Daring to adapt Frank Herbert’s 1965 galaxy-sprawling sci-fi novel is an act of, many would deem, madness. 

This idea is backed by the failed attempts of two madmen to make a film out of the “unfilmable” novel: Alejandro Jodorowsky, who never got to finish his 14-hour adaptation, and David Lynch through his 1984 version. Jodorowsky's efforts were recently chronicled in the fascinating 2013 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, while Lynch eventually disowned his. Both filmmakers are viewed by many as the oracles of cinema, with their personality and films carrying a flair of the mystical and transcendental rarely matched on screen.

Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, a third madman, previously dared to adapt a short story about deciphering alien languages from a semiotic standpoint in Arrival, brought forth a modern retelling of Oedipus within a modernized Lebanese context in Incendies, and directed the follow-up to what is perhaps the most iconic and influential sci-fi film of all time, Blade Runner 2049.

Within the crescendo nature of successful filmmaking evolution, Dune seems like the logical next step for the French-Canadian filmmaker.

But how exactly is Dune a madman’s venture? One could easily discern it through the sheer massiveness of it all, from the story to the production designs and most importantly the sets brought to life by Greg Frasier's sublime cinematography, so reverential it feels humbled by every location it visits.

Any review of Dune cannot be done right after leaving the screening. With this adaptation, which has been delayed for over a year by Warner Bros. due to the pandemic, one has to watch twice. The first time allows newcomers to embrace its grand scale; the second time, they further bask in the complex machinations prevailing in its narrative threads.

Grand scale, or massive, spectacle is perhaps the key term to describe the entirety of the film. Villeneuve, using his 165 minutes to perfection, manages to create a multitude of worlds and planets that not only look and feel populated by different cultures and customs, but also exist within the span of a grandiose and overreaching future of which the mind could only imagine a fraction. Villeneuve knows well Herbert’s world, and he is making sure that everything in his film, from set designs to creatures to cinematography, acknowledges the never-ending expansiveness of the cosmic journey at the heart of Dune.

Before the production company’s logo even appears onscreen, Dune promises you a journey unlike no other: On a black background, a voice is heard in Jakobsan (the language of the Fremen-more to come on them) whispering “Dreams Are Messages from the Deep.” 

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From here on out, the film sets out on an interplanetary journey, starting with House Atreides, the rulers of planet Caladan, and headed by Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), father of the film’s central protagonist Paul (Timothée Chalamet). The Atreides family possesses one of the strongest armies throughout the Imperium, which is the supposed reason behind the Emperor’s request for them to replace the Harkonnen dynasty in their colonial quest to the sand-filled planet Arrakis, the eponymous dune, to harvest a powerful hallucinogenic “spice” which is a key element in interstellar travel – and other prescient affairs. Yet the arrival of new invaders does not bode well with the Fremen, native tribes of Arrakis, who refuse to be governed by any external force and seek full autonomy over their land. Meanwhile, Paul starts to have strange dreams and visions before soon finding himself embroiled in a large conspiracy, partly orchestrated by the obscure order of the Benne Gesserit sisterhood, whom his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) is a part of. 

If this all seems too complex to grasp at first glance, buckle your seatbelts, for more is to come in the film. Yet what Villeneuve marvelously succeeds in doing is bringing to life all of Herbert’s intricate story elements with a fresh narrative fluidity that makes the whole affair run as smoothly as a sandworm in its natural habitat. Indeed, many of the “unfilmable” aspects of the novel are rendered in a masterfully delicate and palpable fashion, allowing the hostile world of Arrakis and the rest of the Imperium to feel beautifully welcoming for those just entering the world of Dune.

The film is clearly the work of a passionate fan who wanted to emulate Frank Herbert’s vivid imagination as clearly as possible, with Villeneuve going as far as describing the main target audience for this film to be his “14 years-old self right after reading the book.” The passion seeps through every detail, from the aforementioned massive bedazzling set designs down to the minute parts of the hyper-realistic desert stillsuits, passing by the iconic ornithopter which no visual interpretation managed to get right, until now. Despite the story taking place in the year 10,191, the delicate marriage of medieval and feudal-inspired visuals with the futuristic sci-fi elements offers a feeling of immersion unlike any other film to have hit the silver screen this year. Furthermore, magical narrative cornerstones of Herbert’s vast Dune, such as the Jedi-like mind-control ability called “the voice” or the gigantic sandworms, are seamlessly yet creatively integrated within the overall journey without looking derivative of other iconic film franchises such as Star Wars or The Matrix which used the original novel as a central source of inspiration.

But all this praise comes with a hefty baggage of inconveniences, starting with the story structure: Indeed on the first watch, the screenplay mostly appears to suffer from the source material’s weight, succumbing in the process to the massive pressure of the iconic novel to the extent of feeling as if certain chapters are scattered throughout the film in the guise of plot points. In the film’s transition from one scene to the next, one could pinpoint the exact moment in which chapter breaks take place, leaving much to be desired in terms of narrative flow.

Had this been the film’s only narrative irk, one could have dismissed it as a “necessary evil”, but this issue extends to the entirety of the runtime where the story eventually ends on a rather brusque note, turning the whole affair into an elaborate setup. The usage of the term “setup” is not archaic in this context, as Dune is in fact aptly titled Dune Part I, with Part II recently announced after positive box-office and critical reception surfaced, turning the film into an opening act of this nascent film franchise. Many parallels have been drawn between Dune Part I, which presumably covers the first half of the book, and The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2003), which also covers the first part of a massively sprawling saga. What sets these two era-defining blockbusters apart is the fact that Dune feels like a story warming up to begin, whereas Fellowship functioned as a self-contained story that could yet reach greater heights.

Another hiccup in the film lies in its treatment of mystical and spiritual elements which guide much of the world’s lore: Here again, Herbert’s legacy looms large over the blockbuster, pushing Villeneuve to wrap Dune in a highly sober and self-conscious style which, to the film’s detriment, sterilizes the spiritual and eschatological connotations that have long drawn fans to the source material. In a sense, all scenes involving hallucinogenic and metaphysical happenstances are rendered through scantily creative camerawork and editing tricks that become repetitive by the end of the film. The filmmaker attempts to cover this all-too recurrent mishap by draping most scenes with Hans Zimmer’s chorus-submerged bombastic score, at times succeeding and at times not. 

Alas, such directorial choices from Villeneuve become far more injurious when taking into consideration the ecological, philological, and Islamophilic implications of the 1965 novel that are either deliberately or banally missing from this adaptation. Given Villeneuve’s filmography and the precision with which he orchestrates his films, one could be forgiven for going with the former. The blatancy of the issue becomes all too perspicuous when the audiences are greeted on Arrakis by a group of Bedouin-looking Fremen speaking in Arabic and its various in-world linguistic derivatives, yet each word is uttered with a heavy indecipherable American accent. The appearance of the Islamic-inspired Fremen, all too crucial for the story’s spirit within the novel as many know, as well as their usage of pseudo-Arabic vernacular, is oddly juxtaposed with the absence of any Muslim or Arab actor to lend Arrakis any cultural credibility, whereas the European feudal-inspired Atreides house is populated by well-spoken Caucasian actors who elevate each character they portray to a fully-rounded three-dimensional one.

Many rightfully fear that the story will eventually turn into a cinematic prima donna of white savior narrative, notably with the usage of Islamo-Arab esthetics and one too many colonialist tropes. Much is to be decorticated in terms of Villeneuve’s rendition of Dune, which is in appearance highly orientalist and imperialist, but Part II must be awaited in order to assimilate the full picture, notably with Herbert’s story being celebrated for its unorthodox and sailing against the current approach in terms of critiquing imperial and colonial narrative.

For now, all that is certain is the majesty of Dune Part I, which functions as a cinematic oasis in which one could satiate their rapacious desire to enter the uniquely expansive and hallucinogenic world of Dune.