Part Two’ review: Denis Villeneuve nails the landing on this adaptation : NPR

Three years have passed since Denis Villeneuve put into practice his double passion as a director (impressive views, whispered dialogues) Frank Herbert’s beloved 1965 science fiction/spicy opera novel. Now that, with Dune: Part TwoHe has accomplished the takedown with such assurance and visual splendor, and enriched many of the novel’s fine characterizations in the process, that it is worth examining why his approach worked then and works now.

After all, many before him had attempted to distill the inner story of that thick book about disparate interests vying for galactic control using tools like war, eugenics, mind control, and propaganda. What was so exhilarating about Villeneuve’s 2021 film, aside from its many, many fascinating set-pieces, was his decision to leave all those conspiring families and their devious schemes-within-schemes simply hanging around in the background.

He had one main job to do before resorting to such things, which was to get audiences interested in his brooding hero, whose cheekbones were so sharp they could cut Pecorino and whose black hair couldn’t seem to stop itself from pouncing Byronically. That would be young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), who with his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) found themselves stranded on the desert planet of Arrakis after his father was murdered by a treacherous rival family.

Colors of the world

Fortunately, Arrakis was home to an indigenous population called the Fremen who had adapted to living in the desert. They took in Paul and his mother, a strange decision that becomes less strange once you realize that one of those aforementioned dark galactic groups had long ago planted prophecies among the Fremen about a savior who would come from another planet and the He would lead an uprising that would turn Arrakis into a paradise.

The fact that said savior spoke and behaved very much like Paul? Yes, that helped.

Villeneuve knew that behind all the book’s complicated business about trading letters and ancient mystical sects and the intricacies of space navigation, there was a very clear and simple narrative of the Chosen One, complete with a reluctant hero, the rejection of the call: the whole Joseph Campbell farce, actually. So that’s what he set out to tell, although he took the time to dress it up with epic battles and endless horizons and big cheekbones and Charlotte Rampling sniping at everyone while she paraded around in a veil.

Spice up your life

Dune ended when Paul and Jessica encountered a Fremen tribe and their leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem). The second part picks up where it left off: Paul meets a particular Fremen warrior named Chani (Zendaya), whom he had previously glimpsed only through prophetic dreams.

The first movie tackled the hard work of placing game pieces on the board, so The second part He quickly starts hitting them against each other. All those faction conflicts that developed throughout the first film finally come to a head.

There are the evil Harkonnens, led by a human baron, played by Stellan Skarsgård and his fat suit. (The Harkonnens are bald and wear black; their crowd scenes look like a Palm Springs leather bar at happy hour.)

The baron pits his two nephews, the wild Rabban (Dave Bautista) and the sinister Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), against each other. Bautista fumes, Butler slides in, and while doing so, pulls off an impressive Skarsgård impression, proving: 1. Disdainful, snarling line readings run in Harkonnen’s genes, and 2. His Elvis was no fluke, the only talented imitator of this child.

Against the Harkonnen rise the Fremen, noticeably and gratifyingly less monolithic here than in the book. Both Bardem and Zendaya get a lot more screen time this time around, and each makes the most of it, in very different ways. Stilgar is a true believer in Paul and his prophecy, but Bardem does not make him gullible or naïve; Instead, he finds dry wit in the script’s few jokes and proceeds to dismiss them like the professional that he is.

Zendaya’s tough, independent Chani belongs to a younger generation of Fremen who see the prophecies about Paul for what they are: a clever marketing strategy, executed over hundreds of years through selective breeding. (Zendaya brings a grounded, searching ambivalence to her portrayal, making the Chani of the original novel seem like a lovestruck, one-note girl by comparison.)

And finally there is the emperor, Shaddam IV, played by Christopher Walken with what, to him, is restraint. Her daughter Irulan (Florence Pugh) wasn’t in the first film, but she has a few scenes here to helpfully chronicle the film’s many shifts in gear, a role the character (her diary, at least) also plays in the book. . In those fleeting glimpses we get of her, Pugh manages to imbue Irulan with enough intelligence and empathy to justify her presence in this film and make you want to see more of her in the future.

Which is a sneaky way of telling you that the movie only concludes the story that the first one started. Here’s why that’s not a bad thing.

Hit it to the left

nothing about Dune either Dune: Part Two it feels padded or unnecessary. (Indeed, Herbert purists will complain about the complete elidence of entire plots, and of one fan-favorite character, in particular.) Villeneuve carefully planted seeds in Part One that not only bear fruit in The second partbut that fundamentally changes the story being told in the process.

If you hadn’t read the book, you might have left Part One thinking that his story was just another narrative of the Chosen One (which it was), and yet another narrative of the White Savior (which it wasn’t exactly): After all, as soon as Paul arrives on Arrakis, some Fremen start whispering that He is the prophesied leader who will lead them to victory.

Villeneuve’s decision to put Paul in the foreground as he did in the first film easily fed into that reading. But in The second part, the director makes explicit what he had previously kept implicit: several galactic puppeteers emerge from the shadows and their agendas are resolved. This makes Paul’s relationship with the Fremen more complicated: will she be their savior or will she condemn them to hell? Is he being used by others or is he using them? Is he in control or not?

Shake it to the right

Throughout the film, Villeneuve continues to add texture to the stories and relationships that Herbert was content to keep fluid or only introduce in later books. As a result, the film’s conclusion seems much less conclusive than that of the novel.

But is that so bad, really? Especially if it means we could get Dune: Messiah: Part One In a few years, with Villeneuve at the helm?

In the hands of Villeneuve, a science fiction epic like Dune: Part Two It can deliver what’s expected (high stakes, big conflicts, big explosions) but it can do it in a clear, rigorously consistent visual language that serves the story. Even in the most important battle scenes, his camera keeps us focused on what matters most: the human cost of it all. It closes on the eyes, the hands, the movement of the bodies. A wide shot showing Harkonnen’s troops in black war suits crawling over a sandy outcrop gets its visual and thematic echo later, in close-up, as black ants swarm over a human body.

Villaneuve finds moments like that and creates many others that the novel didn’t even bother to hint at, which together serve to deepen, humanize, and ultimately enhance both Paul Atreides’ own story (as he did in Dune) and everything that will be unleashed (in Dune: Part Two …and, hopefully, in what’s to come).