On DUNE: Villeneuve, Vibe, and Verisimilitude (Patreon)

THE THINGS AND THE PEOPLE

Who is Denis Villeneuve?

In one way, it’s a meaningless question. Art exists outside the identity of the artist. When you watch a film, you are watching the thing itself (which is a product of the work from hundreds of people anyway). And honestly? The vast majority of people in the audience aren’t going to care who made it. They are only interested in the film itself, along with the world and characters within. Historically, it’s always been this way. And often by design. For it is what gives the art distinction.

But in another way, “who is Denis Villeneuve?” is a very important question. Because there is a sizable (and growing) part of the audience that very much cares about the artists making the thing itself. Not just because we live in an information age, nor just because the artist tends to affect the overall quality of the picture they’re seeing and thus makes a surer bet. But because we irrevocably connect with the artist making any art. It’s like when you emote along with a singer’s voice. Or when you cry along with an actor on screen. There is a direct relationship there, even if it is parasocial or one-sided. But in that, the person behind the thing matters whether we know their name or not. Because their choices, their approaches, and their value judgments add up to a little old thing we call “a voice.” And we care about that part a lot.

But sometimes a voice is more evident with certain filmmakers than with others. It’s easy to spot the way Spike Lee dives into the fault lines of American racism with empathy, humor, and an unblinking eye toward injustice. Or even spot the way a newcomer like Julia Decournau will embrace visceral, violen imagery as metaphors for anxiety behind so-called “destructive” femme urges. It’s not really a question of “who” these folks are in real life. It’s connecting to the filmmaker versions of themselves. And even with directors who rarely write their own material, there’s something in their voices that we gravitate toward. Because those artists have material they gravitate toward and something the audience connects to in turn. Whether it’s Scorsese’s oscillating styles and editing flare. Or Soderbergh’s brutal efficiency and playful sense of humor. Or Fincher’s packed, deliberate frames and brooding sense of malice.

So it all comes back to that question: who is Denis Villeneuve, the filmmaker?

Going by historical interests, he’s certainly had a fascination with some real nastiness. I never saw Polytechnique (not sure I can bring myself to), but if you look at the first half of his feature career and films like Incendies, Prisoners, and Sicario there’s this undeniable inclination toward brutality. But it’s all about the expression of that brutality. Because he’s not making horror-driven stories full of spectacle that load these brutal things front to back. Instead, they’re often deliberate dramas that save their brutality for vivid punctuation marks. It just all gets dressed up in films that more visually fit the prestige circuit sensibility. Which is why I tend to identify Villeneuve more by his style than his interests (especially when it comes to the second half of his career). Because if anything’s become clear with time, he’s a guy with a certain bag of tricks.

Which I don’t say as a backhanded compliment! We all watch a lot of films from people who we wish had any tricks at all. But with Villeneuve, you can see them for certain. For one, he’s pretty much bet the farm on the effectiveness of deep rumbling sounds as a dramatic signifier. There’s so, so many times you’ll feel that literal shake from the bass notes as the clue that tension is building (even if it's sometimes just atmospheric teasing). And no matter which cinematographer he works with, he’s going to tend toward mono-colored imagery with low contrast, with frames that often feature a lot of negative space. And unlike someone like, say, Scorsese, he’s not going to shift his language within the film all that much. He’s going to do his thing. And that thing gets layered over the story. So the question is how well that thing fits the events on screen.

The answer is sometimes counter-intuitive. While it may seem pitch perfect for the violent dread of something like Sicario, it also works weirdly well for the emotional fireworks of Arrival (perhaps it’s just that I love that script). But the truth is I go back and forth on a lot of his work. At times I’m riveted, as there’s always sequences that grab your attention and (often literally) shake you to your core. But I’m also often left with all these little feelings about the way certain story choices and themes add up to something - and whether or not I feel those notions are entirely resonant.

Unsurprisingly, I have many of those varying thoughts about DUNE.

THE SPICE MUST FLOW

So Dune’s long been this white whale of sci-fi adaptation. Okay, you can say that about a lot of books, but the point stands. It’s like we’ve always been thumbing around the notion of a “proper” adaptation for some time now, especially after the Star Wars boom. There’s a whole grand history of stalled adaptations, but the one we actually got in 1984 was infamously “bad.” I put that in quotes because the truth is that I kind of like David Lynch’s undeniably boring take on the cosmic space opera. I don’t smoke weed anymore (makes me paranoid), but sometimes I put the 3 hour version on at 3 am to simulate the same vague feeling. Especially as it lets my brain half-stare at the picture as I half-work on essays or whatever (and I’m literally doing it now). Much like Paul’s dreams, you can fade in and out as you meditate on so much irrelevant information, all punctuated by what-the-fuckery of Sting’s plot and Kyle Mac’s perfectly coiffed hair. But all that being said, this obviously does not make for a proper movie-goer-friendly blockbuster. And for years we debated about whether or not Lynch’s sleepy, ornate weird outlier was in fact the best representation of Dune, or whether someone could actually elevate the book to popcorn status after all.

In that way, Villeneuve is sort of perfect to helm a new adaptation.

For a film that could easily get lost in the hoity toity politics of Houses and sleepy dreams, he’s gonna be the guy who comes in and literally shakes your seat. I don’t say that entirely in jest, though. The sound work of Dune is probably his sharpest yet because there’s even more of a kind of playfulness to it. Because it’s not just about the way it rumbles, but the way it cuts out at crucial moments and plays with silences to vibrant effect. And as austere and distant as some of the imagery can be, there’s still a sense of gravity and weight to the objects we see on screen. And when it comes to the emotional weight of these characters, one of the least talked about things with Villeneuve is his ability to work with actors. Because you bet he’ll genuinely mine the despair within them. While Chalamet can sometimes feel a little stranded, he still readily fits the bill of the young boy unready for the trials that await him. And the gruff, but emotional world of Dune has never felt more assured than in the hands of Oscar Isaac and Jason Momoa (consider me a card-carrying member of the Jason Momoa appreciation society). But perhaps no actor is more crucial in the film than Rebecca Ferguson. Not just because she’s given so much to do in a genre that so frequently sidelines mother characters for daddy issues, but because she’s so truly excellent at it. For a story that’s largely about keeping a young man on destiny-laden rails, she absolutely carries all the ups and downs right there on her visage.

But even more impressive is the way Villeneuve, Roth, and Spaihts find the narrative weight of the story as writers. Because it’s not just about amping up tension in the obvious sequences, but clarifying where the conflict actually exists in the constant chamber drama of the story (which is not easy with Dune’s complex politik). But here in the film’s first act, it zooms in on dramatic expressions of what you need to only get the conflict of the scene in question, then allows those scenes build out over time to form the larger shape of the narrative. Yup! It turns out the big old solution for what to do with Dune’s sprawling lore was just do what other good dramas do! (and as an important note, this is literally the exact opposite of what Lynch did, as he was often trying to throw out dry explanations like there was going to be a quiz later). So from writing, to performance, to simple visceral filmmaking, it all works. The seemingly un-filmable property was a much-needed sense of verisimilitude; an approach that the modern audience won’t bounce off, but instead, will fall into. For this, I imagine Warner Brothers is delighted.

But in some other ways, Villeneuve is a not-so-perfect person to adapt.

Perhaps it’s my own druthers, but I’m officially dead tired of Hollywood’s color-draining industrial complex. Even in the opening shots of Chani talking about her “beautiful” home world, I’m instantly struck by the irony of her saying this over the grayed, washed out image. Like, everyone saw Fury Road, right? We know the myriad of ways we turn a desert environment into all sorts of gorgeous, contrasting looks? And everyone adored it? Sigh. I know it’s been argued that the trend has developed because it better “hides” CGI and effects work, but again, I’ll point to the same example as a counterpoint. And while we’re on the subject of visuals, Villeneuve’s love of negative space and low-contrast can’t help but bring the inherent barrenness of Dune just a step too far for me. Characterizing an Arrakis that’s a bit too austere and distant, especially as it pans over the mining city and it’s like I can barely make out a distinct detail in the sea of practical design (which is probably part of the point, but I’m just bored by said point). There’s this kind of “effective, but limited” approach to all of it for me.

Particularly in the way Villeneuve shoots action. In comparison to so many other directors today, the film’s oddly at its best with the heavy, clad CGI crashing and rumbles. But when it comes to the hand to hand stuff? It’s kinetic, but always cutting a hair too close on impact. Or putting the camera a hair too close to its subject. Which makes it end up feeling busy, but somehow lacking in impact. The little things really add up. When a friend was talking about why the action didn’t land for her, I invoked the small editing differences in the opening scene of Soderbergh’s Haywire. Like Villeneuve, he’s aiming for that wide-angled mix with brutal intensity to hits, but Soderbergh has that baseline understanding of function (like selling the hit on impact and cutting right after to set up the next move). It allows the same approach to play like fireworks. And look, I’m fully aware that these things aren’t deal breakers and that the “effective” part of the equation still does wonders, but the small things matter. Even when they’re not what really holds up the film.

Because the real problem with Dune is that it has to be Dune.

Again, I say this as someone who generally likes Dune, but it’s a holdover of a very specific kind of early 1960’s Orientalist, supposedly-hippy literature about how colonialism is bad but what it really needs is the obligatory white savior. Read generously, it’s about a prince who gets a major privilege check and joins the side of the oppressed. Read ungenerously, it’s just more of the endlessly gross framing of envisioning of oneself as the oppressed and thus the only space Jesus who can rescue minorities from their fate, often by proving yourself as being THE BEST at being said minority, which is all just another form of oppression. And as a text, the mining of Arrakis is your standard metaphor for oil or even the literal spice trade of the East India Company stuff. But what’s perhaps ironic about Lynch’s adaptation is he turns so far into the wall-to-wall whiteness and weird galactic space knight side of things that we end up further away from some problematic bits.

Villeneuve on the other hand, steers the ship right into them. As much better discussed in this piece by Siddhant Adlakha, the director turns right into the Orientalism of the story from its design, to casting, to even Hans Zimmer’s score.  Put simply, if you’re going to tackle this stuff, hoo boy, ya got to figure out how to massage that message, update, and invert to make the framework to make it work better (and it’s indeed possible with modern popcorn fare, as Taika did magnificent job at this in Thor: Ragnorok of all things). But let’s just say the optics of Timmy’s big climactic hero moment [SPOILERS FOR REST OF PARAGRAPH] coming at the murder of a black Fremen to prover yourself to the minority tribe are NOT GREAT, BOB. Particularly for a film that feels like it’s constantly both fumbling these messages while searching for its climax in the last act - and settling on THAT as their grand choice (especially would even possibly play differently in the context of the next film). There’s just a lot of “uhhhhh” to chew on here.

So if the perfect / imperfect appraisal of what Villeneuve brings to Dune seems like a contradiction, rest assured, it is! But most things end up being a kind of contradiction. And while I have a bunch of complex thoughts about the film, my summation doesn’t really matter as an appraisal to be judged in turn. The only real question is…

ARE YOU FEELING THE VIBE?

I’ve often said that I feel like I do my job when people can read whatever gobble I write and go “oh that helps me understand why I liked it” or “oh, that’s why I think I bounced off it.” And most films offer some combination of the two. Again, I liked Dune. But I also feel like I’m left with all these grand questions about Villeneuve, his career, and how he came at this subject matter. So the best I can do is lay this out as some kind of framework - and even if you disagree with that framework and establish your own - it can lend a kind of awareness of how we all fit inside.

For instance, I know a lot of folks bounce off films like this for being “cold and unemotional,” but I like to remind people that this approach is, in a weird way, a kind of display of emotion. Or at least a way of dealing with emotions. When writing about Nolan I wrote about how so much of his work operated within the language of repression and how it often spoke to an audience of young males for that very reason. But his best work is always genuinely trying to get at those emotions underneath. So perhaps it’s unsurprising that Villeneuve and Nolan have a lot of overlap in their styles and proverbial bag of tricks. From the bassy, bwammy undertones that could get even the most emotionally-guarded of us to feel a rumble in our tummy, to their penchant for unapologetically painting with big budget boyish canvas, to their yearning for a kind of grounded “realism” within those same offerings. They even have a similar nose for conflict and characters dealing with traumas / emotional repressions (though Villeneuve skews a bit more gnarly and Nolan a bit more cerebral). There’s reasons people gravitate toward all this, no matter how much they’re even aware of why.

I always feel weird using the word “vibe,” but vibe is undeniably powerful. It’s part of the surface-level interaction that first guides whether or not we feel like we could be on the same page as the art. And filmmakers give off initial vibes that hit us right or don’t. Cue the straight-line conversation we’ve been having about Wes Anderson for 25 years now. With every new release (PS - gonna see French Dispatch this week) people say the same criticisms about it being too twee or them lamenting that he’s always doing the same thing. But it’s no less “the same thing” than what Villeneuve or Nolan do, it’s just that some people 1) notice it more in a Brechtian sense and 2) don’t like that vibe.

But films have to be about more than vibe, right? Because we get in trouble when we stick to the surface level first evaluations of things. There’s countless films I thought might be going for one thing or another, only to be delightfully surprised by its depth and ability. Plus it can become so damn reflexive. For instance, this Tik Tok about A24 film score similarities weirdly highlights the problems of an audience only liking something on a surface level - but also the complexity of judging an audience and assuming they must only be engaging said art on a surface level (and thus largely depends how tongue in cheek you view the joke being made).  Which is why beyond the surface emotion, the thing it really comes down to again and again and again is the often unspoken power of theme. Meaning the resonance of the character’s experience, what is actually being said, and why it matters to us.

Which is the space where I eventually run out of steam with Villeneuve. For all my genuine adoration of Arrival, I’m not sure what the trauma mazes of Prisoners is really after outside of my initial shock. Just as I’m not sure there’s a speck of cultural verisimilitude in the supposedly-grounded horror of Sicario (this gets into a larger Sheridan discussion though). Even my read on Blade Runner 2049 largely depends on what I can project into a few moments of silence. Villeneuve just seems much more comfortable in the vague. Which is perhaps why I find the spider-laden cryptic-ness of Enemy’s big moment to be the thing that has stuck with me longest (even though the film has an odd path in getting there). By comparison, the delivery of one line by F. Murray Abraham in The Grand Budapest Hotel still guts me harder than any of that. Not that it’s a competition. And not that Villeneuve doesn’t punctuate his gut-churning work with compelling characters and psychological depth. It’s just how it all adds up and what I feel I am left with.

And with Villeneuve, as much as I genuinely like, and perhaps more fittingly, respect his work, there’s just that personal ceiling that often comes into play. And it’s the reason I probably tend to gravitate toward other voices and vibes in an act of pure favoritism. At worst, it only makes me wonder if maybe we have enough big budget stuff that speaks repressive language. But I will say, every time I see something pedestrian, voice-less, or even disrespectful of the audience’s intelligence and patience, I’m re-reminded of all the genuinely compelling things that filmmakers like Villeneuve have to offer. Which is why every time I’ll happily sign up for the bag of tricks.

And then be pleasantly delighted if I get more than that.

<3HULK