This dream, Denis Villeneuve caressed since adolescence: to bring the novel to the screen Dune, by Frank Herbert. Pursuing a remarkable professional career, the Quebec filmmaker has arrived there. And the result is dazzling. Film-event as it rarely happens, Dune – Part One (Dune: part one) is the film by a filmmaker who obviously loves the source, but has not been its slave.
In an interview, Denis Villeneuve confided that he wondered if he could “live up to” his dream. By diving, we guess that he must have made his own the mantra of Paul Atreides, the protagonist: “I will not know fear, because fear kills the mind.” “
Bright, dense novel, Dune conceals several traps for those who wish to make a film of it. David Lynch broke his teeth there, and before him, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ridley Scott, whose projects were unsuccessful. With his version, Denis Villeneuve breaks what has been called the “curse of Dune “.
Camped in a distant future, the plot takes place in a universe where the most precious resource is the Spice, which has, among other properties, that of facilitating intergalactic journeys. The Spice only exists on the desert planet Arrakis, nicknamed Dune, which the Fremens inhabit. For decades, the Harkonnen have acted as stewards of Arrakis on behalf of the Emperor. But now the latter decides to entrust the exploitation of the Spice to the Atreides. Between the two clans, a conflict emerges.
It is against this backdrop that Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), son of Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), will pass from teenager to young man. A transition that will take place first thanks to the teachings of his mother, then in contact with the Fremen culture.
The Fremens who, for their part, fight against imperialism and the plunder of the resource to which their planet is subject. The film immediately encapsulates these themes through the character of Chani (Zendaya), whose words open and close the film.
The epic and the intimate
On the subject of storytelling, anyone who has seen Lynch’s film will recall the heaviness generated by the increased use of voiceover. Faced with the amount of information to pass, the process seems inevitable. However, Denis Villeneuve has instead chosen to use it to a minimum. With some exceptions, the filmmaker relies on the intelligence of film lovers. The film gains in fluidity.
This is just one of the many pitfalls that Villeneuve has been able to avoid. Undoubtedly because he knows the novel by heart, that he carries it for 40 years, the director and co-writer knew how to isolate a clear narrative thread and to prune all which, consequently, became surplus.
The result, in all fidelity to the spirit of the novel, an intimate initiatory story on an immense canvas. Like David Lean in Lawrence of Arabia, to quote an assumed influence, Denis Villeneuve breathes epic breath into his film without ever losing sight of the human being.
Paintings of a strange and astonishing beauty are linked together: the watchmen watching near the Spice extractor, the procession of the Bene Gesserit sisters … In this regard, one of the filmmaker’s main achievements is to be managed to create a real universe. Yes, all the capital planets of the different houses and factions have their own visual identity, but there is more.
Villeneuve takes the time to show how people live and how things work, from magnetic armor to dragonfly aircraft (one thinks of those of pirates in The castle in the Sky, from Miyazaki). It is a universe that exudes an immediacy, a tangibility: on Caladan, we taste the humidity and sea salt, on Giedi Prime, the air stale by industrial fumes assails the nostrils, and on Arrakis, we feel the tingling sand carried by the wind.
Imposing but rich in detail, the sets designed by Patrice Vermette contribute to this “physicality”. Ditto for this bias to shoot in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (in the Liwa desert) and Norway, rather than in front of green screens, the use of which is as rare as it is invisible.
At the top
What a change of scenery! What a feat! It is imperative that Warner Bros. gives the green light for the second part. Because at the end of the premiere, and even if it means summoning a whole different type of science fiction, it feels a bit like the end of The Empire Strikes Back : delighted, galvanized… and in expectation.
If the project were to end there, it would perhaps be the biggest interrupted coitus in the history of cinema.
Anyway, we can only rejoice that Denis Villeneuve had the courage, and the talent, to rub shoulders with the monument that is Dune. In doing so, he was not afraid to measure himself against his dream, and he triumphed. This film is the work of a filmmaker at the height of his art, at the peak of his vision.