The missing link between multiplex and arthouse, Denis Villeneuve’s sandy sci-fi opus is dense and moody but also thoroughly immersive and often sublime50 best films of 2021 in the UK: the listMore on the best culture of 2021Dune reminds us what a
Hollywood blockbuster can be. Implicitly, the message of Denis Villeneuve’s fantasy epic, written again and again in the sand, is that big-budget spectaculars don’t have to be dumb or hyperactive, that it’s possible to allow the odd quiet passage. Adapted from Frank Herbert’s 60s opus, Dune is dense, moody and quite often sublime – the missing link between the multiplex and the arthouse. Encountering it was like stumbling across some fabulous lost tribe, or a breakaway branch of America’s founding fathers who laid out the template for a different and better new world.
Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, your archetypal hero, unsure of his powers and questioning the merits of the mountainous task before him. His father, the Duke (Oscar Isaac), has been handed stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis, source of a magical substance called “spice” that extends life and fuels space travel – all the good stuff. But Arrakis, though sandy, is not entirely deserted. It is home to vast worms that can rise up with little warning, and an oppressed people – the Fremen – who see the spice harvesters as exploiters.