Dune part two : first impressions

I covered Dune : Part One when it came out, so it seems only fair I should cover the "concluding" part as well. I'm gonna do this in two sections, first without and then with spoilers. I added the suffix "first impressions" because Czech cinema doesn't provide English subtitles for the Fremen-language scenes. There are quite a lot more of these than in the first film, and while not understanding them didn't spoil my enjoyment, I did feel there were some substantial sections missing. I'll update this when I see it at home with full subtitling.

Without Spoilers

Technically this is a masterpiece and anyone who disagrees is a bit weird. The story is a clever blend of the truly science-fictional and contemporary sociological commentary, which in many ways is less subtle but more emphatic than Herbert's original. The message is clear and unapologetic without being overbearing or distracting, and, crucially, both sticks to and aligns with the theme of the original book(s).

The audio-visuals are simply stunning. To paraphrase Herbert himself, this is a movie to be experienced. It's loud – very, very loud – to the point where it becomes genuinely physically exhausting. In fact I don't think I've seen any other movie which has this sheer, visceral, brutal physical power. It's like being punched in the face, but somehow in a good way. The sandworm-riding scenes... these are seat-grippingly intense. I would not have done it like that, and I'd have been wrong. They're better than I ever dared hope.

The acting... well, Rebecca Ferguson is a fucking terrifying Jessica to the point where it's hard to imagine anyone ever equalling this performance. Even, perhaps especially, when she's not doing the Voice with a capital V she's got one of the scariest, almost horror-film voices of anyone. Chalamet too has really dialled it up to 11. At one point, even though it was all in Fremen with no English subtitles, I would probably have risen from my seat with a cry of "LISAN AL GAIB !" and charged into battle against... well, whoever, really. The ushers, probably.

The Harkonnens remain suitably villainous, the Baron a virtual demon and Feyd a true sadistic psychopath. These simple monsters aside, all the other characters feel if anything more human and developed than in the novel. As in the first movie, the added humour makes them feel more believable than the virtual archetypes of the novel, and from this much is gained while very little is lost. Chani especially feels like a more developed person; Jessica's progression to full Revered Mother is also commendably well-done. The Fremen as a whole have more diversity of cultures and beliefs which I feel adds something, even if it's a little too explicit in pointing out how diverse they are.

I don't have much I could honestly find fault with. There are certainly choices in how to do things which I personally would have done differently, but to my mind I feel Villeneuve's decisions are perfectly valid. Certainly they don't undermine the original story and if anything they tend to enhance its clarity for the viewers who haven't read the books, without dumbing anything down for the fans. 

Perhaps the one thing I would say could be improved is the mysticism. Dune is primarily a science fiction rather than a fantasy story, but the one genuine element of magic (prescience) is underdeveloped, in marked contrast to the first movie. It's there, but its importance is underplayed, and the interesting theme that Herbert developed of how to know the future is to be constrained by it is not much explored. This is a shame, but it's a theme which is lacking rather than absent. Everything that needs to be there is there, even if the balance is occasionally questionable. If you've read the book, you can fill in a lot of the blanks for yourself without being inconsistent with the movie's version of the story.

Finally, pacing. I perhaps would have liked the film to be about 30 minutes longer, not to develop the story any further (nothing much is needed here, though more of the Imperium would have been nice) but just to slow things down, just a bit. It would have been beneficial to rebalance things to have a bit less of the relentless pounding of the lasguns for the first two thirds of the film and develop to a longer final battle sequence.

All these thoughts, I stress, are petty in the extreme. They are minor quibbles, not complaints. Similarly for the ending. I love the original, incredibly rounded ending : I think Herbert was at his narratively most magnificent in suddenly and satisfyingly bringing the whole, hugely complex tale to a clear and decisive conclusion in the space of a few pages of shining brilliance. Villeneuve opts not to do this, going for a more open, ominous ending (hence I termed it the "concluding" part) that is nevertheless distinctly an ending. It's not how I would have done it, but it works.

As I said of part one, this isn't the decisive version of the movie adaptation but it's a damn good one. All my quibbles really are a matter of personal preference and no more than that. I'm giving this 9/10 : this is, realistically, the best version of Dune we can ever hope to see.

With (Minor) Spoilers

Okay, now for the juicy bits ! Don't worry, there's a big gap so you won't accidentally read any shock revelations about how Paul is actually an elephant in disguise or whatnot. I don't think I give away anything that would actually spoil someone's enjoyment of the movie, but you have been warned just in case.

I first read Dune when I was a teenager. It's safe to say I was more enthralled by the world itself than anything else at the time : the sheer brutality of Arrakis, the magnificence of the ships and sandworms, the blend of psychology, science, politics and mysticism all at once, with some enormously complex character interactions. There were elements of the classical heroes and villains, the truly good and truly evil, richly blended with subtly of difficult moral choices.

It would never have occurred to me that it's about oil because my mind just doesn't work like that, I always enjoy stories on their own basis first and only read in any analogies (if at all) much later. Indeed, to create a world you can enjoy on its own terms, without needing to draw parallels with real life, this is the highest form of imagination : a story that only works in its contemporary context is in my view a shallower thing.

In the book, if I remember correctly, Paul falls for his own mythology. He may know he's a man, and often doubt his own choices, but he tries to actually behave as a god or prophet. There's a mood that something truly supernatural and inexplicable is at work, that the gift of seeing the future is, in a way that's never clearly stated, far more advanced than the similar abilities of the Guild navigators. Paul may have the emotional turmoil of a real person but he does not, so far as I remember, ever really doubt his own messianic duty. And duty it is. He doesn't relish the choices he has to make, indeed he can be repelled by them, but he makes them nonetheless because he believes he must. He finds a way forward which is the only possible way, and makes that choice despite its terrible purpose and abominable moral cost.

Teenage me was to an extent happy to go along with this from Paul's own perspective. In this way the ending of the book definitely gives the reader the legitimate option to accept it as something basically optimistic, that while tragedies have occurred, a better future awaits and justice has been served. This isn't the only interpretation but it is possible to read the book in this way. Not so in the movie. Here the moral ambiguity is thrust more directly in the viewer's face, and Paul's own doubt makes it unavoidable that he's not the messiah he's a very naughty Fremen. This definitely does work and is absolutely consistent with the underlying message of the book. Intellectually, I have to say I prefer it. But emotionally, I equally have to say I preferred my original reading and Kyle McLaughlin's' creepy-demigod 1984 depiction of Paul. This version was to me more impactful but less thoughtful. As I say, I regard Villeneuve's choice as an absolutely valid one.

Of course, it fits the complexity of the story perfectly that the differences from movie and novel are here only that : differences, neither better nor worse in and of themselves.

Likewise Chani. In the movie, the Fremen are more fragmented in their religious beliefs than the novel : firmly united against the Harkonnen but culturally more diverse than what I remember from the book. Chani, as Paul's not-wife, is a sensible choice to represent the more prophesy-skeptical Fremen faction. Having made the decision that Paul himself doesn't believe in his own divinity, it makes good sense to have Chani, the woman he falls in love with, be someone who is publicly against the notion of prophesy. It gives her a more active role in the story, even though it's occasionally a bit too blunt in its moral delivery.

That morality is an important point, however. Certainly there's an element of the white saviour trope at work behind the novel, but only at most subconsciously. Anyone seeing it as being Desert Avatar has very badly missed the point, for several reasons. First, the Bene Gesserit planted superstitions among the Fremen as a means of control (as a safety option in the book if I remember correctly, but deliberately to facilitate the Kwisatz Haderach in the movie). And this is Chani's key point, that the prophesy is a means of enslavement. Paul in this sense is a saviour only because the situation was engineered. It isn't any innate racial superiority that gives the Atreides an advantage, it's political manipulation and deliberate military repression of the Fremen by the other peoples of the Imperium.

Second, as someone pointed out elsewhere, Paul could never have succeeded anywhere else but on Arrakis. Without constant exposure to the spice and the Water of Life, the sleeper would never awaken : had the Harkonnen attacked the Atreides on another world, Paul would simply have died. Paul without the Fremen is really not much of anything; a key part of the story is that Paul is a genuine blend of cultures. He is shaped both by the gentleness of Caladan and by the bitterness of Arrakis, both an Atreides and a Fremen. They lead him as much as he leads them, they raise him from boy to manhood more than his own parents do (albeit this aspect is present in many white saviour stories). And it's the Fremen themselves who, though with some coaxing, almost actively choose to make Paul into a Messiah, rather than merely passively accepting him as such. They have genuine agency and awareness in how they respond to the situation.

Thirdly, and arguably most importantly... Paul is just not a saviour in the classical sense. Here too the movie makes this clearer than the book, having been informed by the sequels. Paul is in no sense a despotic villain, but he isn't a white knight. The only way to save the Fremen is jihad, or "holy war" in the movies understandably more political terminology. The consequences of this are unimaginable horrors on a galactic scale. You could call him a saviour, but only if you think salvation should be soaked in the blood of a million worlds.

That latter is the part I'm most uncomfortable with. I still like the simpler, good-versus-evil vibe of my teenage reading of the book, but I respect Villeneuve for going down this darker path. It's a discomfort that I'm actively comfortable with, so to speak.

For this reason I get even more annoyed (as per last time) about any efforts to make Dune more diverse or appealing to modern moral sensibilities. That is exactly what it should not do. Dune revolves around unpleasant choices in an unpleasant dystopian reality. Making Liet Kynes a woman is of no import whatever because it has no bearing on the story; making any Bene Gesserit male would be insulting to the point of bordering on the offensive. The whole point of the story is that some aspects of reality are simply bad. It doesn't promote anything, in any way. It simply presents. I'm far from adverse to direct morality tales which present an author's personal opinion, but Dune is not it, and trying to make it into one would have been farcical.

All in all, a stunning piece of cinema, and I might well go and see it in 4DX just so I can be blasted with sand and really get the full sandworm experience.

What's next ?

I've recently come across two discussions in which the moral point of an argument seemed to be absent. Consequently the whole point of the debate seemed to be missed, with everyone dancing in circles around the target while never getting anywhere near it. Specifically, these boil down to :

1. What do you want to do with this information ? For example, why do you want to know if two demographics have fundamentally different abilities ? 
2. What do you think will happen next if this policy is implemented ? I mean the immediate consequences of, saying, giving more rights to an underprivileged group. Do you think that this is in and of itself inherently bad, or is it only the foreseen slippery slope that causes you problems ?

The first was about whether men and women have similar abilities. It's an interesting question, I suppose, but... why ask it ? What are you going to do with the answer ?

The second was about the rising debate in the UK on legalising assisted dying. Okay, fair enough, those campaigning against it say it will ultimately lead to (in essence) public suicide booths. As the worse-case scenario, that's clearly bad. But what about the best case ? What about the cases where someone was properly informed, repeatedly consented well ahead of time and at the moment of decision, to ending their life to escape unendurable agony – should those people actually be forced to continue against their own wishes ?

Now proclaiming a slippery slope is not itself a fallacy. It can happen that one thing will lead to another, ending in a position that nobody wanted. But it's a fallacy to insist that this will happen without justifying why this would be so. In particular, when other countries have implemented similar legislation and found that actually, yes, people do want to end their own suffering but (amazingly enough) remain steadfastly against suicide booths... then why do you think it would happen in some countries but not others ? Or even if sometimes a slippery slope has happened but not universally, still you must then justify why it would be likely to occur in the particular case under consideration.

It's far safer and simpler to first say what you believe about the thing-in-itself. If you say that mercy killings are fundamentally immoral, then we don't have to worry about all the paraphernalia and secondary concerns. We can skip the complex pragmatic issues and go directly to the basic moral issue at hand. Otherwise, these objections to AD feel similar to me to early objections to gay marriage : that it would eventually end in people marrying their cars and pets and siblings and suchlike. Okay, those scenarios, which failed to happen, would be bad, but what about the issue at hand, the thing-in-itself ? What exactly was supposedly wrong with gay marriage ?

Now if you don't object to the TII, that's okay. At that point we can proceed to the pragmatics and potential for a slippery slope. But we shouldn't skip the phase of discussing the TII, because this is the most important and morally interesting part of the discussion. It also provides vital information about the basis on which the debate should proceed : if we both agree on gay marriage or AD or whatever being fundamentally moral, but only disagree on what's likely to be the practical result, that's different from having a really basic moral disagreement.

And after all, your pragmatic objections might be valid. There's nothing inherently wrong or false about presuming that one good thing will lead to other bad things; sometimes one thing does carry unintended consequences. The problem is that you must demonstrate that this is (a) likely to actually occur (e.g. gay marriage has not led to incest or auto-erotica and there was never the slightest reason to think that it would, because these are not sexual desires that are inherent but repressed in any sizeable fraction of the population), and (b) that any consequences you see happening definitely would be problematic in themselves, that they would have some intrinsic moral problems.

As for why you want to know... it might be that you want to account for genuine differences and allow for people of different abilities, providing facilities to accommodate them. But here you generally only need to know what abilities and ability levels actually exist, and how common they are. Demographics are often irrelevant, except for schemes to deliberately uplift targeted underprivileged groups. You need to know what the abilities are, not who has them, because you can meritocratically test for this on an individual basis.

If you insist on judging people based on demographics... well, that's why the question, "what will you do with this information ?" is an important one. It may well be that you're just curious. Okay but why pursue the issue at all ? Why do you apparently want it to be true ? Why exactly does it matter to you ? If you have some good evidence that the groups are different then you probably don't need a study to confirm it. If you don't, it's probably safe to assume they're the same. Presuming a difference is, in general, a very strange thing to do, and I don't think it's at all unfair to want to know why it should matter.

There is of course a major exception : medical data. Men and women do have physical and physiological differences, and especially if one group is more prevalent in some area than another, it makes sense to be prepared for this eventuality. Presuming similarity here should be no more than a starting assumption, which you can actively test for to determine the proper course of treatment. Here though, the obvious physical differences should make it equally obvious that there might be medical differences as well, whereas in the case of mental skills, the case is (to put it mildly) infinitely weaker. It would seem that there is an obvious need to allow for medical differences existing; there is no such case for mathematical or creative faculties.

But in general, if you can recognise that the question of demographic differences might be unpleasant, and take steps to address this, and show that your response won't be simple unfair discrimination... well then, perhaps you have a case to make. Until you do this, however, you should be able to understand why I might view your curiosity as being uncomfortably close to bigotry.

The unifying factor in these cases, of what happens next and why do you need to know, is that metadata is essential. Knowing the moral preferences of each side changes the entire tone of the debate. So it's incredibly helpful to present this information first, i.e. state what you think is fundamentally wrong with the proposal in and of itself, or tell me what you want to do with the information which you think is very important. Do this first, I repeat, and only then we can move on to discussing the secondary effects. If we both accept that there's nothing wrong the with TII, then we can debate the slippery slope; if neither of us is clearly trying to be a bigoted twat, then we can discuss demographic differences.

Moral issues are anyway often complicated. Perhaps this guidance might help simplify the discussions, if only just a little bit.