viewer what they should be thinking. It is, rather, a commitment to conveying the dramatic power-struggles of Herbert’s novel—nothing more and nothing less. Villeneuve tells us that he is going to tell us a story, and that story will speak for itself.
I admire Villeneuve’s total commitment to story, which feels unique in a world where earnestness can be interpreted as not being serious. He has spoken about the importance of Dune to his childhood, which perhaps best explains it: it is important to him that we are thrown head-first into this other world, not merely for the purpose of artistic integrity but to remain true to his younger self, who grew up in the shadow of it. You can feel this commitment throughout both films, not just in their massive physical and financial scale, but in the way they use modern storytelling techniques to bring audiences into its fold and take them on such a spiraling ride.
What I am actually doing here is trying to make sense of the weight I feel when I think about these movies. These disparate moments now seem to be so pregnant with thought and significance; I am in awe of the emotions I can feel while watching this most recent film, astounded by the extent to which this assembly of pictures and sounds can move me—and I do not believe that I am alone. It is fascinating, as well as frightening, that film can do so much.
On Celebrity
Thirty years from now, one might be forgiven for missing the power that is conveyed through the star-power of these films. The cast seems to have been designed to be both a consecration of the older generation—Brolin, Bardiem, Starsgard, Isaac, Ferguson, to name a few—and a heralding of the new: Chalamet, Zendaya, Pugh, and Butler. It’s a summoning of forces that, when put in front of Villeneueve and his team, becomes impossible for even the most Hollywood-illiterate to avoid. I admit that movies can retain and gain power over time, but this is the kind of age-sensitive event that is most formidable in its present moment. There are some things about seeing Dune for the first time that will be lost on future viewers.
Like most, I first noticed Chalamet in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name and knew intuitively that he would become a star. For years I shifted between at times appreciating his presence in some of my favorite movies—I particularly enjoyed him in Little Women and his second film with Guadignino, Bones And All—and at other times begrudgingly accepting his omnipresence in pop culture. An upcoming Chalamet feature has become an expected event of the movie season. When news broke that he would play Paul in Villeneuve’s upcoming film, any excitement was tempered with a shrugging acceptance.
This feeling followed me through my experience with Dune: Part One. Chalamet was never quite a formidable figure—a fact which has set his career apart from other prominent leading men, sometimes in the best of ways—and that was fine because Paul was indeed a boy, and Timmy seemed to be inhabiting the most important aspects of that character’s beginnings. But Frank Herbert’s book did not have to deal with the visual strangeness of a boy becoming the leader of the Fremen and eventually the Emperor of the Known Universe. Heading into Part Two, I was prepared to be merely tolerant of Chalamet’s performance, trying not to expect a true transformation.
First of all, Chalamet has aged since the first film. Not a whole lot, but enough for a viewer to register a difference, a certain hardening of his facial expression, which was certainly aided by a skillful hair & makeup team that was clearly cognizant of the change’s importance. After Paul has made the decision to consume the Water of Life and sees the horror of his family’s past and future, his boyish bangs are finally swept back in a more defiant and manly wave. The lines of his face appear somehow more defined, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Chalamet gained (the smallest bit of) muscle for the role.
This all comes together when Paul finally declares his rule of Arrakis—his character’s first wholehearted acceptance of himself as the Mahdi, and the revelation of this story’s real tragedy—a scene in which Chalamet demonstrates that he can not just look but move and speak, too, like a movie star. I was astounded by how he employed such a highly kinetic presence to sweep his audience, both real and imagined, off their feet and into his legions of extremist supporters. It was then that, just as the Fremen fell to Paul’s cause, I was finally convinced of Chalamet’s ascendancy.
On Family
There is a scene in Part Two in which Paul Atreides drinks the Water of Life, lethal to any male, sending him on a spice-induced trip through the depths of his own ancestry. If they can survive it, the Water of Life forces the drinker to inhabit the consciousnesses of their own forerunners. Paul is then imbued and burdened with all the minds of his fathers, the many dukes of Caladan.
It is not a new idea that we are subject to our family’s worst traits and tendencies. Paul literally becomes these men, with all their ambitions and follies, to the extent that he can picture his own future with clarity. Simply the thought of this (objectively absurd) idea is frightening to me. I love my father, his memory and the things he accomplished; but it is important to me that we are not the same person, and that I maintain the opportunity to improve in some way upon my family’s legacy. Watching Paul’s fathers’ memories rushing through his mind—the oceans of Caladan spreading before him like the many dunes of Arrakis—I felt the pain and tragedy of what he then had to face, the burden of being an infinite son, even though the very idea of it is a fantasy.
It is, in fact, what many of us fear, in that kind of abstract way: that we will become our fathers not just in thought, but in reality; that we will somehow begin to think like them, to draw their terrible conclusions, to commit their atrocities. And that we will never think of what we are doing as wrong, because we will have been swayed.
On Power
Perhaps Villeneuve achieved his goal too well: many viewers, myself included, found themselves captured by the charm and guile of Muad’dib, the Voice from the Outer World—even when, by the end of the film, we know full well that this story is a tragic one for all humans, as Paul succumbs to the power laid at his feet and plunges the galaxy into the bloody holy war he was trying to avoid all along.
Villeneuve knew about this problem of allegiances from his experience with book-readers, and he made efforts to pit the audience of his films against Paul by altering the Chani character—once nothing more than a sidekick—into a sympathetic one, who can see the tragedy in Paul’s rise and who suffers directly from it. And still, the story is too powerful to erase our affections completely; even on a second viewing I found myself grinning like a fool whenever Paul did something heroic, winning followers to his side and growing ever closer to becoming the dark figure of the messiah. Such is the power of endearment: we tend to forget the awful things that happen in the aftermath, as we have already been swayed by emotion.
That being said, a second viewing allowed me to sort my emotions in a more responsible way. We are, in fact, capable of feeling something for one character one moment and another character the next. By tracking Chani’s resentment and betrayal by Paul, which becomes the real emotional thread in the final part of the film, a viewer should walk away with the full tragic force of this story, your heart taken in Zendaya’s hands as she rides a sand-worm into the distance and away from the people she once loved—and maybe even leaving you excited for Part Three, when she will presumably get what she’s owed.
Maybe it’s not enough to say that ‘responsible’ viewers will take away the right message, while legions run with something far more nefarious—but that is part of the game we’re playing with Hollywood. Indeed there is something both thrilling and unsettling about this movie, how successfully it manages to convey its highs and lows; with big entertainment comes big emotions, and those emotions are nearly impossible to predict, much less to control. The project of the blockbuster was ever to sway the masses. I would say that Villeneuve has done his job.