After the world premiere, in London on February 15, 2024, the second part of the film was released in cinemas around the world on March 1 Dunes: the work of the Canadian Villeneuve, author of Blade Runner 2049, sequel to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, appreciated by critics but revealed to be a commercial failure, realizes and collects all the premises of the first part of the film, released three years ago, and gives finally justice to the work of the writer Frank Herbert.
Herbert will dedicate six books to the events of the planet Arrakis, the place where almost the entire film takes place (the work will be completed following the death of the author by his son Brian, who will write some final novels based on notes and notes left by his father). But let’s be clear: Villeneuve does not try, in his film, to slavishly repeat the events told in Herbert’s novel. This would be detrimental to the rhythm and narrative of the film, where the intrigues and events of the houses of the Landsraad, the feudal society that characterizes the literary universe of the Dune cycle, are mostly omitted to focus instead even more on the figure of Paul, the Messiah prophesied by the Fremen or, if you want to put it in other terms, the Kwisatz Haderach, the Supreme Being longed for by the Bene Gesserit, an all-female sisterhood who wishes to use the powers and abilities of the Kwisatz Haderach to their own ends and for purposes that go beyond the lives of entire generations.
Moreover, even David Lynch, who had already proposed his own film version of Dune in 1984, understood that this path was not viable. But if Lynch had made his film a sort of encyclopedia, a gigantic introduction where everything in Herbert’s world is explained with long digressions that break the rhythm of the film several times, Villeneuve constructs a film where the images are the true common thread of the film. The entire framework: the desert, the caves, the dunes of Arrakis speak for themselves, since there is no need to explain, there is no need to give a label to everything.
Life is life, and as such it must be lived: the revolts against the emperor, the fight against the Harkonnens present themselves, and the spectator experiences these situations in their manifestation, and in their exhaustion. The superb and solemn music of Hans Zimmer, which here surpasses itself in the magniloquence of its Maghrebi and Arabian tones, gives life to an extraordinary synesthesia with the images of the great Worms, which cross the deserts of Harrakis with the same vehemence and visual power of the bison in Costner’s Dances with Wolves prairie. But if we stopped here, Villeneuve’s film would be pure form without substance, a finely crafted urn containing ashes. Dune Part 2 links form to substance: just as one feels wonder in seeing wonderful planets such as Kaitain, the Eden where the Padishah emperor Shaddam IV resides, so one feels horror in witnessing the demonic spectacle of Giedi Prime, the planet of the Harkonnen where the parades in arms of the Baron’s subordinates recall the Nazi celebrations of Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl. Images are the terrible visions of Paul, which destine the young Atreides to the existence of a ruthless leader and emperor, of a Messiah who will cause trillions of deaths in the holy war waged against the major houses of the Landsraad.
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Muhammad Hussein, in one of his articles signed for Middle East Monitor of 15 March 2024, makes a comparison between the events narrated in the film and the terrible conflict that broke out in Gaza on 7 October 2023 (we limit ourselves to defining it as a conflict: other personalities, including Moni Ovadia, to name an Italian one, in a broadcast for Radio Cusano Campus, have perhaps better defined the horror that has been taking place in recent months). The comparison seems even more accurate if you think about the terms used, “Mahdi” for Paul Atreides, “Fedaykin” for the desert warriors, which cannot help but make you think of Fedayin.
The MEM journalist analyzes all the elements of the film that can be traced back to the ongoing war, and the resulting massacre: The Fremen are the Palestinian people, oppressed and now deprived of freedom and peace, subject to constant attacks by the Harkonnen , who would represent the Zionist forces, and not only, of Israel (it should be kept in mind that not everyone in the Israeli state is in favor of bombing schools and kindergartens). All under the watchful eyes of the emperor, who would embody the British Empire, which had promised Palestine to the Arabs/Fremen and then betrayed them in favor of the Harkonnen/Zionists. Literary works and artistic fiction, moreover, often deal with historical and contemporary facts or events. In the case of Dune Part 2, Paul, the Madhi or the Lisan Al Gaib of the Fremen, is a Messiah who operates in history, not a simple abstract concept: when he has to undertake the path that worries him so much, he does so while seeing a people destroyed and tortured.
In the film there is a scene in which the Harkonnen bomb a Fremen position to weaken its resistance and to ensure the resumption of the supply of spice, a psychotropic substance that allows the Guild’s navigators to fold space and carry out interstellar journeys vital for the existence of the Imperium (identified by Hussein as the symbol of the new Anglo-American order). Arrakis is a coveted planet precisely for its spice, just as the territories of the Middle East are coveted for oil, the epicenter of the clash between Arab countries and colonial powers for the control of the production and trade of black gold.
The image of the bombing in the film cannot help but recall the destruction of Gaza, the photos of 4-5 year old children who see their siblings, even small newborns, torn apart by bombs; children who rely on prayer, to ask for an end to the horror and almost to give thanks for those few moments in which they saw their brothers alive and to entrust their souls to God. The prayers of children for their dead brothers are the same as those the Fremen, oppressed by the Harkonnen’s abuses, turn to Paul, in the hope that they can find an answer.
Also because while in the imaginary world of fairy tales and cinema, the struggle of the Palestinians is compared to that of the rebels against tyrannical empires (see Star Wars, but not only) and people “root” for the rebels against evil, in the real world in which we live, genocide is tolerated and the deaths of innocent children are justified, when they are not kept silent.
If the common morality of much of the West and of the so-called developed world, as we see, does not tell the tragic reality, the hope that this will happen can also come from watching a film, which opens our eyes to the historical moment we are living in.
