REVIEW: DUNE

It's the dearest hope of many a book lover to see their favorite novel adapted onto the big screen with heavy detail, and this appears to be the mindset by which director Denis Villeneuve adapted Frank Herbert's book, Dune. The end result is a film that is somehow stuffed with detail yet lacking in identity.

The movie favors the initiated viewer, one already familiar with the book. This is bad luck for those unfamiliar with the faith. The film is not merciful to those who cannot keep up with the extensive worldbuilding. The film's action and adventure scenes leak in toward the back half of the film, so much of the movie is carried by politics and world mechanics that the film never satisfactorily explains. (It can't be because the movie was in a rush.) I'm grateful the characters were courteous enough to not speak in exposition, but I was also annoyed that everyone seemed to know more about what was going on than I did.

Various plot elements pop into the story like fireworks and disappear just as quickly. What did Paul's mind control voice that he's been working so hard on have to do with anything? Entire characters--top-billed characters, mind you--disappear for nearly an hour before finding their way back into the plot. Maybe the movie's issue is less one of not having time to explain everything and more one of trying to chew on more than the giant sandworms of the desert. (Incidentally, the sandworms were kind of fun.)

I wonder if the novel is similarly meandering with its thematic dialogue. At first the movie sets itself up like a tale of exploitation of the natural world in the vein of Avatar. Then that tension disappears while our main character's parents start having domestic troubles. And all the while Timothee Chalamet is having mysterious dreams about Zendaya. Surely that will see some grand payoff in the film's final minutes, right? Then suddenly you're halfway through the movie and realize that nothing has actually happened.

This straining runtime and unknowable worldbuilding is aggravated by the film's lack of visual variance. Zendaya's blue eyes are the only things that interrupt the film's endless span of gray, black, and dirt. I respect the commitment to a heavy, brooding tone for a blockbuster film, but even Lord of the Rings let us play around in the lush and merry Shire for a spell before throwing us to the battlefront.

In the same fashion, the performances are one-note from start to finish. One-note, not necessarily weak. The actors seem to be throwing everything they have into their performances, but much like the lovingly rendered desert landscape starts to feel monotonous, even Timothee Chalamet's game face loses its charm.

I'm sure many fans of Herbert's novel will be thrilled with this thorough reconstruction. But an adaptation should also aspire to draw in new viewers into reading the book it's born from. For this viewer, this was not a great first exposure.

--The Professor

Comments

REVIEW: Clayface

James Gunn promised early on that with his new DC Universe, not everything would be for everybody, but there would be something for everybody. I have to assume he means he's eventually going to grant us the first proper superhero musical. (No, I still haven't seen "Joker 2.") But until such a time, James Watkins' new take on superheroes and horror with Clayface is a valid offering just the same. Rising actor, Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harris), is on top of the world, securing his first Oscar nomination, when he has a fatal night of passion with the girlfriend of a lord in the criminal underworld of Gotham. Matt is punished by having his lovely Hollywood face carved up irreparably. Matt's golden ticket to the front of the camera is ruined, and his reputation is smeared. Driven to desperation, Matt seeks out a neuroscientist, Caitlyn Corr (Naomie Ackie), investing in an experimental form of therapy that could recover his...

Finding Nemo: The Thing About Film Criticism ...

Film is a mysterious thing. It triggers emotional responses in the audience that are as surprising as they are all-encompassing. As a medium, film is capable of painting stunning vistas that feel like they could only come to life behind the silver screen, but many of the most arresting displays on film arise from scenes that are familiar, perhaps even mundanely so. It’s an artform built on rules and guidelines–young film students are probably familiar with principles like the rule of thirds or the Kuleshov effect–but someone tell me the rule that explains why a line like “We’ll always have Paris,” just levels you. There are parts of the film discussion that cannot be anticipated by a formula or a rulebook, and for that we should be grateful. Arrival (2016) But the thing about film–and especially film criticism–is that film critics are not soothsayers. Their means of divining the artis...

The "Stephen King's IT" Paradox - Can You Ever Go Home Again?

Though I think of myself as putting my heart and soul into this blog, I generally like to keep my offline persona mysterious. This is why I use a pen name and why you’ll never see a picture of my face on this page. But I’ll pull behind the curtain just a little today and share that … I attended my high school reunion not too long ago. I actually ended up attending this reunion twice simply because the first reunion, our “real reunion,” was planned at sort of the last minute and had rather sparse attendance. And so those of us who made it to that resolved to see if we couldn’t pull off something a little more robust, which we did some months later with much more success. And I honestly didn’t mind going twice over. I never actively put any distance between myself and my old pals, but I also never really made any effort to hold onto them after graduating beyond liking their posts on...

An Earnest Defense of Passengers

I've heard a lot of back and forth over what the purpose of film is and what we should ask from it. Film as a social amenity kind of has a dual purpose. It's supposed to give the population common ground and find things that people of varying backgrounds and beliefs can unify around. On the other hand, film also creates this detached simulated reality through which we can explore complex and even testing ideas about the contradictions in human existence. In theory, a film can fulfill both functions, but movies exist in a turbulent landscape. It's very rare for a film to try to walk both lanes, and it's even rarer for a film to be embraced upon entry for attempting to do so. Let me explain by describing the premise of one of my favorite movies, Morten Tyldum's 2016 film, Passengers . A key piece of this film ’s plot revolves around the main character, Jim Preston, a passenger onboard a spaceship, who premat...

How Disney Liberated the Musical Genre

Anytime I’m getting ready for a new musical film, I generally try to put off listening to the soundtrack until after I’ve seen the movie. It’s just my way of ensuring that I experience the narrative in its full context upon its important premiere viewing. Most of the time I’m good about sticking to this, but nowhere is this feat harder than with the arrival of each new Disney musical. I tried really hard with Encanto , but with Lin-Manuel Miranda writing for Disney, what can I say (except "You're Welcome"...) So, why am I talking about Disney musicals? W hen I premiered my Jungle Book essay earlier this year, I decided that going forward I was ready to expand how I talked about Disney. Owing to Disney fans constantly having to justify their fandom, a lot of Disney discourse tends to be purely defensive. Disney fans only ever get to use their platform to try convincing the cool kids that--for the last time!--it's okay for adults without kids to go to...

The Other Woman: Empathy Isn't Easy

Anyone else remember that one time Padme wrecked Phoebe's marriage to Max Medina? Directed by Don Roos, The Other Woman first premiered in Toronto in 2009. At the time, the movie was sporting the title of the book from which it was adapted, Love, and Other Impossible Pursuits . But the film didn’t receive any kind of widespread theatrical release until 2011, when it also sported its new title. We can assume perhaps distributors were more eager to showcase the film after Portman’s Oscar win for Black Swan at the 2011 ceremony . I myself caught the film on Netflix circa 2017, a time I remember as being especially fruitful for discovering underseen and independently financed films on the service (back before most of Netflix's budget went instead to funding such homegrown masterworks as Extraction or Damsel ...). In the tentpole-driven film world that we were already seeing emerge in 2009, an underground Netflix following is typically the highest t...

The Notebook Has No Excuses

The thing about film is … the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. Film tells us, even in a society obsessed with wealth and gain, “Remember, George, no man is a failure who has friends.” Film warns us that the most unnatural evil lies in wait at the Overlook Hotel and peeks out when all the guests leave for the winter–and that the heart of it resides in room 237–knowing we'll trip over ourselves wanting to open that door. Film is what makes us believe that the vessel for the deepest human emotion could be contained in a cartoon clownfish taking his unhatched cartoon son and holding him in his cartoon fin and telling him he will never let anything happen to him. Nights of Cabiria (1957) Even when it tries to plant its feet aggressively in realism, film winds up being an inherently emotional realm. We feel safer to view and express all manners of passions or desires here in the space where the rules of propriety just don’t matter anymore. So a fa...

REVIEW: Wildwood

Travis Knight's Wildwood has already generated above-normal discourse about the merits and application of animation as an artform. "Don't you realize that animation isn't just for KIDS, by Jove!?" (Don't you realize ... lots of us have been saying that for a while now?) This connects to a much larger conversation about the stigma the artform has held, a conversation that has generally placed the onus on animation--and animators--to prove they can be as good as "real films" and "real filmmakers." Animation as a form will need sustained support--from more than just the crowd who waited until now to decide that animated movies could be "good, actually." But Wildwood itself offers other contributions that I imagine will carry the field much further. Oregonian preteen Prue McKeel ignores her parents' instruction to not take her brother, Mac, outside. When a flock of crows descend and carry her brother off into the w...

My Criminal Father Surrogate: Masculinity in A Perfect World

I've been wanting to tackle the subject of "masculinity" in film for quite some time now, but I hadn't quite known how best to do that. There's a certain buzzword, "toxic masculinity," that especially elicits a lot of strong feelings from a lot of different angles. While a post-#MeToo world has exposed some very disturbing truths about the way masculinity has historically performed, I'm not here to roast 50% of the world population. Actually, I really want to talk about a man's capacity for good. Ted Lasso (2020) There’s certainly a lot of discussion to be had for newer media celebrating men for possessing attributes not historically coded as "manly." But what's even more fascinating to me are the attempts to bridge the gap between traditional masculinity and new age expectations--to reframe an older vision of manhood within our modern context. Which brings me to Clint Eastwood’s 1993 film, A Perfect World. ...

The Belle Complex

As Disney fandom increasingly moves toward the mainstream, the discussions and questions that travel around the community become increasingly nuanced and diverse. Is the true color of Aurora's dress blue or pink? Is it more fun to sit in the back or the front on Big Thunder Mountain? Is the company's continued emphasis on producing content for Disney+ negatively impacting not only their output but the landscape for theatrical release as a whole? However, on two things, the fandom is eternally united. First, Gargoyles was a masterpiece in television storytelling and should have experienced a much longer run than it did. Second, Belle's prom dress in the 2017 remake was just abominable. While overwhelmingly successful at the box office, the 2017 adaptation is also a bruise for many in the Disney community. Even right out the gate, the film came under fire for a myriad of factors: the auto-tuned soundtrack, Ewan McGregor's flimsy accent, the distracting plot...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog