#11: dune meets denis

please go see this in imax

The first half of this newsletter will be free of Dune spoilers. The second half will not. Please stop reading at the warning + line break if you don’t want spoilers.

I literally cannot explain how good this look is— only Timothee could pull off this popped collar

The first lines of Dune are as follows:

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Maud’Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take more special care that you locate Maud’Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis”

With four unknown terms in the first paragraph alone, Dune falls prey to a sci-fi stereotype that often turns people away from the genre— namely, that any reader must quickly commit to learning strange made-up words like “gom jabbar” or “Sardaukar” to follow the story. This barrier to entry is what’s long relegated sci-fi to the side alleys of nerd culture, but with a $165 million budget, Dune is sidelined no more.

Dune has been famously difficult to adapt, and at first glance, this opening paragraph explains why. Frank Herbert immediately drops us into a foreign universe plush with detail, and any adaptation would struggle under the weight of explaining this universe’s structure, rules, and ways. The worldbuilding of Dune is also rich beyond the average sci-fi novel in that it covers not only a complex intergalactic government but also the infrastructure beyond— the economic, the spiritual, the militaristic, as well as the political. 

Yet even with all the education required to explain the Dune universe, pointing to worldbuilding as the root of its (un)adaptability is a red herring. At this point, films like Blade Runner or Children of Men prove that Hollywood isn’t afraid of adapting complex worldbuilding. And a show like Game of Thrones, while within the fantasy genre, proves that mainstream audiences have a large appetite for that complexity.

What truly makes Dune difficult to adapt is that, despite all of its intricate plotting, it’s a novel that doesn’t feel all that concerned with plot. Herbert makes the odd choice to reveal most significant plot events before they even happen, whether via prophecy or the excerpts of fictionalized historical records that begin each chapter of the novel. This means the events of Dune often sit at an arm’s length, an effect compounded by the emphasis the book places on legend. The very first lines tell us that the story we’re reading has already been codified into the annals of history. 

Like a religious text, Dune is less interested in plotting events like dominoes and more interested in hinting at what, if we weren’t so constrained to the myopic present, the domino chain could show. This results in a swirling mix of high-minded themes that touch on everything from colonialism to climate change, and while it’s difficult to say this all coheres by the end of Dune, the book probably owes its endurance to its willingness to push these themes to the forefront and to champion them even over plot. 

This is, of course, a nightmare for any would-be adapters of Dune. The soul of the novel is not in its sci-fi details but in something much less tangible. While the book relies heavily on putting characters’ inner thoughts to text, a film must translate those moments of interiority into exteriors: visuals, dialogue, and explicit narration. With a big enough budget, you can design beautiful costumes or CGI whole new landscapes, but all the money in the world won’t guarantee you’ll capture the je ne sais quoi of this novel. 

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The second half of this newsletter contains spoilers for Dune. Stop reading now if you don’t want to see those spoilers

Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Liet-Kynes

One of my favorite scenes in Dune is the death of Liet-Kynes. It’s one of the stranger chapters of the book: Kynes is left to die by the Harkonnens, and he wanders the desert in a delirium, staggering towards death. He soon finds himself sinking beneath the sand he knows so well and has worked so hard to change— his last thought, “as his planet killed him”, is that “the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error”. 

This scene is presented very differently in Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation. Instead of being captured by Harkonnens then released to die, Liet-Kynes is simply surprised by Sardaukar on the desert plains. Recognizing her imminent death, Kynes thumps her first onto the sand with ferocity until an enormous sandworm emerges from the dust, consuming Kynes and the Sardaukar alike. Before she’s swallowed into the worm’s gaping maw, she closes her eyes in a moment of peace or understanding. 

This scene is a clear illustration of the difficult series of trade-offs adaptation presents. The motivation behind changing the original scene is clear: having Kynes die of exposure requires another plot thread— we’d have to see Kynes’ capture, incarceration, release, then death. A surprise assassination by the Sardaukar is an economical shortcut to the same result, but the price is the original tone of the scene. 

Herbert’s version of Kynes death is a meditation on the ruthlessness of Arrakis. It’s about reinforcing the lack of human control against the might of nature; indeed, Dune is really a story about how bending nature to human will requires harnessing generations of human power, knowledge, and resources. Villeneuve’s version, by contrast, is a final moment of triumph for Kynes in the face of oppression. She, with her superior knowledge of her planet, is able to wield its might for her own purposes. The final shot of her closed eyes, the hint of a smile on her face, suggests she is working, for once, in perfect synchronicity with Arrakis. 

This example isn’t meant to imply that the adaptation has compromised Herbert’s original story. It simply illustrates the choices necessitated by film adaptation. Here, Villeneuve made the story-telling decision to simplify, which forces a deviation from the source text and, for better or worse, creates thematic consequences. This scene belies the infinite number of impossible choices that were made over the course of the film. Despite the 2 hour and 35 minute runtime, you get the sense that Villeneuve often erred on the side of practicality, offering Dune up with as much story economy as possible. 

Whether doing so has prevented Villeneuve from accessing the heart of Dune remains to be seen. In isolation, the changes made to Liet-Kynes’ death are negligible. But hundreds of those choices, hundreds of tweaks to the thematic implications, and hundreds of revisions might make Villeneuve’s Dune something entirely different from Herbert’s. I’m not opposed to that. The spirit of adaptation is that there’s something lost in the translation of novel to film, always, but if we’re very lucky, there could be something gained as well. Here’s hoping we’ll get to find out.

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Culture Crumbs

• It’s been ages since the last bloopers, so I’m behind the times, but can we all just marvel at the red carpet looks Dune produced?

  

  no one is doing it like zendaya

• Speaking of, special shout out to Ana de Armas’ dress in No Time to Die, which could be yours for the low, low price of 995 euros

  

  keira knightley called… she wants this dress in green

• Ruined, a podcast that ruins horror movies for those too scared to see them (or for those who want to revel in other people’s horror!). Their episode on Audition makes me grateful I’m not dating (and thanks to a lovely friend for the original rec)

• The French Dispatch soundtrack, which is exactly as charming as you think it is

• “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more”, which proves that Shakespeare has still got it 500 years later and that I need to read Much Ado About Nothing

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Thanks for reading!