Dune: Part Two
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This week is my spring break, which means I’m trying to rest, see family, and get caught up on some of the things I’ve wanted to write about for months. And I’m glad to say I started my break off right with a long-anticipated viewing of Dune: Part Two.
When the first part of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation came out two and a half years ago I was glad to admit to being apathetic about seeing it—I had read the book and enjoyed it but wasn’t blown away by it—because that made my surprise and excitement about how excellent the film was all the greater. The first film’s achievement was to take what was best of the sprawling, intricate, often unwieldy novel, keep its complexity while making it comprehensible in a visual medium, and greatly improve the story’s pacing. Dune: Part Two continues in much the same way.
The film picks up more or less where the first Dune left off, with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) bereft, Paul’s father the Duke having been murdered in a carefully orchestrated coup by the family’s greatest rivals, the Harkonnen clan. Paul and Jessica now live at the sufferance of a tribe of desert Fremen led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem). Jessica, pregnant with her dead husband’s second child, must protect herself, her unborn baby, and Paul. Paul simply seeks revenge. To get it, he must not only learn how to live and fight among the Fremen but work his way into a position of leadership among them.
This story arc makes up most of the first hour of the film, with Paul repeatedly tested and slowly rising in the esteem and even worship of the Fremen—some of whom, including Stilgar, believe he is a long-prophesied Mahdi or messiah—and with the Fremen carrying out ever more aggressive attacks on the Harkonnen’s spice harvesting operations in the desert. All of this is thrilling and brilliantly executed, particularly a sequence in which Paul has to pass his final test, one that is administered not by his Fremen mentor but by the sandworms. Paul also falls in love with the Fremen girl Chani (Zendaya), a doubter who sees prophecies of the Mahdi as a cynical ploy either to enslave the credulous or to keep them waiting, biding their time under the status quo. Jessica, as a member of the female cult of the Bene Gesserit, is part of the problem as far as Chani is concerned.
Meanwhile, the Harkonnens, led by the evil and physically repulsive Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), thinking that they have wiped out Paul’s family, have escalated their efforts to destroy the Fremen and reconsolidate control over the desert and the harvesting of spice. The film begins with a glimpse of their brutal and systematic slaughter of the Fremen, and so it comes as an unpleasant surprise that there are Harkonnens out there who are more evil yet—namely Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), a nephew whom the Baron brings in to replace his thick-witted and ineffective older brother Rabban (Dave Bautista). Where the Baron uses brutality and conniving to get what he wants, Feyd-Rautha revels in causing pain and destruction.
Lurking yet further in the background, the Emperor (Christopher Walken), his daughter Irulan (Florence Pugh), and his personal Bene Gesserit advisor (Charlotte Rampling) quietly await the outcome of the Harkonnens’ efforts. The Emperor weighs his options, opining to Irulan with Machiavellian candor, deciding whether and how to respond to each fresh bit of news.
And then there are Paul’s dreams and visions of future famine, mass starvation, and the slaughter of billions, a meeting of the southern Fremen that is fraught with disagreement, the psychedelic poison used to promote Jessica to the rank of Reverend Mother, her unborn baby’s telepathy, Paul’s seeming death and resurrection, and more and more and more.
It’s a lot, and, as in the first film, it is to Dune: Part Two’s great credit that all of this plays out smoothly and understandably—especially as it ventures into some of the book’s weirder territory—building from small beginnings in the desert to a climactic final battle on a massive scale.
One artistic choice that certainly helps is the decision to do little in the way of explaining what happened in the previous film. Notice how, in my summary, I didn’t explain what spice was, or the planet Arrakis, why anyone is fighting for control of both, what a sandworm is, and how any of these things are related to each other? Dune: Part Two doesn’t, either. Rather than get bogged down in “as you know” scenes meant to get a forgetful audience caught up, the film starts in medias res and keeps on moving. People who haven’t seen the first part probably won’t know what’s going on, but this also means that thanks to the excellent pacing and escalating action and dramatic tension in each, Dune and Dune: Part Two work together as one giant film. Back-to-back viewings like those nine-hour Lord of the Rings marathons are bound to become a custom among fans.
Sets, costume design, cinematography, sound, music, and special effects—all are excellent, with expert care and craftsmanship in every detail. As much as I love to examine the technical aspects of a good film, I don’t actually have much to say here. The quality of the filmmaking is impeccable. Like the first movie, Dune: Part Two creates a totally absorbing world for its story to play out in and presents it using the medium of film to its fullest potential.
The performances are mostly good as well, especially among the supporting cast. Javier Bardem as Stilgar and Josh Brolin as Paul’s old trainer and mentor Gurney Halleck stand out especially well as two men who both believe utterly in Paul, albeit in different ways and for dramatically different reasons. Austin Butler makes a chilling entrance as Feyd-Rautha and only becomes more threatening and evil as the film progresses.
As for the leads, I actually liked Timothée Chalamet less in this film than in the first one. I believed his Paul as a callow youth with plenty left to learn, but, once adopted by the Fremen and fully integrated as a fighter, I found him hard to accept as a warlord on the rise. Chalamet conveys Paul’s charisma and leadership mostly by yelling, which is effective for showing how the power Paul assumes in pursuit of revenge slowly corrupts him but less for showing why the Fremen would risk their lives to support him, Mahdi or not. He’s still effective as Paul, but is somewhat outdone by the story and characters surrounding him. Rebecca Ferguson, on the other hand, is still excellent as Lady Jessica. Like Paul, she goes into the desert at the end of the first film a weak and vulnerable refugee and emerges from it at the end of this one a figure of terrifying power, but thanks to Ferguson this transformation is completely convincing.
If I have any complaint whatsoever about the movie, it’s in a handful of supporting roles. Zendaya’s Chani starts off charming, her subtle flirtation and romance with Paul warm and believable, but once Paul embarks on his mission to bring down the Harkonnens and the Emperor she mostly seethes, glowers, and storms out of rooms, and she never completely overcomes the stilted delivery I noted in the first movie. Likewise, Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan is both underwritten and underperformed, Pugh’s flat affect and monotone speech contrasting badly with older costars like Christopher Walken and Charlotte Rampling, who convey much with great subtlety. But these are small things in a big movie, and if Villeneuve gets his way and makes a third and final Dune film, perhaps we’ll get more, and better, from both characters.
Dune: Part Two is an excellent sequel to one of the best sci-fi adventure films ever made, not only continuing but building on what the first film accomplished. It’s brilliantly made and thoroughly exciting—the final attack on the Emperor’s base by an army of Fremen riding sandworms is one of the gnarliest things I’ve seen in years—and a trip to the movies that was well worth the wait.
