Scene Turner is a fortnightly column, in which Devarsi Ghosh looks at literary adaptations on film and television.
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*Spoilers for Dennis Villeneuve's Dune below*
Fifty six years after its publication, Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel Dune has finally had a film adaptation that has worked with critics, fans, and newcomers to the series. The success of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, starring Timothee Chalamet in the lead role of Paul Atreides, has motivated producers to greenlight a sequel, which was required in any case because the film is an adaptation of exactly one half of the book.
How did a novel once considered unfilmable finally become a successful movie? To understand the depth of Villeneuve’s achievement, one has to consider why the novel was thought of as unfilmable, and how Villeneuve found a solution to problems that trapped his predecessors such as master filmmaker David Lynch, whose worst film is perhaps his 1984 adaptation of Dune.
Unfilmable — but why?
Herbert’s Dune is set in the distant future when mankind has spread across the galaxy. Artificial intelligence has ceased to exist following a man-versus-machine war. The emperor rules humanity with various planets serving as vassal states run by nobles belonging to several royal houses. Humanity’s survival depends on a magical spice called Melange which, among other things, serves as a mind-expanding narcotic, medicine, and fuel source for interstellar travel.
The hero of Dune is Paul Atreides, a highborn of the Atreides family whose home planet is Caladan. The emperor, belonging to the Corrino family, is threatened by the increasing power of the Atreides clan. To decimate them, the emperor commands Paul’s father, Duke Leto Atreides, to move to the desert planet Arrakis, or Dune, the only place where spice can be mined. Leto Atreides’s seemingly prestigious but demanding job is to ensure steady mining of spice in the face of harsh living conditions, hostile locals called the Fremen, and giant sandworms that frequently disturb industrial operations.
Arrakis had so far been run by the Harkonnen family, bitter rivals of the Atreides line. The emperor’s plan is to trap the Atreides in Arrakis, and destroy them with a combined army of the Harkonnenes and the emperor’s ferocious Sardaukar forces. The involvement of the Sardaukars would be kept secret, of course, from the Landsraad, a parliament-like body representing all the noble houses.
When the Atreides are attacked in Arrakis, Paul and his mother Jessica escape into the desert. The Harkonnens and the emperor expect them to die.
The 15-year-old Paul, however, happens to be the Kwisatz Hederach, the result of a millenia-long eugenics operation run from the shadows by the Bene Gesserit, an all-women organisation with mild supernatural powers. The Kwitsatz Hederach, who can only be male, is expected to have the power of prescience that would allow him to see through all past and future, and thus rule all of humanity.
The Kwisatz Hederach is also considered as a messianic figure, the Lisan al Gaib, or Mahdi, by the Fremen who hope that he will free them and turn Arrakis into paradise.
Paul eventually fulfils this prophecy, develops superpowers, becomes the Fremen’s leader, defeats his enemies, and becomes the emperor. Through Herbert’s increasingly fantastical sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, Paul becomes the reluctant leader of a holy war, a Fremen-led 'jihad,' that leads to the death of millions. Later, Paul relinquishes his power.
Subsequent books, beginning with God Emperor of Dune, follow Paul’s son, Leto II, who, unlike his father, is committed to fulfilling his role of god emperor. This will eventually require him to become a monstrous human-sandworm hybrid, which is just one of several bizarre events in the Dune series that would be a task to bring to life on screen.
The first novel is hardly as thematically or visually complex as Herbert’s remaining five books. Its reputation of being unfilmable comes primarily from failed attempts by big-name directors to successfully adapt it.
David Lean was supposed to make it. Alejandro Jodorowsky, the maker of surreal masterpieces, El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973), planned to turn the novel into a 20-hour adaptation that would recreate the effects of LSD, as he said in the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, and be an "artistical, cinematographical god," a "prophet… to change the young minds of all the world." He failed, but his storyboards and illustrations have become the stuff of film legends.
David Lynch wrote and directed an adaptation a little over two hours long. Lynch’s 1984 film, while being extremely faithful to the novel, failed to be a coherent viewing experience because of his impossible decision to contain the plot within two hours. Herbert’s novel featured sweeping descriptions of alien worlds and cultures, a laundry list of technological, political, religious, and mystical concepts, and action sequences that required budget and technology Lynch simply did not have.
A television miniseries in 2000 improved on the visuals, but an uninspiring lead actor (Alec Newman as Paul), and the screenwriters’ unreasonable departures from the source novel, made it a disappointing experience.
A major problem that both Lynch’s film and the miniseries could not deal with was the trouble of over-exposition. Herbert’s world-building is extensive. While Lynch got into the mess of highlighting just about everything in the book, the miniseries makers mindlessly did away with or reworked plot points. The novel includes a lot of inner monologue. Lynch’s film have characters express these thoughts as whispery voiceovers which looked as awkward back then as it does now.
The novel also has politically troublesome elements. Baron Harkonnen is a violent homosexual who feasts on sex slaves, and is even sexually fascinated with Paul. The entire series is replete with theological concepts and linguistic features from Islam, only least of which is jihad, which in Herbert’s books, is how any kind of revolutionary war for self-assertion is described. In Villeneuve’s adaptation, the word jihad is simply not mentioned.
Why Denis Villeneuve’s Dune works
If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed, Stanley Kubrick said. Denis Villeneuve proves him right.
Villeneuve’s Dune is a stripped down, minimalist adaptation. He does away with the baroque kitsch of both Lynch’s version and the miniseries. He and his co-writers, Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts, distill the novel into a straightforward story a hero’s journey. The screenplay always has Paul at its centre with Chalamet appearing in practically every scene. Political intrigue that is of value only if sequels are made is kept aside. As much as knowing what Landsraad, CHOAM Company, Orange Catholic Bible, Buterlian Jihad or Spacing Guild is is important to understanding the complete story of Dune, Villeneuve found including them in his simplistic first film unnecessary.
Villeneuve’s Dune is comparable to the first Matrix film (1999), in which the messianic hero comes of age and realises his purpose. The sequels delve into the complex mythologies, and forces the viewer to question their assumptions formed from the first film.
But unlike the Matrix series, for which its makers, the Wachowskis, had to develop a mythology to support the sequels, Dune is an adaptation of one half of the first novel of an expansive series which already has mythology enough to sustain a franchise for over two decades. So the task of excising or doubling down on elements from the novel to make the introductory film work for both fans and newcomers was one that required intensive thought.
For example, one of the key scenes of the first book occurs during a banquet on Arrakis, in which the who’s who on the planet, including a Harkonnen agent, is invited. The chapter offers a good look at the political machinations of Arrakis as well as Paul’s temperament as a formidable duke-to-be.
Villeneuve lets it go, presumably to avoid the messiness of political chatter in the first film, but also because the screenplay has already established Paul as a smart, kind, and capable young boy who is deeply aware of his responsibilities.
For example, the role of Atreides swordmaster Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), a minor character in the first book, who got the short shrift in earlier adaptations, is expanded by Villeneuve to be Paul’s close friend and mentor. In an early scene, Paul expresses concern over Duncan’s survival in Arrakis, and later, he begs his father to let him join Duncan in a scouting mission to Arrakis. Both scenes, absent in the book, show Paul to be a caring friend, unafraid of danger.
Paul also dreams and sees visions about his future throughout the novel. In the earlier adaptations, these visions were a bunch of disjointed images without a narrative of their own. Villeneuve’s writing of Paul’s visions lend them an element of storytelling as Paul foresees characters interacting with him with both speech and action.
Villeneuve takes care of the internal monologue with silence, meaningful glances, and a superb Hans Zimmer score signalling portentousness at every turn. The writers also give Paul and Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) hand gestures to communicate what cannot be said out loud. Some of the novel’s tacky elements like Paul reciting the Bene Gesserit mantra “Fear is the mind killer” is introduced as Jessica saying it to herself while Paul is facing his first of many challenges in the film.
Any plot point that did not affect Paul’s circumstances or decisions are intelligently left out, such as Thufir Hawat, the Atreides’s Master of Assassins, suspecting Jessica of betraying Duke Leto. Villeneuve reduces the roles of Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson) as well as the Baron’s associate Piter De Vries (David Dastmalchian).
He does not introduce the Baron’s nephew Feyd-Rautha, who has a strong part only in the second half of the novel. He also does not include the fact that Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), in addition to being a macho brawler-type, also sings and plays songs, which would perhaps look awkward on screen.
Villeneuve’s additions are significant.
In the book, the first sighting of the sandworm is dramatic, but Villeneuve and his writers up the ante by making Paul set foot the Arrakeen desert for the first time in this scene. Since Arrakis is eventually going to be Paul’s home forever, this is an important moment, and the writers do it justice by giving Paul yet another moment of visions, during which he hears a voice calling him the Kwisatz Hederach.
Another intelligent decision is to never bring Paul and Jessica face to face with their nemesis Baron Herkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard). In the book, they do meet, but the Baron sends them off to be killed. Villeneuve knows that this is a strong hero-meets-villain moment and has understandably saved it for the sequel.
Additionally, making Arrakis’s ecologist Liet-Kynes female does not feel like a cynical modification to fulfill a diversity quota. The character, unlike the rest, is a nurturer whose job is to turn Arrakis into a habitable planet with plant life. Unlike the book, Villeneuve gives the character a dignified ending. He also does not touch upon the Baron’s homosexuality.
Villeneuve’s biggest success is getting the casting right. The 15-year-old Paul is described as "small for his age” whose “young body carried a sense of command, a poised assurance, as though he sensed and knew things all around him that were not visible to others." The slim and boyish Timothee Chalamet not only looks the part but the one-time Oscar nominee is also a capable actor.
In comparison, Kyle MacLachlan, who made his acting debut as Paul in Lynch’s Dune, was an untested actor. Worse is Alec Newman’s whiny and disinterested Paul in the miniseries. The writing does not help. In one scene, he exclaims about his father’s enemies, “Why don’t we call them out?”
It is not that Villeneuve’s predecessors got it all wrong. The Lynch film, despite its awkwardness, flows like a Flash Gordan-meets-Arabian Nights-like fantasy whose combination of imaginative visuals and wooden acting provide accidental surrealism. Some of the designs of Arrakis are indeed impressive.
Villeneuve’s real challenge with his first Dune film was to set up the world in which the mammoth story unfolds. With a 156-minute length, Villeneuve lets the world of Arrakis come into being at a leisurely pace, while Paul gets to slowly evolve. His responsibilities with the sequel, and hopefully a Dune Messiah adaptation, will be way harder. Not only will he have to simplify a story that becomes increasingly complex, but he also has to stick with a protagonist who is ultimately unlikable and unheroic.
Dennis Villeneuve's Dune is now available in Indian cinemas.
Devarsi Ghosh is a journalist, writing on film, culture, and music.
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