Dune: Part Two
DISCLAIMER: MILD SPOILERS TO FOLLOW. GO INTO DUNE: PART TWO LIKE A SANDWORM – BLIND AND WITH FURIOUS ENERGY.
All hail Denis Villeneuve, renowned aesthete and king of breathing new life into the sci-fi genre. For after a three year gap he returns to the world originally built by Frank Herbert with Dune: Part Two, a sequel even more grand in scale and thematic heft than its 2021 predecessor. Villeneuve pulls up his sleeves and crafts a piece of work that not only improves on the original, but stands as a staggering achievement in blockbuster filmmaking. While I’m still financially recovering from last year’s Oppenheimer-inspired trip to Melbourne’s IMAX cinema, I’ve broken the unfortunate news to my savings account that another is surely on the horizon.
We pick up where Dune: Part One left off, with Fremen and Co dragging the body of the defeated Jamis up an Arrakis dune. But what’s that? Villains on the horizon with jetpacks and laser guns? The Harkonnens, like Scar and his minions before them, have seized control of the desert and are extracting Spice, the resource everyone wants to get their hot little hands on, in very unsustainable ways. They’re led by Jabba the Hut big boned Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), Baron and mountainous blob of a man with the accessories of Immortan Joe but not the spirit. His beefiest and most appropriately named nephew “Beast” Rabban (a perpetually incensed Dave Bautista) is losing control of the Spice harvesters to the rebellious Fremen, and risks losing his inheritance to his ruthless younger brother Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler).
Walking on the lighter side is our main man Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), who seeks to alter his prophesized fate and fight the good fight with the Fremen. His lady love Chani (Zendaya) does not believe in the messianic narrative spread by the Bene Gesserit; she thinks Paul’s mum Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) is talking shit to benefit House Atreides and to her credit, she’s not technically wrong. Despite their better intentions, House Atreides, as led in the first film by Paul’s dearly departed daddy Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), are colonisers like all outsiders appointed by the Emperor to be responsible for Spice production on Arrakis. Dune: Part Two’s tension lies in Paul’s determination to stray from what he envisions is a path to further bloodshed and war, and that pesky DNA that propels him towards true and inevitable leadership. It’s a large-scale, Shakespearean narrative that, while undoubtedly familiar, is truly the stuff of epics.
Dune: Part Two does what James Cameron’s Avatars do not; it tackles the ethics of a figure from the outer world being a possible messiah to native peoples, and shows the varying perspectives held by those peoples. Some of them - chiefly Javier Bardem’s Stilgar - are all in on the idea that Paul is The One. Villeneuve even brings some levity to the table with their attributing even the most ridiculous occurrences to Paul’s saviour status. But others among the Fremen, namely Chani but also some of the younger, more pragmatic fighters, are disillusioned by the tale and with their own belief. They’ve been waiting hundreds of years for this chosen figure to arrive and faith wanes when you grow up with nothing but coloniser after coloniser. If Paul represents the divine and Chani, the mortal, then their relationship is at odds from the get-go. And while I find the parts of the film dedicated to their romantic storyline less interesting, it is crucial to moving the plot towards its final stretch.
One of the film’s greatest strengths is the separate growth and development of these two characters. I haven’t always been the biggest fan of Timothée Chalamet (excluding his work with Luca Guadagnino and Greta Gerwig) but he really stepped it up in this outing. The Paul of Part Two epitomises the boy to man arc and I could hear it in Chalamet’s voice and see it in his posture. The same is true for Zendaya, whose work has generally lay just outside my periphery as someone ‘too old’ for Euphoria and Spider-man. Getting to spend more time with her character made me understand her talent; she’s got real presence and a face that conveys a lot with little.
Part Two’s other major highlight is the exploration of the Bene Gesserit and their Machiavellian schemes. Where men and women in Fremen culture are equal, high society in the outer worlds seems to lean more into traditional gender roles. The Bene Gesserit use this to their advantage, tapping into their femininity (whether it’s as mother figures or objects of attraction) to manipulate world outcomes from the shadows – and I’m utterly obsessed with it. Apart from Sister Act I never considered convent life an enviable route but Part Two paints the shady sisterhood in a very appealing light. Rebecca Ferguson’s wholehearted descent into Dark Side-coded spiritual fundamentalism (Palpatine, is that you?) in this film gave me life; I think I even shivered a bit at her total command of the Voice and her unapologetic use of it in situations that could have easily been resolved with a ‘please’. Dune is Star Wars without having to feel embarrassed about liking it. And its aesthetic edge is a clear contributor to this.
Integral to Part Two’s superior visual world are director of photography Greig Fraser, production designer Patrice Vermette, and editor Joe Walker. The first film’s iconic dusty oranges and foreign blues are accented by a gorgeous black and white sequence that paints Austin Butler in a similar light to the otherworldly creators in Ridley Scott’s unfairly maligned Prometheus. Costume designer Jacqueline West expands her work on the previous film’s wardrobe most particularly in Jessica’s transformation, with costumes inspired by the Tarot and an amalgamation of Christian and Islamic influences. Legendary mood maker Hans Zimmer returns to add the gravitas required of a world where great toothy worms rule the desert and their poison is a world-opening psychedelic. To quote the kids, “it’s a vibe.”
After two hours and forty-six minutes of sitting in awe I left Dune: Part Two with no real notes to offer. The film does become ever so slightly compressed in its last stretch and the central love story is perhaps not given enough time to feel as believable as it should. But Part Two exceeded my expectations and made me feel like a silly little girl on an adult-sized roller coaster. I absolutely loved it.
Verdict:
☆☆☆☆☆
Dune: Part Two is in cinemas now. It’s bloody good – I really hope you enjoy it.
