dwight@timeinc.UUCP (Dwight Ernest) (12/16/84)
I went to see DUNE last night with my wife, Sandra, and a friend she works
with, Don. We're all in the same field, computers in publishing; Don has a
remarkable capacity for trivia, and as we waited to go into the theater in the
opening-night line, he stumped us constantly with various trivial facts about
the DUNE books ("How did Gurney Halleck get his scar?" "From what feature in
the Arrakis sky did the name M'uad D'ib come from?"). Incidentally, while we
were standing in line, some people from the theater came around to pass out a
commemorative book of credits for the film and a remarkably helpful glossary
of terms from the screenplay (like FREMKIT, THUMPER, GOM JABBAR, etc.).
(By the way, in the book, M'uad D'ib is a constellation in the Arakeen sky,
"the one who points the way"--a constellation of a mouse of the desert, his
tail pointing to the north; in the film, M'uad D'ib is an imaginary face in
the second of Arrakis' two moons. Disappointing--never any reference to
"pointing the way.")
You've gotta see this movie, but...
First, the negative, and then I'll tell of some of the positive aspects of the
film.
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The film has an incredible quantity of self-importance, as did the books, but
it wasn't nearly so oppressive in print as it was on the screen. One previous
article here mentioned that the film was humorless for the most part, and
that's very true. Comic relief would have been very welcome, and could easily
have been worked into the screenplay. Just about the funniest part,
disappointingly, took place during a brief development of the character of
Piter De Vries played by Brad Dourif, the Mentat in the Harkonnen's employ,
during his recitation of a Mentat mnemonic concentration-enhancement drill
while in transit on an overhead monorail-type vehicle (resembling the 7th Ave.
IRT in NYC) in the Harkonnen complex on Giedi Prime. Watch for it; but that's
about all you'll see if you're looking for fun.
This adaptation was also interesting in its choice of which violent scenes to
use and which to avoid, along with the relative accuracy of the violence and
gore, compared with that depicted in the book. It's interesting, too, to note
throughout the film how much more emphasis was placed on gore and bloody
detail instead of upon the relative sensuality/romanticism/loveplay that I
recall from my first reading of the book where it described the love between
Chani and Paul.
Of a piece with these two points is the way women are depicted compared with
the way I seem to recall them having been depicted (or WANT to recall their
depiction) by Herbert in the first book: they're mostly spineless idiots,
incapable of any truly forceful or decisive activity in the film, whereas in
the book, most women were portrayed as very different from men (culturally,
politically, psychically, etc.) but as relative equals.
Certainly there are limits to what can be done in a film that runs a little
over two hours compared with the several million words in the first book, but
the liberties were in some case unnecessary and demeaning.
Talk about unnecessary violence... in the film, all of those in the employ of
the Harkonnens were equipped with "heart plugs" (?) that could be pulled in
case of disobedience to leak out their life's blood quickly and grossly. These
things were surgically installed in their chest and were frequently focussed
upon in the film. They were gross and terrible, which was probably the desired
effect. But let's face it: the Harkonnens were bad, bad, bad; but not THIS
bad.
Some examples:
# Kenneth McMillan as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (who acted his part
well, incidentally) isn't just grossly overweight and a sick pedophiliac with
only a small remaining kernel of the old Honor of the Great Houses; he's
seriously physically and mentally diseased without ANY regard for human life,
to whom "honor" appears to be a concept he hasn't just forgotten, but
apparently never knew. In his introductory scene (which is quite long), we see
a young beautiful male captive enter the Baron's room, carrying flowers, with
a look of terror in his eyes, accompanied by guards. The Baron finishes his
conversation with Beast Rabban and Feyd-Rautha, and approaches (actually, kind
of floats over to) the young man, who is dressed in transparent garments. The
Baron passes beneath what appears to be a shower of motor oil (which he
clearly enjoys), and then confronts the youth and violently embraces him. He
then grabs the boy's heart plug release valve and opens it, revelling in the
violent arterial bleeding which ensues, and sexually revelling in the rapid,
terrible death of this young man and the spray of his blood. Yecccccch. (Feyd
and the Beast look on this scene in rapturous voyeurism, incidentally.) This
scene is SO GROSS that it's almost campy--I half-expected the Baron to turn to
the corpse and ask, "Was it good for you, too?" and light a cigarette.
# Both of the bedroom scenes I can remember in the film are
disappointments.
In the first, which must last AT LEAST six seconds, featuring
Francesca Annis as Jessica and Jurgen Prochnow as Duke Leto, she, crying,
turns to him and says, "I'll miss Caladan SO MUCH!" Uh-huh. End of scene!
In the second, featuring Brooke Shields' almost-twin Sean
Young as Chani and Kyle MacLachlan as Paul, Chani is half sitting up in bed
and is attempting to comfort Paul following one of his prescient dreams, but,
but, but she's wearing a halter top (which appears to be part of her
stillsuit's undergarments)! Um, somehow I just can't picture Paul and Chani
sharing a bed with any clothes on. This is just plain bad interpretation and
bad direction... it would be very possible, without getting into the old tits
& ass game, to still show this scene with a little more romanticism, and
little more raw--or even refined--sensuality. Yes, they're an attractive
couple together, but they're too cute. Too much like "teen romance" instead of
the mature love story subplot it could have been.
# When Paul and Jessica were fleeing from the sneak attack by the
Harkonnens, and Jessica is facing the fact of her Duke's death, and Paul is
realizing the extent of his growing awareness, she's almost a totally
crippled, helpless, emotional wreck. This is a long distance from the strong-
willed, clear-thinking, but grieving woman portrayed by Herbert. She sits
weeping in the desert for what seems to be hours and hours. (And the stilltent
was greatly missed, too.)
# Alia, who is brilliantly played by Alicia Roanne Witt (and someone
who did her overdubbing in an almost perfect technical tour-de-force), is
shown pretty accurately in bringing about the demise of the Baron during the
Fremen attack acros the Shield Wall; but later, when she was said to have
departed the headquarters to help slay the wounded enemy (thereby earning her
title, "St. Alia of the Knife"), all we see is about three seconds of her kind
of doing a rain dance with the knife outside the building among the wounded.
The whole point of Alia was that even at two or three years old, she was a
Reverend Mother with little or no mercy, and a full-fledged Fremen; to act
properly, she should have been looking after the Water of the Wounded. But
they pulled this punch altogether.
# Then there's the whole question of SPIT. In the book, we begin to
realize how important water is, and how different the Fremen customs are from
those the Atreides are used to, when Stilgar spits on the conference table in
front of the Duke, where it's a gesture of great respect (a symbolic wasting
of one's own water) and admiration. In the film, instead of using that scene
(which was totally skipped), we see the Baron Vladimir spitting on Jessica's
face as she's bound and gagged, about to meet her supposed death. So instead
of spitting being a symbol of respect and differing customs, it's used here as
an act of violence against a trussed woman.
The effects are technically disappointing, especially the worm riding, which
is almost as silly as the effects from "Plan Nine from Outer Space." But the
artistic depiction of the worms is done with great accuracy to the drawings we
might all remember from the Dune Calendars and the "Illustrated Dune."
The Fremen weaponry ideas the filmmakers chose were just plain stupid. They
are some kind of Voice amplifiers, and they're too boring even to explain. The
ornithopters are badly done and not accurate at all. (Gee, as a student pilot,
I was really kind of looking forward to the 'thopters, too. Forget it.)
Two scenes from the book that stood out in my mind as having great cinematic
potential were not even included in the film.
The first, which takes place just after the Atriedes arrive on
Arrakis, is the famous dinner party scene, in which there's a great intriguing
interplay between the guests, and in which the dialoge could have been some of
the best ever filmed. Could have ranked in memory with the Cantina scene from
"Star Wars." Totally skipped.
The second, which takes place the evening after the dinner party,
would have had doubtful and disturbed Duncan Idaho returning to the House
after a bout of drinking Spice Beer and confronting an outraged Jessica which
his factually groundless suspicions of her coming betrayal. This would have
been a great opportunity for Duncan, played by a really rafish Richard Jordan.
Totally skipped.
Prochnow's Duke was an exception to the mostly great casting and a
disappointment. I was expecting a deeper-voice, physically larger man with
more PRESENCE. He had great, gentle eyes, and did a great job, but he just
wasn't the right guy for the part. His voice was too high-pitched, too gentle,
too soft.
Everett McGill as Stilgar wasn't nearly as fascinating a character as he could
have been. The direction left no time for the development of the Fremen
leader's psyche, his motivation, his ethics.
The Mentats were only sort of passable. So much more could have been done with
this discipline. Freddie Jones as Thufir Hawat was too emotional for the human
calculator.
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And now on with the positive comments.
MacLachlan, although he's a pretty preppy (as mentioned by another article
writer), is appropriately regal and does a fine job as Paul Atreides. This guy
was a casting coup de grace... he really fits in
with the way he was portrayed
by Herbert.
As I mentioned, Brad Dourif as Piter De Vries was pretty good as Piter De
Vries, the totally twisted Mentat. It's not his fault he didn't get a chance
to develop his character more and was seriously crippled by bad direction.
Francesca Annis as Jessica was appropriately beautiful, with a spectacularly
pretty face (especially that nose, for some reason). She did a truly good
performance; too bad the screenwriters made her part so damned wimpy. Annis
and Prochnow made a believable royal couple--they looked RIGHT together.
Again, it would have been spectacular instead of just good if only they'd had
the chance.
Sting as Feyd Rautha got an increidible welcome when he first appeared on
screen, at least in the theater where I saw it. He was an almost perfect
interpretation of the character, and his performance was excellent.
The costumery was excellent as well--those Bene Gesserit robes, headdresses,
and dresses are going to stand out in my mind for a long time to come, and
some of the best cinematography in the entire film included shots of the Bene
Gesserit women simply WALKING, with their costumes flowing about them. Very
correct.
The Guild Navigators, left mostly to the readers' imagination by Herbert, were
something out of a VERY strange but vividly appropriate dream. (They were said
to have the "ability to fold space when deep within a spice trance," when we
all know that this is a technical accomplishment rather than a psychic one,
and that the Navigators really use the spice trance to see the way rather than
to perform the ~"motion without motion" (a quote from the film) itself. But I'm
getting picky, I guess.) Their physical shape, only dimly perceived through
the spice gasses, was sort of the way I had imagined them. (Curious, though,
that the speech organ of the Navigator should so closely resemble a deformed
but articulating human pudenda.) The rolling coffin-like monstrosity in which
the Navigator arrived in the court of the Emperor was really well-done, and
that scene is quite memorable.
The Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen), who appropriately introduces the story
we're about to see, is played well, and she's a very attractive actress, but
except for the opening, we only see her kind of standing around among the
Emperor's court. (Yet another example of the disappointing background roles
given to the women in the film.)
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In summary, don't miss this film. It's more than just worth seeing.
But be prepared for some disappointments, and understand that they're mostly
due to the limitations of the medium and the compression of the already
extremely dense writing by Herbert. DUNE, the first book, had at least three
good major feature-length motion pictures in it alone (perhaps most
appropriately broken up along the way the three books-within-the-first-book
are divided). This single film attempts to compress that entire long novel
into a single motion picture, and in so doing many important details get lost.
--
--Dwight Ernest KA2CNN \ Usenet:...vax135!timeinc!dwight
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