I’m here to learn your ways. Following the destruction of the House of Atreides by the House of Harkonnen, Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) daughter of Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) the head of House Corrino secretly journals that Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) may be alive. On Arrakis, Stilgar’s Fremen troops including Paul and his pregnant mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) overcome a Harkonnen patrol. When they arrive at Sietch Tabr some Fremen suspect they are spies, while Stilgar and others see signs of the prophecy that a mother and son from the so-called ‘Outer World will bring prosperity to Arrakis. Stilgar tells Jessica that Sietch Tabr’s Reverend Mother Ramallo (Giusi Merli) is dying and that she must replace her by drinking the Water of Life, a fatal poison for males and the untrained. Jessica’s body transmutes the poison, surviving and inheriting the memories of every female ancestor in her lineage. The liquid also accelerates the cognitive development of her unborn daughter Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy) allowing Jessica to communicate with her telepathically. Jessica and Alia agree to focus on convincing the skeptical northern Fremen of the prophecy. Jessica urges Paul also to drink the Water of Life and become the Kwisatz Haderach [‘the shortening of the way’ in the Kabbalah]. The young and rebellious Fremen warrior Chani (Zendaya) and her friend Shishakli (Souhelia Yacoub) believe that the prophecy was fabricated to manipulate and subjugate the Fremen but she begins to respect Paul after he declares that he only intends to fight alongside the Fremen not to rule them. Paul and Chani fall in love as Paul embraces the Fremen ways: learning their language, participating in rites such as riding a sandworm, becoming a Fedaykin fighter and helping raid Harkonnen spice operations. Paul adopts the Fremen names Usul and Muad’Dib as he his likened to a kangaroo mouse. Due to the devastating spice raids, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Starsgard) head of House of Harkonnen and former stewart of Arrakis and enemy to the House of Atreides replaces his nephew Glossu Rabban Harkonnen aka Rabban (Dave Bautista) as Arrakis’s ruler with his psychotic younger nephew and heir apparent Rabban’s younger brother Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). Lady Margot Fenring (Lea Seydoux), a Bene Gesserit is sent to evaluate Feyd-Rautha as a prospective Kwisatz Haderach and to seduce him to secure his genetic lineage: she is duly impregnated. Jessica travels south to unite with Fremen fundamentalists who believe in the prophecy of the Mahdi. Paul stays north, fearful that his visions of a holy war will come to pass if he travels south as a messiah. He reunites with Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) the former military leader of House Atreides and Paul’s mentor who leads him to the hidden atomic stockpile of House Atreides. Paul was not able to foresee Feyd-Rautha’s attack on the northern Fremen, including Sietch Tabr, forcing Paul and the survivors to head south. Shishakli remains behind and is killed by Feyd-Rautha. Arriving south, Paul drinks the Water of Life and falls into a coma. Chani is angered by this but is forced by Jessica to revive him by mixing her tears with the liquid. Paul attains a clearer vision of the past, present, and future, seeing an adult Alia on a water-filled Arrakis and that Jessica is the Baron’s daughter, making Paul both an Atreides and a Harkonnen. Chani attempts to warn the southern Fremen that the prophecy will be used to enslave them, but Gurney quiets her down. Paul galvanizes the fundamentalists by showing that he can read their innermost thoughts. He declares himself the Lisan al Gaib and sends a challenge to Emperor Shaddam. Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother and the Emperor’s Truthsayer Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) tells Irulan that she advised the Emperor to annihilate House Atreides because they had grown too defiant. Shaddam arrives on Arrakis with Irulan, Mohiam, and his Sarduakar troops. As he meets the Harkonnens, the Fremen launch a massive military strike using atomics and sandworms … He’s a sociopath, highly intelligent, in love with pain but sexually vulnerable. And so the behemoth that is the second half of director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci fi Dune carves its path into global consciousness with a positively Shakespearean scenario unfolding. Viewed through the prism of one of Herbert’s great influences, Lawrence of Arabia, the fey, androgynous and rather reluctant protagonist who rallies the rebels against the powerful desert overlords makes more sense of Chalamet’s casting, a callow youth not quite ready for his hero’s journey who says to Zendaya’s Chani, I want to be your equal. In the 1960s the interest in ecology and the world’s resources together with a question about the future of Islam can clearly be mapped onto today’s geopolitical catastrophes with Paul’s Messianic position as Mahdi key to the resumption of the Fremen fundamentalism and the miracles of Christianity given a wholesale workout. Essentially the Abrahamic religions intersect in battle and beliefs, the role of the desert prophet a common trope. The visual debt to Lawrence is clear in certain visual quotes but it’s mitigated by the murky palette of greige created by cinematographer Greig Fraser and the tendency to blur Chalamet’s slight figure against the rippling sands: not a visual choice Lean would ever have made when clarity and precision were key to the earlier film’s expressive beauty. Sometimes this looks like it’s shot through Paul’s dusty goggles and his lusciously long lashes. The extraordinary Colosseum/Nazi-styled gladiatorial fight in an infrared rendition of Harkonnen is a glorious and daring exception, a clear statement about a world drained of colour. And, not to put too fine a point on the general tendency of the film, when we step away from the major world building sequences, there are too many close ups – a problem afflicting many films at the present time. This can’t be a budgetary choice so must be an aesthetic one. The storytelling in the streamlined screenplay by Villeneuve & Jon Spaihts (with early work by Eric Roth) is much more efficient here than in the first part: that film’s setting up of the spice-mining story and the different planets’ ecological concerns permits a slicker narrative to unfold here, the 2 hour 46 minutes running time notwithstanding with a religious and familial fight resulting in war. Every beat is hit at the right time. Happily there are a couple of clunky moments which might make you giggle at presumably unintentional reminders of Life of Brian (sometimes this prophet doth protesteth too much) while the ladies say twice (repetition being a screenwriting trick) that the religious prophecy is designed to distract, a common Marxian precept (something about the spice of the people, natch). The major jaw-dropping story twist at 120 minutes is of the Star Wars variety and very pleasurable it is too, turning the last 45 minutes into an astonishing conflict of character, wits and strength. Every hero requires a vicious enemy and Butler makes for a mesmerisingly sadistic villain. Caveats aside, this is mostly masterful filmmaking with engaging characters, terrific timing and excellent structure, which creates a narrative matrix of totally absorbing events and developments with an open-ended conclusion in which we can see Paul evolving into an anti-hero while the women take charge. This psychedelic sci fi encompassing faith, friendship, fascism, imperialism, breeding programmes and destiny, is hitting theatres when the concerns of the recent past are replaying out in real time. Part three (Dune Messiah, which is set 12 years following the aftermath of the war) is in the works but according to Villeneuve, he is not rushing it. More’s the pity! I am not the messiah
mondomovies 