Dune: Part Two

Due to delays, because of the new Hollywood strikes that took place, the film ‘Dune: Part Two’ is more than ready to begin its release. It starts moving even before the Warner Bros. logo is displayed as out of habit one can already see the famous water tower on it, reminding us that it is time to load water because we are in for a long and dusty journey.

As the screen remains dark, a voice much altered and modulated says something that those who do not rely on the sound track cannot make out the meaning of unless they read the subtitles: “He who controls the spice controls the universe.”

A rare greenhorn to the Dune-iverse may be baffled: a cumin slavery tale? But that is going to seem quite obvious to readers of Frank Herbert’s 1965 epic science fiction novel or those who have seen “Dune: Part One.”

That film plummeted us, quite like this one, into what can only be described as an entirely taupe and brutalist interpretation of Herbert’s universe and kicked off a story about war and destruction on a feudal scale. In the center of the story lies the substance called spice, which can enhance lifespan, evoke foreseeing and allow for space voyages.

(Any kind of journey it is perfect for.) For many centuries, Spice has aroused and triggered enmities and intrigues from those wanting to monopolize its trade; for spice can only be found on Arrakis, the sand planet riddled with monster sand worms.

As films usually do, ‘Dune: Part Two’ begins right where the last one ‘Dune’ ended, at an extra savage game of thrones. Still the year is 10191 and the evil members of House Harkonnen are busy running Arrakis and its spice-mining operations after completing defeating their hairy foes in House Atreides.

But in the desert, where the lady’s hero, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), son to the mortally wounded Duke Leto Atreides, has gone all T. E. Lawrence and hid with Fremen people, There is still room for hope.

He is no more than 15 years old in Herbert’s novel, Paul—yet, even at such tender ages, he has Gods-given intellect, natural combat skills, stylish long hair and as the story goes on, additional names – some of them more than what anyone under the twenties should carry – than most carry – Mahdi, Muad’Dib, Usul, Lisan al-Gaib, Kwisatz Haderach, to name a few.

4398040 dompa Primary themeWhich I am aware, sticking to usual objectives, is not sufficient when it comes to explaining the position of Paul in the three-part story. Paul, though beset with all these attributes preferable in a leader, is not immune to messiah’s complex as it is been traditionally called. A band of Fremen headed by the wry but fatherly Stilgar (wonderfully played by Javier Bardem) believes that Paul will lead them and defeat the oppressive order of the Harkonnens.

Paul’s regal looking ethnic woman – Lady Jessica (all fire and steel Rebecca Ferguson) is the daughter of the tyrant and, owing to marriage, a Member of a dark create order – the Bene Gesserit which has Its Plans for Her Son. Why circumcision is emotionally bothering and how would it change me by Villeneuve, ‘narratively’ like Pialat or Osu?

What visions has Paul to mislead into domination? Chani, the fierce and beautiful warrior whom Paul dreamed of in the first film, and who also happens to be his wife, easily captures his heart in this one. This is justified since, in this Chapter, Chani puts unreasonable hope into Paul and as a response to some of his delusions, she spits on him.

Furthermore, it is true that Zendaya, an actor of tremulous, mostly mute kindness, indicates more than her character Chani’s skepticism. “Fear is the mind-killer,” Herbert’s text says and perhaps faith is worse.

Paul has his own inner fears. As the role progresses in terms of bodily strength and emotional height, the rapid and lanky Chalamet never really loses any of his adolescent end of the spectrum Shappiness. He and Zendaya do indulge in some short measure of mountain-top tranquility.

Had Villeneuve been more of a sensualist or Paul Zorba the Greek a more daring adventurer, we would have been treated to “Call Me Dune Bedroom”. In the end, however, he means to wage war and not romance.

Time and time again, we see his fierce fantasies of destruction and burning of everything, an example of apocalypse, ‘holy war’ if you will should he come to the throne. Drawing Fremen faces from sad stories about Arabs and Islam culture, Herbert borrowed a concept as “jihad”.

The obvious decision to avoid the Jihadist term must have been reached long before the most recent outburst of violence in the Middle East however the film, pitting Fundamentalist Fremen against a cultural imperialistic mass murderer, would scarcely be able to escape the recent evening news in the nightmares. Though if the film is, among other things, a long overdue fable of Arab emancipation, if anything it is a slippery and reluctant one where the actual juices of revolution politics are inexplicably low.

While upholding the Arabic nature of the material and portraying the Fremen with a noticeable shortage of Arab players in critical roles, Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts who co-wrote the narration, are dull, neutral, and overly safe from the text. However, this does not mean that the image has no idea of itself or that it avoids politics. Villeneuve may be more a visual rather than an ideological logician, but, by placing Paul in the position if a potential fake, he rather cleverly plays with our discomfort. He can’t wholly rebut the repeated accusation that Dune is merely another white savior’s tale, but to some extent of self awareness he is able to call it off.

Nevertheless, he has much larger matters to concern himself with. During his time with the Fremen, it is also necessary for Paul to learn the fun sport of worm riding, which is essentially a cross between windsurfing and rock climbing, and the sight of which is utterly breathtaking.

It is clear that it is only during this- quite glorious- explosion of spectacle, complemented by Hans Zimmer’s portentous score, that “Dune: Part Two,” leaves behind the mundane and flirts with the extraordinary.

Equipped with the deepest pockets and the most modern tools of the motion picture business, Villeneuve the emigrant develops into a seer in the desert; preacher of the good old faith – the cinema. For a second, at least, the morbid tale is cast aside.

Right from the origin, Villeneuve has been able to tell “Dune” in a very clear manner, and I do not mean that completely in a positive way. Making lucid content isn’t easy so it is only natural that Hollywood would place emphasis on making sure the different story lines are coherent. And Herbert, lord bless him, with his flown prose, tries to be more experimental and exotic as possible which, well, is not so easy to do.

One stylized logic, which we can see in puzzling films “Arrival” (2016) or “Blade Runner 2049” (2017), belongs to Denis; it is to simplify, remove the last rough edge, funneling out any confusion or misunderstanding.

In “Part One,” the guys aked their tongues in the Herbert vocabulary in as serious as it gets. (Some of them make welcome returns, including Josh Brolin, as the Atreides weapons master Gurney Halleck, and the ever-formidable Charlotte Rampling, as a Bene Gesserit reverend mother.)

The actors’ skill felt of a peace with the plainness and even sparsity coupled with the images; it has been such an absolute head turner but also made one feel that the look has been forced on the movie by some dystopian minimalistic Marie Kondo.

Part Two is noticeably better, mainly because so much of it takes place in this aerial view of vast desert instead of in cold and sterile forts and hangers where one might even forget about the life-and-death intensity, the hard edged sun on the sand, and the chic appeal of the survival equipment.

When the Fremen address corpses of their enemies, fitting milk-sucking tubes into their mouths and making sure not a single drop of precious pivotal fluid escapes waste, it turns into a sickeningly close-world-building.

Scale flattened a bit of that persuasiveness in filmmaking: ‘Dune” is already tempting imparison with Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, but despite all of the Villeneuve’s battle sequences impressive pitch and frenzy, they were not on Zachson’s pop-Waghnerian lavishness, exalted B-movie.

Though Villeneuve has wandered outside the desert world of Arrakis from time to time, you feel more of an urge to come back to Arrakis. The travesty of enlightenment mere from her stepsister is now replaced, in yawing deserts, with lush green jungles bound with the emperor’s wife, Irulans, babysitting Christopher Walken.

Even more bland and dismal is the oppressive world of the Giedi Prime, which causes the cinematographer Greig Fraser to literally reverse his color palette from color into black and white. Oh, by contrast less subtle, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in boiled oil with monsters, continues, embellishing his free time while some of his loser nephew, Feyd-Rautha, prepares to usurp him.

And somehow Feyd-Rautha, the character odious enough to elicit such a knee-jerk reaction from the audience, is played by Butler, Julius and Strangio Austin whom one only wants to laugh at having gapes of Elvis himself dissociated from the impressive Australian star. Such a transformation: from stylizing a stunned audience in Las Vegas to stabbing fighters in colorless precedents of the Caesars Palace.

You could never have read a word of Herbert’s work and still have guessed that Feyd-Rautha must necessarily feature in the final conflict of this film. Even so, while viewing “Dune: Part Two” and its main Utah scene during the warm-up to what’s bound to be an only marginally satisfying climactic stage of take-this-imperial-game-yourself, I caught myself in an unexpected twist, not looking to bring down Butler’s character, but rather staring Chalamet and wanting to supersede with the image of Sting.

Sting, who in David Lynch’s “Dune” (1984) was parading around in space diaphanous and sweating, exuded more of the Feyd-Rautha’s sexual deviance than Chalamet could have. And for those who dare to bare with the endless criticism of the acclaim-hoarding condo of matriarchs, those loyal to DOI Panache V, will be able to detect the absence in Villeneuve’s work – the edge cutting curse of imaginative stupidity.

As meaning may affect no one, least of all the heads that rule House Hollywood. The only world that makes sense in this case, is the one that this “Dune,” which is a box office catch spasm, has already invaded. The spicer is the ruler.

That picture, and this is also directed by Denis Villeneuve, let us step into Herbert’s universe where it is a cut-throat, beige and brutalist dark Age futuristic. We have the stage set for another case where feudal expansive and destruction of the environment is the order of the day. The primary axis of the story is also spice, this drug/food stuff that can extend life, make you see into the future, and travel through space.

(This is suitable for any type of travel.) Spice being the only thing that is exclusive to the resurfaces masters fights and plots against those who would control it, as it is only found on the desert planet of Arrakis that is infested with gigantic sand worms.

Where the last film finished, ‘Dune: Part Two’ also begins – at the climax of an unusually lethal round of the warring houses. The date is still the same — 10191; the vicious House Harkonnen and their bald knackers, having subdued their hairy and considerably nicer House Atreides enemies, are in charge of Arrakis and its spice extracting works.

But in that thwarted world, there is a glimmer of hope in the hot sands of the desert where the title character Paul Atreides, a son of the murdered Duke Leto Atreides, has been a absolute T.E Lawrence of sorts cloistering around the Elysian blue-eyed Bedouin desert people who are called the Fremen.

In the nineteenth chapter of Herbert’s book, this reported age of Paul – fifteen years old – belongs to the most incredible intellect in the family, the best adolescent in combats, with splendid long hair, and subsequently – more epithets than anybody younger than twenty ought to bear.

These are Mahdi, Muad’Dib or Usul, Lisan al-Gaib, Kwisatz Haderach. You’ve heard of messiah complexes but this one concerning Paul is about at the very edge of comprehension. A faction of the Fremen headed by the wry, and somewhat avuncular Stilgar (awesome Javier Bardem) feels that Paul will be the one to lead them to emancipation from their bloodthirsty Harkonnen captors.

Timelock Paul’s classy mother, Lady Jessica (hilariously fiery Rebecca Ferguson all of them in steel), is a member of Bene Gesserit religious order who covets women and who has her own perverse views on Paul’s demon. (And for good measure, let me add that sexy slash profane ‘heady’ crown – the mother is pregnant – Villeneuve places a womb with a view, which perhaps for Stanley Kubrick’s a nod to, is wise in womb with a view.)

Is there any truth at all in the prophecy? Is it truly important, save avoiding the public dangers, so long as Paul is able to use the congregation he has garnered for utterly personal revenge? Chani (Zendaya), the strong, beautiful and rugged woman who occupied Paul’s thoughts in the first film is very easily won to this film and she spits in mockery – ok, lightly spits – on his aspirations of divine dimensions.

However, chiaroscuro ZenDay Os an actor whose tremulous yet most of the time performs in silence shows us the rising tension beneath Chani’s doubts. Chani chided him. “We all go down this path. Herbert wrote: Fear is the mind-killer, and faith is a more dangerous weapon than fear.”

Paul has problems of his own, too. Even as the character grows in both physical strength and emotional power, it must be admitted that the swift and lanky Chalamet is never able to fully shake off the boyish naiveté that he possesses.

Also, he and zendaya share some eye-catching relatively very short shared moments of top of the dunes mimicking; if it was a film made by vilenueve’s different spirit or paul’s little more of pushing the sentiments we could have been watching “Call Muad’Dib By Your Name”.

However, finally, fights, he is for, not romance. More than once, we see him burning an apocalyptic vision, a “battle for God,” he sees as he will sit on the throne. Including Fremen are used to, delicious derivatives of arab and islamic culture’s practices, weapons of mass destruction that is ‘jihad’.

The strategic decision to avoid the J-word must have been taken well in time before the last spark of fire with the middle east but the film, putting together the buntsai fundamentalists and the sowing genocide crazed oppressor, is hardly able to avoid the barbarity of the recent news.

Still, the movie is also a bit too purple for a horror drama of modern times, which one of the sometime embodies the, among other things, an illustrative fable about arab liberation. Such film doing politics of revolution very puzzling the sentiment, if any, gung ho feeling would be out of place.

Keeping the basic Arabic ornamentation on the material, if considering the obvious absence of the Arab actors in major Fremen parts, Villeneuve & Jon Spaihts, the co-writer here rather read the text cautiously rather than aggressively, bland without commitment.

It is not to say, however, that the picture has no mind of its own or that it entirely avoids any controversy, as much as it finds itself as a political rendering in a sense. We may regard Villeneuve as a more sophisticated cinematic logician rather than an ideologue of nond’islamists, nevertheless, by making Paul an arrogant possibly omnipotent charlatan, she deftly addresses our uneasiness. Any white colonialist who repeats for decades ‘Dune’ is another white savior fantasy game will not be able to complain fully in the reverse.

Anyway, he has more important things to deal with. Paul as a part of his adaptation to Fremen culture has to adopt the perversion of worm riding, which is like riding a giant kite surfing sail which is also like free climbing, a sight that is quite something.

It is only in this grand effusion of sights, propelled by the breathtaking music of Hans Zimmer where Dune Part Two rises from being merely skilled, to the edge of being knockout. Resourceful in connection with the biggest wallets and the most up-to-date tools in Hollywood, Villeneuve turns an outsider into a preacher of the movie business as it was before. At least for a while, the tables are turned.

Since the very first time, Villeneuve has narrated the tragic story of “Dune” with perfect clarity, of which I don’t fully mean as an effusion of praise. Constructvers to the consternation of Hollywood where story clarity is king, Herbert text is such a rich breeding ground that desynthesize names, names, characters, texts and tirades and their relationships forces one to escape this world.

Clearly be’)In such films, smoothness is a stylistic nuttiness Villeneuve in, clear linguistic think. “Part One,” did the actors out of no imagination, but with po-faced determination to form words out of the Herbert’s created language. (Some of them make wonderful comebacks, as Josh Brolin as Atreides weapon expert Gurney Halleck, and the formidable Charlotte Rampling as first of the Bene Gesserit Madam Reverend Mother.)

It was cute that the actors appeared to feel they were performing what the visuals glamour posed the austere pang whereby agricultural accumulating forecasting hunger pangs seemed to be implanted strategically from expectations.

In “Part Two” there is a clear visibility of an improvement as most part of it is not in neutral castles and nondescript buildings, but in the distance of the desert where stakes of life and death, heat of the sun on the sand and the beauty of the survival kits can be well understood.

As the Fremen begin to suck the moisture out of the crushed enemies, making sure not one drop is wasted, this is when it gets quite creepy because of the immersion into the fiction. However, the picture takes off some of that win-win forced nature – “Dune” already started talking about “The Lord of the Rings” in the sense of the trilogy, while in fact it is too early to do this because despite a great pitch and a huge amount of frenzy during the battle scenes by Villeneuve, they are not Jackson’s pop-Wagnerian ornamental musical work with celebrating B-grade movies.

There is a moment when Villeneuve goes beyond Arrakis, which only makes you wish to return to Arrakis. An expanse of luscious foliage encircles the scheming Emperor (Christopher Walken) and his daughter, Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) only for the coloration of the characters to pall any change of environment.

More pallid still is the dread planet Giedi Prime, where the cinematographer Greig Fraser cuts from color to black and white for reasons that seem to centre on the horrifying nature of the Harkonnens’ fascism. In these pages, the deathly sadistic Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgarde) pleasures himself in a soup tub of greasy gunk while the obnoxious psycho nephew Feyd-Rautha waits for his turn as Psycho Villain in Chief.

Amusingly, Feyd-Rautha is portrayed by Austin Butler who utterly unlikeable from the star in Elvis (2022); while being bald of the brow and Skarsgarde in voice – a mere jester. What an arc: from thrilling the audience’s spectacle illusions in Las Vegas to stabbing gladiators in the black-and-white rendition of Caesars Palace.

Anyone who had been nailed to a chair with a copy of Dune any more than the film adaptation needn’t have read a page of Herbert in order to use a finger on it and guess where and how Feyd-Rautha will factor in this movie’s climactic showdown.

However, contrarily enjoying rather ambiguous imagery – that of Butler standing prepared for yet another performance although this time against the male not female but Timothy Chalamet but rather Sting who moved in a peculiar fashion in 1984 ‘Dune’ by David Lynch – which rather took more of what Feyd-Rautha was supposed to portray sexually menacing but more lascivious instead.

This is not to say that many of those who are still burning the candle at Lynch’s “sacrilegious” work, will not try to grasp what is missing in Villeneuve’s: spatial imagination, psychoerotic under layer, the horror, the reality that we rather live in a world filled with living-heaving breathing beings.

Not that it will trouble anyone’s sleep, least of all the heads that rule over House Hollywood. Only a world that matters here, a world of this Dune. The box office dismal messiah in the making. Power to spice equals power to everything.

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