Reviews of Movies I Haven't Seen Yet: DUNE

Beautiful Yet Oddly Un-Erotic Desert Epic

DUNE is director Denis Villeneuve’s epic, sprawling adaptation of Frank Herbert’s weighty sci-fi tome that electrified the 1960s with its graphic descriptions of human-worm sexual intercourse. Villeneuve has downplayed the bestiality angle, however, and focused more on the sand.

There is a lot of sand in DUNE, all of it computer-generated so as not to trigger star Zendaya’s sand allergy. The former KC Undercover star plays Chani, a magical elf who lives in the desert and is the subject of the romantic advances of Paul, a nerdy office worker who decides he needs a change.

Paul is played by Timothee Chalamet, reprising his role from Call Me By Your Name. In depicting the inner struggle of a man torn between his duty to his family and his thirst for adventure, Chalamet runs through more than three facial expressions, but he truly shines in the action scenes: his acrobatic leaps and flips are something to behold, especially as his character is confined to a wheelchair.

In a way, the desert is the main character in DUNE, and as such it gets most of the best lines. The witty script, by Diablo Cody, contains many crackling zingers recalling the screwball comedies of the 1930s, but that doesn’t mean it’s all fun and games. Indeed, the film’s most powerful moments take place in the imperial palace, when Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) is forced to make the heart-wrenching decision of whether to withdraw life support from his grandfather (Stellan Skarsgard). Leto must decide whether to follow the advice of his sassy maid Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) or his best friend, the giant sandworm Albert (Paul Giamatti). As discussed above, the sex scenes of the novel are mostly excised, but there is still considerable heat in the encounters between Jessica and Albert, when they finally succumb to passion.

Herbert’s novel famously dealt with serious themes of ecology, and Villeneuve’s adaptation is faithful to this, as Paul is shown on several occasions recycling. The Fremen people, who live on the planet of Dune, or “Art Alexakis” as they call it, are the heroes of the piece, while the lazy Harkonnens, who live in enormous baths in space, are destructive wastrels who use single-use plastic.

In the end, Villeneuve has crafted an aesthetically gorgeous sci-fi saga that is only let down by its ending, which lifts heavily from both Planet of the Apes and Seinfeld. It’s to be hoped the sequel, Dune 2: Cheeseburger Fever, gives a little more substance to Herbert’s world.

Special mention must be made of the performance of Jason Momoa, who as the stuffy butler Duncan Idaho, provides just the right mix of snobbery and sarcasm.