Dune (Denis Villeneuve, 2021) (Patreon)

I will freely admit that I am not the target audience for Dune. It's not just that I'm not a genre guy, although that tends to be true. I'm only really interested when the conventions are subverted or at least seriously tweaked, and that's not the case here. But more significantly, I have an aversion to this kind of world vs. world space-opera business. I thought about this a lot while watching Dune, since I wasn't particularly interested in its stolid, retro-futuristic version of sword-and-sandal. And I think I figured out my problem.

There are far too many popular images of the future of humanity as an almost inevitable descent into tribalism. Not only does this collapse our understanding of history into a meaningless mishmash of feudalism, the Industrial Era, and the Crusades. It also suggests that conservatives' darkest impressions of human nature are correct: that people are naturally brutal, selfish, and driven by distrust of the Other, whoever that may be. Civilization is fragile at best, and is most likely doomed to collapse. 

I haven't read Frank Herbert, but it's clear that he isn't a totalitarian like Robert Heinlein. If anything, he's just channeling this set of received ideas about human beings' primal impulses. This thinking never goes away, but it's certainly gotten a boost in the Internet age, where racism and (especially) Islamophobia can metastasize into an entire pseudo-philosophy of anti-modernity. And while I think that Dune is certainly open to liberal or progressive readings -- fat, rapacious Harkkonen capitalists colonizing the indigenous, desert-darkened Fremen, whose folkways suggest harmony with the land -- I strongly suspect that the form itself mitigates any left-leaning intent the film's makers (probably) harbor in their hearts.

In other words, Dune is a smash hit because it speaks a particular kind of cultural and cinematic lingua franca regarding the inevitability of fascism. And to be sure, the visual language of Dune is cribbed from the usual suspects: Leni Riefenstahl, Albert Speer, the Brutalist architects and the sculptural monumentalists. I'm hardly the biggest Star Wars guy, but while watching this film I sincerely missed George Lucas's artistry, because for him it was a strategic decision to depict the Empire using fascist space. By contrast, Villeneuve just sees these visuals as part and parcel of the outer-space blockbuster genre -- "what these films do."

This isn't to suggest that Villeneuve is himself devoid of artistry. He's a smart, talented fellow and you can see that he brings his own tendencies to Dune. There's a frequent dip into abstraction that accompanies the movements through Arrakis, the shifting sand and digital lens flares offering nods (intentional or not) to Nathaniel Dorsky and especially Jordan Belson. And the director's deep ambivalence about screen violence -- seen in films as radically different as Sicario and Polytechnique -- is also in evidence here. Most of the warfare and swordplay takes place in near-total darkness, as though the film were reluctant to even witness these acts, much less glorify them.

And I guess that Timothée Chalamet gives good waif. His Paul Atreides is essentially a restless cipher, all the better for natives, outworlders, and viewers to project their messianic fantasies onto him. Then again, Dune stacks the deck in his favor, since he's the only character without a sand-encrusted beard, just as Chani (Zendaya) is the sole representative of the Fremen to look like she just stepped off a runway in Milan. And do I really need to point out that Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) is a dead ringer for Col. Kurtz? In Dune world, only contemporary beauty can slay the corpulent beasts.

Finally, sandworms. You hate 'em, right? I hate them myself.