When David Lynch adapted Frank Herbert’s Dune — now widely acknowledged as the world’s best-selling science fiction novel — into his much-talked-about film, the result was a cramped behemoth which hardly allowed its narrative, its characters or its ideas — futuristic to spiritual to allegorical — to breathe. It turned out to be a colossal disappointment, but one had to laud Lynch, counted as one of the best movie makers of all time, for even attempting to bring alive what is unanimously regarded as an unfilmable book.

Almost four decades later, Denis Villeneuve dips into the Dune desert once more for his 156-minute film which has both ‘audacious’ and ‘ambitious’ written all over it. However, unlike its 1984 counterpart, Dune in 2021 is Dune: Part One, a film that from the start aspires to be more than just one film.

Which means that it isn’t a film, packed as it is with some jaw-dropping cinematic sci-fi, a world-building spectacle of epic proportions and a movie-watching experience that’s both thoughtful and thrilling, that is going to come with any closure. Villeneuve, unlike Lynch, takes time to build the scope and scale of both his story and those who live in it. The result is a film that will impress you with its visual ambition, but also touch a chord in its quieter moments as it examines the human underpinnings of Herbert’s work.

Set far into the future in “a planet far, far away” (Star Wars’ debt to Dune and Dune’s debt to Star Wars has been extensively discussed over the years), Dune follows the story of Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), a young man born into a weighty destiny who is invested with the responsibility of not only wresting the dangerous desert planet of Arrakis from its enemy invaders, but also safeguarding the planet’s supply of the most precious resource in existence, in order to save his people.

Villeneuve’s reverence for Herbert’s book is evident right from the first frame of Dune. The man credited with films like Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and Sicario, assembles a team of some of the best technicians in the business to craft a cinematic experience that is both visually and aurally an achievement in film-making.

Moody and atmospheric, Dune — now playing in movie theatres —melds dreamy and dramatic science-fiction fantasy with medieval imagery. The action transits from rain-soaked dark granite to opalescent sand, set to a throbbing score by Hans Zimmer, even as Villeneuve deep-dives into Herbert’s world of sandworms and stark spaces. But what we also have is a coming-of-age story of a young man who stumbles on to an inheritance that he isn’t quite able to fathom. The film does take its time — and we suggest you remain with it even through its slower moments — to set up its world of palace intrigue and family dynamics, but once that’s done, we are treated to a buffet of visual fireworks. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.
Dune is peopled with an ensemble that boasts the likes of Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson (who play Paul’s parents), a virtually unrecognisable Stellan Skarsgard who functions as Paul’s nemesis and names like Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Dave Bautista and Javier Bardem, with Zendaya as the blue-eyed Chani, whose presence haunts Paul’s visions of the future, setting up the story niftily for a sequel. While Villeneuve allows every character to breathe and grow, the film’s key moments are between the mother-son pair of Jessica and Paul, with Rebecca Ferguson and Timothee Chalamet helping in humanising the story.

Dune ends just as the movie is getting started, cutting off not with a big, cathartic ending but somewhere in the middle of the second act of the story. It’s a film that leaves you wanting more, yet giving you the feeling that it didn’t deliver on its initial promise. Part Two, we’ve got our eyes on you.

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dune (u/a)
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem.
Running time: 156 minutes