Going to the cinema is a very solitary experience. It’s not like at home, where people can freely converse, asking questions fifteen minutes into a film. No matter how big the group, once everyone sits, and the lights go down, it’s just the individual and the screen. In my life, outside of air travel, it’s the only time I actually shut off my phone. My extrication from society.
Still, seeing Denise Villeneuve’s Dune (2021) a few weeks ago was the first time I’ve been on my own to the cinema since 2019. Then, it was a conclusion to a franchise—Avengers: Endgame (2019)—and now, it’s the beginning of a new one. But before I proceed any further, I think it prevalent to make a confession: I have neither read the book by Herbert, or seen the Lynchian take on the subject matter. I went into Dune with no preconceptions of what it was, or what it should be, outside of some general knowledge of the plot and themes—religious fascistic overtones and the like. I was excited to just experience it all fresh, to weigh it on its own merits. And am I glad that I did.
From the start, I knew I was in for something different. A black screen, and rumblings in a foreign, alien language set the tone before any title cards. It’s unsettling, and surprising. This was not going to be your average blockbuster film. And it is a blockbuster, an experience that lends itself to be seen within a cinema. Not just for the grand scale of the impeccable production design or costumes, but for the sound. Villeneuve is a filmmaker who cares about sound and understands its impact. A friend once recalled to me their experience of seeing one of Villeneuve’s earlier films, Sicario (2015), at the Cannes Film Festival, and how before the film, he worked with sound engineers to ensure that the audio was just as he intended it to be. It was a key component to the film, an underlining base tone permeated scenes to heighten their discomforting impact on the audience. The same attention to detail can be found in Dune.
The film is about alien races, human enough to be recognizable, but vastly different in their attitudes, their architectures, and their beliefs. The audio design and Hans Zimmer’s score play a big part in making that pervasive theme of alienation feel present and active. The more Villeneuve leaned into the otherness of it all (and he does it a lot), the more I could feel myself smiling under my mask. The film is just better for it, and maintaining it throughout is essential to every detail. Not only because the film’s world is foreign to the audience, but because the world of Arrakis—it’s the big sandy one—is also foreign to most of the main cast of characters. They come to terms with the culture as we do, and that synergy is an important part of any good film, any good piece of storytelling. But that isn’t to say that the film doesn’t have its flaws.
The film is part-1. And it really leans into that. Without spoiling too much, there are set ups here. One could even mistake it for the biggest budget TV pilot of all time. I consider myself lucky going in knowing this. Even the film wants to reinforce this, plastering a big PART-1 onto the main title card (funny how that’s not on the poster). So, I can imagine if someone isn’t familiar with that, they would be leaving the movie very confused. It’s risky and very anti-blockbuster, but that’s Villeneuve. Rather than shoving in a potential-sequel-scene at the end, he chooses to embrace that this film is a first act. Regardless, the story contained within this first act is satisfying enough on its own. Character arcs are unique, and the narrative grapples with its thematic morality of colonialism and environmentalism well—“no, don’t worry, we’re good colonizers. Now please help us mine the resources of your planet to meet our quota”. It serves as an underlining motivator throughout the first hour of the film and hints to a grander, political interplay just beneath the surface of all the sand and explosions. Thematically, narratively, and aesthetically, the film satisfies. Though that doesn’t alleviate it from its other issue.
It’s not just an issue that Dune faces, though. It’s something that I’ve noticed across a lot of new visual media, and it has to do with sound. And a very specific part of sound at that—the dialogue. Whether it’s Disney + or Netflix, rapidly raising and lowering volume to hear dialogue and avoid being deafened by sound effects seems to be the new norm, and I am not here for it. In the context of Dune, at the cinema, this control was not available. Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth (the credited screenwriting team) do an excellent job of balancing the dialogue with exposition in the script, so when a vital piece of information is lost, it really hampers the experience.
It only occurred on two occasions for me, but they were pivotal moments. The first involving Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica (who is amazing in this film regardless of her garbled words), and the second with Timothée Chalamet’s Paul (who is also good despite his spice-induced whispers). Having their dialogue lost, luckily, was at least made up for by the amount of visual context given, and it’s not like there weren’t contextual reasons for the dialogue to be lost—Chalamet’s during a rather tumultuous moment—but it still has to work, and it still needs to be heard. And onus should not be put on the actors, as their performances—across the entire cast, big names and extras (spoken or otherwise)—are wonderful. Still, I can imagine the average cinemagoer being lost without those key pieces of information, and having to work hard to catch-up based on just the visuals. But that might not be a bad thing because ultimately, that’s what a Villeneuve blockbuster is.
It’s a big, bombastic affair because the story dictates that it is in a sensible and emotionally evocative way. Audiences have become so conditioned to see sci-fi films in such a particular way, from one set piece to the next before the BIG ONE to cap it all off. This is the blockbuster formula and many films that exist in that overall category and resemble science fiction (I’m looking at you Marvel) continually reinforce it. With his past three films—Arrival (2016), Bladerunner 2049 (2017), and now Dune—Villeneuve has tried to subvert those expectations. He’s accomplished this to varying degrees of success, but Dune feels like he’s finally arrived at an impeccable balance, having moments that really slow down and consider character while taking the final BIG ONE moment and subverting it in a satisfying way.
Dune towers over its minor faults with jaw dropping visuals, set design, and performances. It’s a film that is not your typical science fiction film, because it harkens back to the tradition of science fiction—to embody and discuss important themes on a larger scale and in ways that are specific to that theme, without being restrained by the world it exists in. As an audience member, I was immersed and invested in the story, with no previous nostalgia tied to the previous iterations. So, if you can, take the lonely path out into the desert, with the lights down, phones off, and get lost into the world of Dune.