Dune

As you may know, this movie came out in 2021. If you have been reading my blog, you may also know that I don't only review movies that came out recently. I asked some of my "followers" last week to choose from a certain list of movies to see which one they'd like me to write about for this week. Dune was one of the movies on this list and it got 100% of the votes. So here we are. Don't get me wrong; it's not like I didn't want to write about this movie---it was already on my list (for a long time actually). Now, this was a very long movie, so I must warn you that my review post might also be a bit longer than usual.

When the release date of this movie was approaching, I started hearing about the series of books Dune. All of a sudden, fans of this book series appeared. I had not heard about Dune at all until then. Does that make me really ignorant? I don't know. I wonder where all those Dune fans were before they heard about the movie...None of them had ever mentioned to me reading Dune and liking it. Since I didn't know about the Dune (book) series, I was astonished to see how many people were excited about the movie. To me, it was just another movie (at that point). 

When it first came out, I saw this movie in the theatres. I can't say I liked the movie a lot at that point. I think some parts were hard to understand, especially if you didn't know anything about the story before. In some scenes, there was this women who was doing some prayer and it was not clear to me at all what she was saying most of the time. Oh well. After the movie, I was still a bit astonished---this time I was thinking "what was all the fuss about?". It is good that it wasn't my final decision about the movie.

What happened is I re-watched the movie, this time at home, with subtitles to actually understand the mumbling parts. After that, I started appreciating the movie. In the meantime, I had collected some information about the Dune universe which also helped me appreciate the events in the movie. So, maybe you like the movie already, but let me share with you some of the knowledge.

First of all, a person who has seen the Star Wars series and did not hear about Dune before (like me) might think that the author of the books, Frank Herbert, might have copied quite a few things from the Star Wars series. That would be a cruel criticism. In fact, the truth is that it was George Lucas who took ideas from Frank Herbert's books. Now, I don't know if that changes your opinions about George Lucas (or Star Wars) but hopefully it reduced the resistance you might have had towards Dune. I don't think Lucas ever denied getting ideas from the Dune books so I guess we wouldn't call this stealing, and all is good.

As I mentioned above, there were some words I didn't understand. For example, I would have never thought Bene Gesserit is written like that. Maybe it's just me but I should know the spelling of a word if I were to understand it. So since there was a lot going on that I didn't quite understand the details of, I paid more attention to the visuals. You may remember the desert suit they had to wear. During all those scenes, my mirror neurons were apparently working at peak capacity, and I really felt uncomfortable and sometimes as if I wasn't able to breathe. That mechanism the suit had---I definitely wouldn't want to be in that suit. On the other hand, if I didn't have any other choice to stay alive, I probably would've gotten in the suit but I am not sure how that would go for me.  

Now that we started talking about the desert, let's talk about the desert people and the spice. For a westerner (like a person from North America), maybe these ideas used in the film would look eccentric or authentic. To me, they really weren't. If you are familiar with certain eastern culture and/or studied history of certain civilizations in the east, you can easily detect some of the ideas in this movie/book are taken from eastern cultures. Indeed, it turns out that Frank Herbert spent some time in Vietnam and Pakistan. I believe he learned a lot there. 

If you look at the desert people, their skin, eyes and choice of clothing, doesn't that remind you some society who fit this description already? They are the ones being invaded and they are the ones being enslaved---I don't know, this sounds very familiar to me. Now, the spice. Well, so many nations went to war just because of "spice" in the past, too. That's basically in the world history. Of course, that spice and the spice in the movie are not exactly the same. However, if you think about it they are in the same position according to their context. In the old times, people fought for food, or spice trades. That was the most important thing, to live---food. Now, in the movie, what they call "the spice" is as essential as food was to people who lived in, say, 1450 or 1780. You may not know every country's history, but as an example, the British definitely fought wars over spices (and their traditional food is still pretty plain considering this---also see this). I hope you didn't think I gave legitimate links about wars---they are just memes. You can, however, find the information about Frank Herbert's life I mentioned in the previous paragraph on Wikipedia.

The story of Dune is really taken from past events (history) and just set in the future. Obviously, this is not the only movie or book which had done this. But, maybe because I am so familiar with these ideas, they were so obvious to me and a bit boring. On the other hand, it was also a bit enjoying to see someone is bringing these topics up. Another example is, in the movie, the desert people kind of have their own ways to be able to live in the desert. Basically, others invented suits, etc, but they (the desert people) devised their own ways to navigate in the desert. And the point they made was, you have to learn the ways of the desert if you are to survive. If you look at it, it looks like the desert people don't have much technology and probably considered "behind" but they have their own mystic ways. Well, first of all, this reminds me the fact that until some point in the history the east was definitely the one that was ahead (of the west). East was where philosophical thinking happened, inventions took place, science/technology developed. Not sure what the exact point is but after some point, the west was better than the east somehow. If you think of some ancient civilizations, perhaps you can observe this in some contexts. I mean, the USA came to existence only recently and before that there were no "the best/most prestigious universities" there where the most prominent science/research took place. 

There is no doubt that there are terms and ideas used in the movie with islamic references. I can't say this was interesting to me. What bothers me is that while some areas on earth are full of people with islamophobia, they think it's cool when some ideas from that culture are used in such a movie---because they have no idea that the idea of a mahdi in the movie actually exists in real life stories and that's also where the term comes from. Well, this was just an example but hopefully you get the point. The mystic elements in the movie are just a melange of items from different Middle Eastern cultures and maybe this is a good thing---people with prejudices against Middle East might actually start understanding and liking these cultures. 

The events of the movie take place in a distant future but most things are the same---just masked to look different. I do think the movie touches important subjects. It shows the dynamics in religion and how it plays its role in politics and the power required in politics. I guess the movie is also trying to draw attention to ecological crisis we are facing nowadays but I am not sure if what the audience takes away from this movie. Like, after seeing the movie, do they think "hmm if I don't do anything about global warming now, maybe this will be our future and so I must become an activist now!"? I don't think so. I think people are mostly taken away from the interesting set up in the future (even though some of which was already familiar from Star Wars). 

Now, the movie takes place in a distant future but other than the interstellar travel and big ships, you don't really see that much technology in the daily lives of people. In fact, they might be even using less technology for everyday things than we do now, and that's a bit strange to see in a movie which takes place twenty thousand years into our future. This is strange and makes you think the story is not well established. However, there is actually a reason why things are the way they are in the movie, and you'd know that things make sense if you knew more about Dune universe. So, apparently, before the events of the movie, there was a war and all robots and computers were destroyed. These are not really spoilers. They are just background info to be able to appreciate the movie more.

From my review so far, maybe you think I didn't like this movie, but I actually did. I am definitely waiting for the sequel and I will watch it too. Before I finish, I will try to briefly go over the performances of the actors. 

Casting Javier Bardem is probably the best decision the cast directors did. He is a highly respected actor. His performance was, of course, pretty good in this movie. I must say though there were some disgusting looking scenes that involved him and if you like disgusting images, maybe you'll enjoy (or enjoyed) those scenes. I don't really like Jason Momoa very much (and I don't see how and why people like him) but his character added depth to the story so I won't complain. Timothée Chalamet is a very good actor, in my opinion, and he did a very good job in this movie. I knew Oscar Isaac from the Star Wars movies first but his character in this movie was quite different and he showed what a good actor he is. I knew Zendaya from the latest Spider-man series. I liked her previously but I am not so sure about now. I am not sure why they cast her for that role, maybe because of the characteristics of her face? 

I seemed to have complained a lot about the oriental elements in the movie but I should admit that it's not like the movie didn't include European elements. So, to be fair, I think Frank Herbert did the best job (compared to any other movie) in the sense that he was able to include features from cultures all around the world. So, in terms of representation, it's hard to find another movie like this where anyone could find something from their own culture or religion, even it might just be one thing. Plus, if you think about it, it is only realistic if both the west and the east are represented in such a universe. 

About seeing and understanding this movie, I think that if you haven't read the books (and/or don't want to read them), it might be worth to befriend someone who did so that you can ask them the questions you have about the movie. I already have such a friend, thankfully, and I asked her a lot of questions, and hearing the answers was definitely helpful. I am not an expert on the Dune books still, but hopefully you learned a thing or two about the Dune universe from this post.

I give 7/10.