I saw David Lynch’s Dune as a very young child. My dad came home with it from Albertsons (we didn’t have Blockbuster in my small town) and proceeded to make popcorn before sitting down and watching it with me and my mom. Two hours later, I don’t think they made much more sense of it than I did, and it was never spoken of again. At least not by them. It spurned a curiosity in me to seek out the book which, paired with Star Wars, kicked off a lifelong love of all things Sci-Fi and film. Flash forward nearly 40 years, and I was ecstatic to finally be walking into a remake helmed by Denis Villeneuve who has proven himself to be this generation’s master of science fiction. I left not just completely satisfied, but jaw agape at the masterpiece I had just witnessed.
Spice – the most important resource in the galaxy. Something so rare that it can only be found on the desert planet Arrakis and so valuable that human life is but a trifle next to it. When Emperor Shaddam IV instructs Leo Atreides (Oscar Isaac) to rule over Arrakis, he has but no choice to leave his ocean homeworld and take young son Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and concubine Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) to the god-forsaken world and mine the spice that the empire dearly needs. But nothing is as it seems as the Emperor has their own agenda against House Atreides which soon sees them torn apart leaving Paul and Lady Jessica on the run through an uninhabitable desert with agents of the ruthless House Harkonnen on their tail, ravaging sandworms beneath them, and the vicious and nomadic Fremen intent on keeping interlopers out of their domain.
Studio reps always want our thoughts as we leave a screening, and it is very rare that I struggle with coming up with something to say. For the most part, it’s easy to sum up an opinion during and after a movie, but Dune truly did leave me speechless. To say that it is epic is truly an understatement as so much is packed into the two-and-a-half-hour runtime that it almost leaves you reeling after experiencing it. Days later, and I’m continually mulling over in my head everything that happened and was shown to me, and I just keep coming back to the fact that I want to go see it again and again.
All of Villeneuve’s past films have been spectacular, but they pale in comparison to this. It’s like he took every trick and lesson he learned from his previous work, distilled them down to the pure essence of filmmaking, and then applied it to this movie. Everything just works. The actors are perfectly cast, the effects are fantastic, the cinematography is mind-blowing, and every piece of the puzzle comes together to form a beautiful picture. Even with its long run time, nothing seems wasted or out of place as it never drags nor seems like it outstays its welcome. One could argue that there is a slight taste of the multiple endings Lord of the Rings had towards its finale, but even then it wasn’t a distraction as it just meant you get to spend a little more time in this magical world.
Dune is not only the best movie of the year but also one of the best of the last 10. It defies the norm and builds a new foundation that will be used for science fiction and the film industry as a whole going forward. Villeneuve took the unpolished gem of the book (unarguably hugely influential just dated by modern standards) and cut and purified it until it became a flawless diamond almost too fiery to behold. This is an experience that only comes along a few times in a generation, and I’m extremely lucky that it happened in mine.