“The English have a great hunger for desolate places. I fear they hunger for Arabia... No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.”
Prince Feisal, “Lawrence of Arabia”
Gods are forged in the Desert. Because there is no abundance, man must turn inward to find answers, solace, prophecies, and purpose within. This is why outsiders are first drawn to the Desert, but as soon as a highly valuable natural resource is discovered, the Desert is only worth what can be squeezed out of it.
This is the essential core of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe. Galactic economics is entirely exploitation. The Padishah Emperor’s feudal families are tasked with strip mining their worlds for their most precious material goods: Caladan offers whale fur and pundi rice, Ecaz brings elacca wood and the Juice of Sapho required for the Mentats’ computational abilities, Salusa Secundus’ harsh environment produces barbaric warriors, Ix manufactures complex machinery. Arrakis, of course, is the only planet in the known universe supplying the geriatric “spice” melange (which is a pointedly obvious analogue for our world’s fossil fuels). House Corrino (Emperor Shaddam IV’s imperial house) once gave the technocratic Tleilaxu secret permission to develop melange off-planet, but that did not end well.
Dune is also about the exploitation of human persona. For thousands of years, the Bene Gesserit conducted their breeding programs and ”prepared the way” for a Kwisatz Haderach (Chakobsa for “shortening of the way”) to show up on Arrakis and lead its religious followers toward a revolution that would overthrow the feudal system of the galaxy. They believed they would have some control over this superhuman, and therefore, control over the universe, but as many sequel novels set over thousands of years prove, that does not end well either.
Or at least, there is no ending, and history never turns out the way the powers that be intend.
There are many lessons to be drawn from the “Duniverse,” and the danger of exploitation is only one example, but I believe it may be the most relevant to Denis Villeneuve’s new adaptation, and how it speaks to our current socio-political-cultural moment.
My first viewing of Dune (2021) left me overwhelmed with the sheer scope of it all. Even after over two decades of being acclimatized to the vast plots, sub-plots, themes, motifs, characters, and imagery of all six of Frank Herbert’s Dune novels (and several posthumous prequels), I came away from this silver screen adaptation with a sense of insignificance that perhaps any member of the Imperium’s commonwealth might feel. Paul Atreides himself, even in the elevated role of a Duke’s son, has this sense of smallness compared to the vast outer-world kingdom at large. It’s an awareness all of us have been forced to confront in this Global Pandemic period. And just like Paul, we are faced with world governments that are corrupt and unabashedly capitalist (to put it mildly), and we feel we have no power to resist.
Villeneuve’s film taps into this zeitgeist-y vein by virtue of Dune concerning itself with a deeply ingrained human experience: colonialism writ large. And colonialism is exploitation with production values. Whether run by a government or an iconoclastic billionaire CEO, monopolies weave easily through the fabric of our lives. Benevolence is something always up for debate. Dune revels in exploring this reality.
“God created Arrakis to train the faithful.”
from “The Wisdom of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan
Herbert’s story is closely related to and influenced by T.E. Lawrence’s nearly miraculous exploits in the WWI-era Arabian peninsula—a fact to which homage is paid in Villeneuve’s film with on-location sets directly overlaid with those of the 1962 Oscar-winning David Lean film. Of course, many sweeping shots of the desert are reminiscent of those in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and several themes and plot points parallel each other: colonialism, war, disruption of travel, religious/tribal revolt, “going native,” and embracing the outsider as saviour. I could parse dozens of scenes for direct similarities, but the most striking and exact moment comes early in Dune when Paul meets the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam for the first time. He enters a nearly empty room and a raspy voice presumably rushes through his mind: “WHO ARE YOU?” After the psyche-battering test of the Gom Jabbar, Paul is never the same, and his mind begins to simmer in a constant state of doubt and inquisition about his place in the universe.
In LoA, after Lawrence successfully invades Aqaba and treks across Sinai with his two young Bedouin valets, one of the boys is tragically lost to quicksand, and this death strikes Lawrence to the core. When he arrives at the shore of the Suez Canal, dusty and dejected, a British military gentleman spots him from the other shore and yells out “WHO ARE YOU?” Indeed, Lawrence in this moment is asking himself the same question, and begins to doubt himself and his role in the Arab revolt altogether.
Both of these clearly exceptional people have deep knowledge and good intentions when they arrive in the Desert, but they soon feel that the people surrounding them are thrusting an outsize burden of (religious) importance upon them. They have confidence and skill, clearly, but they seem to be the only ones in their respective stories who understand their own limitations. How dare they be mere humans.
“Before the gardens must come the fighting.”
Prince Feisal, “Lawrence of Arabia”
”The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped' and on this ocean the Bedu go where they please and strike where they please. This is the way the Bedu have always fought. You're famed throughout the world for fighting in this way…” -Lt. Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia" (1962)
”The Fremen watched me search for them for days. I never saw them. Finally, they sent a warrior out to kill me, and I gotta tell ya, I have never come so close to dying. There’s no finer fighter in the Imperium. They fight like demons.” - Duncan Idaho, “Dune” (2021)
Just as the Arabs revolted against the Turks in 1916, the Fremen rise against the Harkonnens' 80-year reign of terror. Both fight by attempting to cripple transportation; the Arabs blow up railroad tracks and the Fremen disable the harvesting of spice, which is essential to space travel. Of course, as we all know, the Arabs later discover their own source of fuel for travel--oil--and suddenly all nations, not only the English, fix their eyes on the Desert. The Arabs eventually use this resource to make their own little oases that defy nature.
One of my favorite details from the novel is the secret garden room hidden away inside the castle in Arrakeen, the capital of Arrakis. Its very existence on a water-starved planet is tone-deaf, and yet, it represents a sacred hope for a future the Fremen have long prophesied. I love that in the film, we get a few snatches of imagery conveying the enormous cost of keeping any vegetation alive on Arrakis: Paul visiting the thirsty palms and later hiding in the ecology station with the planetologist Liet Kynes. It’s this tiny moment in the station’s laboratory that tugged at my heart. That ultra-close-up framing of a scraggly but tenacious succulent anchors that sense of Fremen perseverance that keeps honor bright. As an amateur gardener and orchid queen, I deeply appreciate the purity of equating the value of flora with that of precious jewels, as well as hope for the future. One cannot be a gardener without a healthy faith in the coming of the next sunrise, the spring, the emergence of a tender sprout from the dark soil.
What the Kynes (Pardot, and his progeny, Liet) do on Arrakis for decades before the Atreides arrive is surreptitiously assist the Fremen in their dream of terraforming the planet from desolation to verdant lushness. Because what good is a prophecy about a Bene Gesserit and her son coming to transform the world without a little helping hand? In the course of studying the ecology of Arrakis, Pardot discovers an inextricable and ineffable link between the spice and the sandworms, and there, the dream suddenly becomes a dangerous goal. The worms—worshipped as physical manifestations of Shai-Hulud, the One God—cannot survive without the Desert. Desert gods (and capitalism) are threatened by abundance, because if everyone has all they need, why pray (or work hard) for more than your neighbor, who has just as much as you? That is the double-edged sword of the Fremen prophecy.
But as humans always do, they will find other gods to worship, or, as occurs later in the novels, a god will force them to. Religion is another core of the Duniverse, and Herbert plainly and confidently asserts that humans can't help but invent and exploit it to gain or shift power. Prophecy is the ultimate meme, and someone with enough influence and patience may propagate that meme for centuries towards some end.
“Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife—chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: ‘Now it’s complete because it’s ended there.’”
from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan
The novels are chock full of tangled and engaging political intrigue and rich multicultural influences one could write endless doctoral theses about, but I, for one, am glad that Villeneuve & co. decided to present a more digestible and essential epic, i.e. something more Shakespearean. Frank Herbert, with his layer cake of storylines stratified with Middle Eastern and East Asian religious references, gave George R. R. Martin a run for his money long before A Song of Ice and Fire was even a twinkle in his eye. Say what you want about understanding Shakespeare, but one thing the man knew how to do was tie supernumerary characters together with élan, using only a sprinkle of subplots for—dare I say it—spice.
Dune contains the most iconic elements of Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth: dead fathers that need avenging, feudal fights over fiefdoms, and bloody prophecies galore. Denis managed to lovingly prune this rugged old juniper of a novel into a handsome bonsai. As a long time fan of both the books and film artistry, I applaud that bold and intuitive move, since trying to weave every thread of interest into a pair of films is no way to keep people awake in a darkened theatre. The first book alone is dense as dark matter, and no filmmaker could ever hope to showcase all of its fascinating facets in a few hours. Perhaps a lengthy miniseries, but no less, has any hope of doing the nuances any justice. Denis' adaptation contains just enough detail to whet potential new fans’ appetites to read the books themselves. And holy Lisan al-gaib, y'all really should.
Sherif Ali: Have you no fear, English?
T.E. Lawrence: My fear is my concern.
Paul Atreides: I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer.
I've seen Dune three times now. First in the theatre, then a few times on the HBO Max. I plan to see it at least one more time in the theatre soon. I'm dying to, in fact. I can't get enough of it now. The more I watch, the more I grow attached. Perhaps the garbage fire of the world is still pressing on my soul and I'm grasping for some familiar, comforting escape. And that's fine.
Villeneuve’s cast was so exquisitely chosen that my brain immediately retconned my mental images of every character so I believe they have always been played by those actors. They fit so well that I barely registered it as acting; they all just were. My heart twinges with the reunification of Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem onscreen, who were perfection in No Country For Old Men. I believe one of the worms to be secretly played by Tommy Lee Jones. Shai-Hulud is also know as “Old Man of the Desert” after all. Just another fine piece of casting. Headcanon accepted.
Hans Zimmer flexed harder than Arnold Schwarzenegger at Mister Universe. Having had a chance to listen to the entire soundtrack out of context while writing this, I must say Hans is swole AF. And I am here for it. Give him the Oscar right now.
Grieg Fraser—dude, I could have sworn you were Roger Deakins. Keep it up, sir.
All the sound folks, foley artists, editors, mixers… holy shit I felt everything vibrate through my chair and soul. Set designers... I want to know everything about how you designed/built everything.
Costumers... thank you from the bottom of my heart for NOT putting bosoms on the stillsuits. Obviously, they don't need them. Décolletage gets you nowhere in the Desert. I have had it up to *here* with bosoms being built in to every goddamned futuristic/fantasy space suit, especially when it comes to armour. From a purely utilitarian standpoint, it is nonsensical for armour to be structured like breasts. If a weapon hits a flat piece of armour, the force is spread across the chest, reducing the blow. If it strikes any part of bra-shaped armour, even if it doesn't pierce it, the force will press straight into the breastbone, which defeats the entire purpose of armour. Absurd.
Anyway, I enjoyed the inclusion of the little kangaroo mouse in Paul’s filmbooks, and the creature's cameo in the desert. This is the critter the Fremen call “muad-dib,” so there’s a little foreshadowing for you.
Finally, I find it highly amusing that many people on the interwebs are bemused by the name “Duncan Idaho.” It is the greatest name in history. Get over it. Also, *SPOILER ALERT* he is the only character in the original series who appears in all the books (in some form or another), so… he’s not quite dead yet.
Damn, he's good.