Tropic Sprockets / Dune

By Ian Brockway

“Dune” is here. As a sprawling hallucinogenic novel by Frank Herbert, the story presents material that was nearly impossible to film which proved vexing for the likes of Jodorowsky and David Lynch. Lynch’s effort from 1984, is now a cult film. Jodorowsky’s version was beset with insurmountable challenges and never got produced.

In that version, Salvador Dalí was set to play the Emperor. One salivates at the sheer outrageousness.
Now it is 2021 and the epic is handled by Denis Villeneuve. The director has a good grasp of the tone of the material. The mood is somewhat dispassionate and reserved but not as much as David Lynch’s treatment. Here, huge expanses of desert sands are repeated multiple times: an otherworldly chapter of “The Treasure of Sierra Madre.” Huge shark-like machines eat swathes of ochre in ear-splitting bangs. Planets are in crisis and tribes are at war. Earth is no longer, burnt to a crisp.

Planet Arrakis appears paramount. Young Paul (Timothy Chalamee) receives messages from dreams and he is in torment. He does not want to be the leader of the House Antreides with his father (Oscar Isaac). Because of his visions, Paul empathizes with Fremen, the Indigenous people of Dune who have neon blue eyes.

This film has a more organic and earthy feeling than Lynch’s phantasmagoria from 1984. There are no “weirding boxes” (sound guns that pulverize cement). Gone are the cats that produce milk with huge rats. Absent too are Harkonnen’s horridly festering boils. Paul for the most part wants to do the right thing.
The Fremen are cast aside and dismissed though they have many old ways of seeing things, numinous and unique.

This is a futuristic coming of age story. Actor Charlotte Rampling is first rate as a gothic and scary Reverend Mother with a frightening black box. Her performance steals the show. While the pace is lethargic with infinite repetitions of sand-gobbling machines and guttural voices, the film is visually masterful with echoes of spacial poetry reminiscent of “Lawrence of Arabia.” The cinematography by Grieg Fraser is wondrous and it is the core of this film.

Take this trip with Villeneuve and be sure to check out David Lynch’s interpretation as a bizarre counter. It will add to your own Arrakisian odyssey.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com

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