TORONTO – “Star Wars”, “Lord of the Rings” and “Avatar” bow to “Dune”.
Director Denis Villeneuve’s new galvanizing film, which had its American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday night, is 100% worthy of being alongside those science fiction and fantasy epics . Believe it or not, sometimes it surpasses them visually.
I sighed in relief at first. David Lynch’s famous 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel was a spectacle in its day, but back then it was hard to see and now it’s impossible to see. Try it some night if you have trouble sleeping. I was worried that this new version would fall into the same style trap about substance.
But the opening narrative is crisp and safe. Dare. Gargantuan. Herbert’s plot is dense, but once you get a couple of keywords (Atreides, Harkonnen, Arrakis), the sandstorm rises and it’s clear.
Timothee Chalamet, who is already famous, but who will later become stratospheric, plays Paul Atreides, son of the powerful Duke (Oscar Isaac).
His family controls the desert of the planet Arrakis, rich in valuable species (think gold or oil) and infested with amazing giant sandworms. The peaceful Atreides House is determined to keep it out of the clutches of the evil Harkonnen House, which seeks to plunder its resources and kill the natives, including a group of fighters called the Fremen (Zendaya is one of them). The Harkonnen are dominated by the Baron, played by Stellan Skarsgård doing his best Jabba the Hutt.
War breaks out, and it is up to Paul, who many believe is the “chosen one” prophesied to save Arrakis.
The monsters in “Dune” will tell you that the story has so much more than that. Save me your nasty social media posts, guys – you’re right! For example, Paul Jessica’s mother (Rebecca Ferguson) is a powerful being who teaches her “the way,” a kind of magic that involves mind control. There are a lot of things like that.
Still, Villeneuve has focused on clarity and affordability with his film. To have a great time you don’t have to absorb all the trivia.
Frankly, you could see him in silence and his jaw would still fall. The richly imagined world combines ancient Egyptian aesthetics and the Middle East and combines them with sleek, futuristic technologies to create an absolutely mind-boggling immersive environment.
The director has also thrown in a bit of humor and colloquializes the speech a bit, which of course corrects the rigidity of Lynch’s film.
In this sense, the interpretation, especially of Chalamet and Ferguson, is not as harsh as formal and ceremonial. They are royal in a millennial society rooted in tradition. No Meghan Markle and Oprah.
Chalamet’s gravitas surprised me. Gone is the guy from “Call Me By Your Name” and in his place is a little man whose footsteps in the sand land with the blow of Neil Armstrong.
What a surreal premiere it was on Saturday night. We all rightly sat inside a giant spaceship looking like a spaceship on Lake Ontario called Cinesphere IMAX. Despite the scale of the event, it still felt small. Fans did not mobilize the red carpet and the disgusting social distancing remains mandatory in Toronto. No one cared. Five minutes later, our sphere faded and changed to a distant and spectacularly predicted galaxy. This film is the first of two planned parts. Please, dear God, do the second.
“Dune” will hit theaters and HBO Max on October 22nd. My advice? HBO Max Screw: Choose IMAX.