Watched in the cinema (43rd visit in 2021)

"Dune" is the Holy Grail of science fiction. Frank Herbert's novel, published in 1965, which grew into a six-volume cycle until Herbert's death in 1985, was long considered unfilmable. In 1984, Italian production legend Dino De Laurentiis and nightmare filmmaker David Lynch, who was still at the very beginning of his career and almost ended it with "Dune", dared to tackle Herbert's work and failed miserably. More fascinating than Lynch's failed adaptation or the mediocre TV adaptations that followed, however, are the anecdotes about the projects that never got off the ground.

David Lean, who had conjured up beautiful desert landscapes and an adventure and colonial story similar at its core in "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), was under discussion as director, as was Ridley Scott, who instead preferred to turn to "Blade Runner" (1982) and, after his "Alien" (1979), set the next milestone in science fiction film. The psychedelic vision of Alejandro Jodorowsky, who came from Chile and lived in Paris, failed because of the budget. His version should have lasted 14 hours and combined designs by comic genius Mœbius alias Jean Giraud and "Alien" creator HR Giger with an illustrious ensemble consisting of Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger and Jodorowsky's son Brontis. Frank Pavich's "Jodorowsky's Dune" (2013) documents as hilariously as it does wonderfully just how crazy this project was and in what direction the sci-fi genre could have headed had Jodorowsky realised his film.

As is well known, nothing came of all this. Instead, Denis Villeneuve has now taken on one of his declared favourite novels. As usual for the French-Canadian, he also approached this mega-project with extreme meticulousness. Villeneuve already proved that cinema audiences should pay attention to this director before he turned to science fiction. Films such as "Prisoners" or "Sicario" were all not only immensely exciting, they also bore his own signature, which the director has retained to this day and refined from film to film. With "Arrival", the film visionary born in 1967 showed that Sci-Fi can be more than mere spectacle, and with "Blade Runner 2049", the sequel to Scott's "Blade Runner", that he does not shy away from comparison with role models - even more: that his visions of the future can keep up with the greatest in film history. An adaptation of Frank Herbert's "Dune" seems only logical.

"Blade Runner" already had a literary model, Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", which appeared only three years after "Dune" and yet could hardly be more different. While Herbert tells with epic breath of far-flung noble houses in a planet-spanning universe, Dick's comparatively slim little book presents the hyperventilating interior view of an unreliable narrator in a megacity on Earth. And where Herbert's literature echoed the flowering dreams of the hippies, Dick's echoed the Vietnam trauma and the paranoia of the Nixon era. This is darker and more confused, but above all much clearer and much more open to interpretation. Perhaps this is why Ridley Scott preferred an adaptation of "Blade Runner" in the early 1980s. Interestingly, Villeneuve's "Dune" now also resonates with much of Philip K. Dick.

And Villeneuve also learned from David Lynch's "Dune". Lynch's adaptation failed on many levels, but above all because it had to tell too much in too little time. Denis Villeneuve does not repeat this mistake. His remake only covers a good half of the first novel. And even for this he takes his time. The introduction to the noble houses of Atreides and Harkonnen, to their ways of life and world views, to their hierarchies and constellations of characters take up a lot of space. As a cinema audience, it takes just as long to find your way around the desert planet of Arrakis together with the newcomers. But you never get bored watching all this.

Because Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" is also a basic course in screenwriting. His way of telling stories does not require clumsy inner monologues like David Lynch once did. Together with his two co-writers Jon Spaihts (of whom I was afraid because he wrote the shitty "Passengers") and Eric Roth (Oscar for the screenplay to "Forrest Gump"), Villeneuve proves how exciting a sprawling exposition can be. The information is conveyed quite organically, via scenes that are integrated into daily routines and in this way reveal something about the world shown and about the relationship of the characters to each other, while at the same time moving the plot forward at all times.

Many minutes pass before the action enters this adaptation, but they fly by (as does the entire film). And even before that, Villeneuve is already putting on spectacular spectacles. The director literally bludgeons his audience with sheer size. The landscapes seem endless, the buildings, spaceships and machines are gigantic. Hans Zimmer's music hums and rattles wildly, making you tremble inside. The incredulous amazement at the sight of these imposing images also stems from the fact that in Villeneuve's work everything looks real and nothing computer-generated - neither the sets nor the finely choreographed fights; completely different and much more convincing than in so many comic book adaptations, to which Villeneuve's film is also a real alternative for an adult audience in terms of content.

Technically perfectly realised, Villeneuve's "Dune" also seems almost aseptically cool in its flawlessness. The warmth comes from the characters, who interact lovingly with each other. The relationships of the young Paul Atreides - played by Timothée Chalamet with an inimitable melancholy look - with his parents and with his teacher and fatherly friend Duncan Idaho bring an intimacy to this film that is lacking in its pictures. The impressive images are strength and weakness at the same time. For as overwhelming as they look, they seem interchangeable.

In "Dune", Denis Villeneuve's previously shown handwriting takes a back seat as never before to a style that is omnipresent in contemporary science fiction cinema, characterised by minimalism designed down to the last detail. As usual, Villeneuve relies in "Dune" on brutalist architecture, on spartanically furnished rooms stripped of all ornamentation and on an extremely reduced colour palette. Visually, however, the result could also have come from Ridley Scott's, Christopher Nolan's or James Gray's most recent films. Yes, even expensively produced television series such as "Westworld", "Raised by Wolves" or the Asimov adaptation "Foundation" announced for the end of September 2021 differ only imperceptibly visually. As miserably as David Lynch's "Dune" failed, in retrospect you have to give him credit for his courage to use an opulent, baroque décor and a stylistic pluralism that drifts off into camp.

The depth of content of the original also falls by the wayside in the transfer from book to film. While the members of the House of Atreides are still vividly drawn, the Harkonnens, who are far more complex in the original, are turned into one-dimensional villains. In the context of genre cinema, however, these despicable antagonists by no means miss their mark. A little more depth than just a few allusions to past colonial politics and the current world political situation would have been nice, though. We were used to more from Villeneuve in this respect. But all the prerequisites for making (even) more out of the complex political, social, economic, ecological and religious web of the first part in the second are already in place. An impressive start that remains true to the original and gives hope for a brilliant sequel.