NOTE: This post touches on politics, which this feed and my stories typically do not. But (I think) it defies any partisan categorization. It’s really about the intertwining of history and art.
ALSO NOTE: This assumes a basic familiarity with some of the plot elements of Dune. If you need a primer, here’s the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)
I.
The first Dune book was published in 1965. Israel was 17 years old, the US was already hip-deep in the Middle East, allied with Saudi Arabia against Communism and sucking oil out of Saudi deserts like Spice off Arrakis’ sands. Oil was the lifeblood of our economy, not just with no end in sight but with no end being sought, environmentalism a crackpot’s shibboleth and electric cars still science fiction.
The new Dune movie is being seen in a world in the early stages of a genuine electrification revolution. The technology to make our economy completely free from fossil fuels exists. It is now too expensive for the amount of political will we have available, but that’s changing—that’s the revolution. Our relationship to oil is nothing like it was in 1965, and it seems likely that our relationship to Spice as dramatic object has also changed.
Also in 1965, the Sexual Revolution was getting started in earnest. In a broader historical view: The Chivalry and Christian Virtue that had once governed American Culture, and which had begun to die of horror in the trenches of WWI, were finally paraded through the streets on their way to the gallows. The Freaks were coming out, and they existed in that dangerous, magical moment when rigid power structures of the old ways still existed, but no longer seemed unbeatable—that’s why the art was so damn good.
Today, the foot soldiers of that revolution are the power structures, and society reflects it. One sense of that reflection: Individualism is the national religion, difference officially celebrated in the most powerful of our institutions (even as prejudice remains). Another sense of that reflection: The power structures no longer feel authentic, and the revolution has too little to push against.
We know that we are not yet where we want to be, yet what needs changing does not have agreed-upon names like “The Church” or “The Establishment”. Does anyone really believe that if we defeat the Republicans once more, racism will end in this country? That if we defeat the Democrats, globalization will reverse and cultural supremacy will slough away from liberals?
We are no longer in that magical moment when what was frightening also seemed possible. The revolution has reached television commercials and cringey political speeches—it is banal. It has swallowed itself.
What we are now facing, in a way that 1965 was not, is our Interiority. This is not just a question of discovering our gender or liking how guns make us feel (although it is also that, and there’s a reason those issues have achieved staggering cultural salience out of proportion to their material stakes). To wit: Unless a critical mass of people reach a higher consciousness and change their hearts, no amount of power will permit any meaningful victory, for any side.
II.
Let’s start with the obvious—the new Dune movie is great. It’s gorgeous, epic, ambitious, well-acted, confidently paced, and filled with the density of incredible ideas that made Herbert’s novel a classic almost 50 years ago. It also should win Oscars for sound design. You should see it if you haven’t.
It’s also a LOT better than David Lynch’s 1984 version, which was chopped down by the studio until it was literally incoherent, and suffered from being made in the 1980s, when the effects were just not nearly what they are now.
Villenueve’s Dune is not funny. It’s resolutely not a Marvel movie, and thank goodness. Not everything has to be that tone, and the Dune book sure isn’t! The movie does a couple pretty lame jokes at the beginning, but then gets down to being what it is: Operatic drama on a galactic scale.
They have also mercifully corrected some of the 1960s tropes that even great sci fi was by-and-large afflicted with back then. The Asian Doctor character is played by an Asian guy now. The protagonist’s mom doesn’t constantly get accused of treason and actually gets to kick a little butt. There are more non-white characters who were white in the novel because of course they were. These are good changes, both morally and artistically.
But these sorts of changes to adaptations aren’t really that interesting anymore. Doing this is the safe play. I’m sure Villenueve truly believes in them, but they also satisfy the stated desires of most of the educated, financially successful people in America. The US political setup systematically overvalues the votes of less educated, less successful people because of geographic quirks (i.e. the educated cluster in cities), but that’s got nothing to do with movies. Culturally, liberals are ascendant.
But there is another cut on the changes that Villenueve made that have nothing to do with this (obviously morally and artistically correct) gesture to the will of the ruling classes. It has to do with our civilization’s simultaneous turns away from Oil and towards Interiority.
III.
Villenueve’s Dune open up with some exposition: Shots of Zendaya as she explains how the Harkonnens oppressed her people and mined the spice from the desert and got rich. The first actual scene, however, is Paul Atreides (the protagonist) talking to his mother. And it’s a long scene. They’re sitting and having breakfast and talking. It’s a scene about a mother and her son.
Villenueve said in interviews that his north star in this adaptation was to keep the focus on those two characters—to stay in their point-of-view as much as possible. He lingers on their scenes together. When Paul is first tested by a mysterious and powerful nun, we see his mother worrying for him, a moment that appeared in neither the novel nor Lynch’s earlier film. When they escape betrayal and end up alone in the desert, their dependence on each other to survive is not perfunctory or rushed.
Meanwhile, the political intrigue has been dialed way back, particularly from the book. There is a famous “dinner sequence” in the middle of the novel, where the Atreides family entertains some of the most powerful people on Arrakis for bon mots and musings about the great powers of the universe. That scene is completely missing from the film.
Most of the specific analogies between Oil and Spice don’t have the force they used to. “The Spice Must Flow” is the number one law of Dune. But I don’t even think it’s political anymore to say that it looks like the oil will have to stop flowing at some point—emergent battery and renewable energy technology will make the extraction and refining of oil financially infeasible.
What we are left with in the film is the Interiority of a man being facing a mad destiny, in relationship to parents who love him but cannot shield him any longer, trying to figure out what is actually inside him and what it might mean.
In zeroing in on that thread of the book and making it the centerpiece of his film, Villenueve has made contact with a main line of the American zeitgeist circa 2021.
The film is not funny because it is not ironic—and that’s a good thing. The search for something beyond the ironic detachment of 60s-style individualism is the central spiritual struggle of the current generation on the American scene.
IV.
Even as the film zeroes in on the Interiority of the central characters, Villenueve’s mastery keeps him disciplined. Meaning: He avoids the worst excesses of Lynch’s adaptation, especially by dropping the voice-over passages. The book is riddled with these—it’s how Herbert writes, and it works fine in a novel—and the temptation to bring them into the film is extreme!
Without giving us access to the minds of characters in that direct way, it’s much, much harder to explain things. It means that the writer has to sit there and come up with ways to dramatize that exposition (put it into a scene that has conflict), or find a way to leave it out and have the story still make sense. That process is difficult; with a story as dense and complicated as Dune, it’s excruciating.
And that’s exactly what Villenueve did. He talked about it specifically in interviews, and the evidence is there on screen. That’s why he made a masterpiece—he was able to move in two directions at once. He made the film consistently personal and intimate, yet moved the story out of the characters’ heads and into a properly theatrical perspective.
It is truly a massive achievement. My pick for film of the year at this point. Bravo.