‘Dune: Part 2’
Manager: Denis Villeneuve
Artists: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Javier Bardem
Year: 2024
Premiere: 1/3/24
★★★
The second part of Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ begins in the desert dunes, the nerve center of the planet Arrakis. The action picks up where the first film ended and ends with a shot of the Fremen warrior Chani, played by Zendaya, at the open door of the third film. Villeneuve has achieved what David Lynch could not, and the entire huge and mythological universe that Frank Herbert describes in his novels can be deployed in a more logical and understandable way with three or more films.
Villeneuve can draw every possible comparison between the Fremen clans and the holy mothers, with their religious power and fanaticism, whatever their signs, despite the desert sands and clothes that might remind us of Muslim cultures. ‘Dune: Part 2’ explores beliefs about leaders, prophecies and messiahs – in short, the cult of personalityand in this the evolution of the story’s main character, the young Paul Atreides, and the performance of Stilgar, one of the Fremen leaders, a character obsessed with all kinds of beliefs, are quite clear. All artists iterate and improve. There’s less naivety in Timothée Chalamet as Paul and more fanaticism in Javier Bardem as Stilgar..
Other relevant figures who did not yet have a place in the first film, such as the Emperor and his daughter Princess Irulan, enter the scene and the full brunt of the political manipulations to seize power or simply maintain it falls on them. Villeneuve manages to balance a multitude of small situations, relying on one basic plot and diverse characters.Although the sandworms always win the game. The unique creatures’ appearance, their earth-coloured naive movements and their toothed mouths, as if they were wild horses or domesticated like a Moby Dick whale, are always a plus. This happened in Lynch’s 1984 remake, Villeneuve’s first ‘Dune’ and this second film.
If these planets – Pink Floyd and Magma were mentioned, among other lysergic and ‘prog rock’ bands – Villeneuve contrasts well the soils of Arrakis, a mixture of sand and spice, with those of the Harkonnen clan, a mixture of dark and putrid liquids.S. Goes for a certain style, framing the entire duel as a Roman stadium analogy between three Fremen prisoners and clan favorite Feyd Rauth, played by Butler, Austin’s Elvis, as a kind of black-and-white ballet. The Harkonnen habitat is then marked by the appearance of a black sun.
If ‘Dune’ were to be divided into three acts, three films, the first of the films would present us with a naive Paul, the second would dramatically evolve into a messianic and vengeful character located between two poles. The perfect ambivalent figure of the story, presented by Chani and given to him by his mother, Lady Jessica – and the third would catapult him into the power he perhaps never desired but the Arrakis story demanded of him. All are displayed with a certain measure and panache; This doesn’t deny the film’s massive production apparatus without turning into its maximum appeal.