Dirtball

 

Dune

Dune

Dune

starring Rebecca Ferguson, Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgard, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin, Charlotte Rampling, Dave Bautista, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, David Dastmalchian, Babs Olusanmokun and Javier Bardem

directed by Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Sicario, Arrival)

A couple of weeks ago I let my adult male children talk me into going to see the latest James Bond, No Time to Die, in a movie theater. We're all vaccinated and have been for a while. Theaters themselves are indoors but chronically and mercifully under-attended, so even without a plan for social distancing, they end up being distanced by the numerical default coincidence of popular indifference. They're safe the way the planned Bill Cosby comedy tour would have been safe. I mean just in terms of COVID. And in literally no other way.

The risk seemed pretty minimal, but my main resistance was that I've been well over James Bond for a while. Sure, Skyfall was decent and the initial rush of Casino Royale was a nice reinvention to go along with the start of the Daniel Craig regime, but the overall feel of them have been dour and dark, with producers and writers mistaking depth of character for what came across as just James Bond being in a decade-long shit mood. Tamp down the misogyny and silliness, fine, but we already have a lost, grumpy spy franchise in the Jason Bourne series. At least in that one we got that time he killed a guy with a rolled-up magazine. In this one James Bond has a silver Aston Martin with machine guns in the headlights. It all comes off feeling like the original artist doing covers of his own songs. Novel I guess, but ultimately unnecessary.

I'll redirect you to the top of this post and note that this is not a review of No Time to Die. What I was getting to is I was way more excited to go to the theater to see Dune this past weekend. The risk was the same as was the expectation for low attendance, maybe even moreso since it was simultaneously released on HBO Max, a streaming service I both pay for and have immediate access to. But why do that when I can pay $19 per ticket to see it in IMAX, sporadically surrounded by possibly pestilent strangers?

So I did that, but in retrospect, I can't really tell you where my excitement was rooted. I have at least seen the 1984 David Lynch version, so I knew the broad story beats. I haven't gotten around to read the book nor had I seen the 2000 TV miniseries version with William Hurt, but still, it was unlikely to surprise me. That's not a dealbreaker, though. I went in to Lord of the Rings after several readings of what is probably the most important developmental text of my early adolescence* and I left that relieved and thrilled. I have evidence that I am open to being surprised and awed by filmmaking and acting in a story I'm well and thoroughly spoiled on. I almost said "intellectual property" instead of story, but then I remembered I want to get out of this blog post still liking myself.

IMAX was a good choice because this film is meant to be eye-stretching, expansive, overwhelming. There are no buildings where you can see the ceilings in the interior shots. No background is shown that isn't a whole-ass horizon. Why show some hills when you can show the curvature of a planet?

Everyone in it is very pretty and very, very clean, even the supposed grubby sand folk. They interact in cheek-boney close-up, which I suppose is the reason they feel the need to whisper all the dang time. I think I lost a full 30% of the dialogue to the blurring rasp of stage sotto voce, a lot of which included a bunch of details of space-hooey with all the attendant made-up words. If I didn't come in knowing what a kwisatz haderach was already, I am not confident I would have walked out with that information.

As a result, everything feels... distant. Literally in most cases, with the crowd-swallowing grandeur of the sets. The acting is tuned to be moody and doubting, which is effective in conveying the uncertainty of portentous events, but when the actual events are so few and far between, it all feels a lot more of a battening of hatches before a storm that never bothers to arrive.

This is not to say the acting was bad. Dave Bautista is in it, sure, but everyone else was notably notable, if perfunctory in what they were asked to do (they had a whole Thanos in Josh Brolin and he had like three completely forgettable lines). Even the Chalamet boy was good, though frustratingly enigmatic, zen bordering on sleepy. The only time it really jumped to life was with a few scenes centering on Rebecca Ferguson's Lady Jessica, which I'm happy to say was way, way more than I thought there would be. She's the star of the piece and arguably the only person in the whole thing with a sense of the whole picture of what is actually happening to anyone.

Friends, family, people I genuinely respect and trust were pleased, even awed by the film as an achievement. And that part of it I get. It's expertly conceived of and shot by a whole team of people at the top of their respective game. If you like movies, get it in your head, if for no other reason than as a point of reference and conversation. In the end, it lacks the narrative balls to include all the weird, weird shit, or even make up some of their own, like the David Lynch version. Lord of the Rings could have pared itself way back too, but those people had the courage of their convictions to give us a walking, talking tree. Character is great, but sometimes you also need character.

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*If you read tragedy in that, I can't immediately tell you you're off base.