I’ve been defending Dune: Part One for some time, arguing that it did function as a complete movie, that it wasn’t just a world-building set-up. Except it was.
Dune: Part Two reduces its predecessor to a starter—no—a breadbasket. A measly, unsuspicious breadbasket. If you’ve never eaten food before, slicing a chunk out of a freshly baked loaf before soaking it in butter is something else. Just wait for the main course.
This is insane. Absolutely insane. It’s hard, maybe impossible, to critically dissect after one viewing— my brain stuck in some malfunction of biological programming from bathing in its sensory overload. The sheer overwhelm may drown you. I did miss the stability and measuredness of Part One, the control that director Denis Villeneuve exhibited as he steadily pulled back the curtains, letting this foreign world gradually seep out. In Part Two, the floodgates are opened. It’s a sloppy collage of action set-pieces, romance, and religious mysticism, sometimes more comfortable with sitting back on epic shots than drilling deeper into own themes. But the whole is so much larger than the sum of its parts that those blemishes fade away. Unchained, but purposeful and driven; like riding a sandworm. It’s The Empire Strikes Back, it’s The Two Towers: a middle child that should only be a connective tendon but becomes a critical organ.
We join Paul Atreides where he left us, far from the lush greenery and aristocratic ceremonies of his home world and cautiously welcomed by the indigenous Fremen as he navigates exile in the punishing sandscape of Arrakis. A discomforting tension strains his passage; he is elevated to a prophetic saviour by local superstitions, placing a weapon of exploitation directly into his hands. There seems to be only one road out of the desert, and it crosses paths with the burden of becoming a colonial tyrant. The protagonist’s treading of the friction between his earnest respect for the locals and his unquenched thirst for revenge drives the narrative forward, led by Timothée Chalamet’s hesitant but charismatic performance.
The shakes and sways in the lead character’s internal journey are drawn out by the precision of the women that surround him, including Rebeca Ferguson’s stoic Lady Jessica, and Zendaya’s warrior, Chani. Zendaya envisions Chani as indomitable but not heartless: her performance is both an emotional and a thematic barometer that marks the film in its most critical moments. Javier Bardem’s loyal Stilgar and Austin Butler’s volatile Feyd-Rautha are other high points in a wealthy ensemble that grounds the film, allowing it to be what it is. On one level, a dense pulsating muscle of spectacle. On another, a firm thematic spine with a charged nervous system firing away electric character arcs.
Dune: Part Two is a gargantuan hypnotic odyssey that takes its patiently built groundwork and shatters it, propelling forward with a screen-quaking pace. That isn’t an exaggeration—the cinema screen began rippling at moments, turning audience member’s heads, their eyes verifying whether the projector was still functional. It’s monumental, the most ambitious thing I’ve ever seen in a film theatre. Its reach strives to exceed its grasp, and while it may wobble at points, don’t worry, it lands the leap in the end, stepping into the desert of the cinematic unknown.
“Marocco. Alba sulle Dune di M’Hamid.” by BORGHY52 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.