In one of the most arresting sequences in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, the Fremen fighter Chani (Zendaya) teaches the Atreides Duke Paul (Timothée Chalamet) the correct way to sandwalk.
They drag their feet delicately across the arid Arrakis terrain, avoiding the rhythmic pattern that attracts desert sandworms. There’s an understated sweetness to their interactions, a sign of the pair’s growing intimacy. At one point Paul insists on the methods he learned from an anthropological video, and Chani responds with a skeptical and exasperated look. Fremen rituals can’t be fully understood from studying outside texts; the traditions are passed down through generations and exchanged by members of the historically nomadic group.
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Dune: Part Two
Fremen society and Paul’s relationship with Chani are among the threads that get more robust consideration in Villeneuve’s highly anticipated sequel. Dune: Part Two maintains the grandiose visual style introduced in Dune while also paying more attention to story and character development. Plot takes precedence in this second installment of Villeneuve’s planned three-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s series.
The film, written with Jon Spaihts, picks up hours after the destructive events of the first film. Paul and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) have joined Chani’s Fremen group, their integration met with equal parts curiosity and suspicion. Some members easily embrace the Atreides nobles, while others wonder if they are spies. Meanwhile, the Harkonnen, led by the bloodthirsty Baron Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgard), have regained control of spice production on Arrakis and launched a genocidal war on the Fremen.
Running close to three hours, Dune: Part Two moves with a similar nimbleness to Paul and Chani’s sandwalk through the open desert. The narrative is propulsive and relatively easy to follow, Hans Zimmer’s score is enveloping, and Greig Fraser’s cinematography offers breathtaking perspectives that deepen our understanding of the fervently sought-after planet. All these elements make the sequel as much of a cinematic event as the first movie.
Still, Part Two is plagued by a nagging shallowness when it comes to portraying the Fremen, an indigenous people fighting for self-determination within the empire; the film has difficulty fully embracing the nuance of Herbert’s anti-imperial and ecologically dystopian text.
It’s not that Villeneuve is uninterested in the Fremen. Paul’s integration with the Arrakis natives makes up most of Part Two; the director does explore how their society works. After killing Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun) in Dune, Paul earns the respect of Stilgar (a sharp Javier Bardem), a religious Fremen army leader waiting for the Messiah, and the tentative approval of Chani. The pair help the eager royal acclimate to life in the desert by teaching him how to have a relationship with the land. Through their lessons, Paul sees the planet as more than a place from which to extract the psychotropic melange known as Spice. He learns to work with the parched terrain instead of trying to dominate it, an approach that improves his combat skills.
Villeneuve stages impressive fight sequences, which show how the Fremen’s small army consistently outwits the technological muscle of the Harkonnens. From riding extraterrestrial worms to using the sandstorms as cover, they draw upon their natural world to maintain an upper hand. In some scenes, the bright, bleached sand surroundings become engulfed in deep, almost blood-like terra-cotta clouds of dust that disorient Fremen enemies. As the opposing soldiers try to find themselves, the Fremen move swiftly to disarm and dismember them.
When the film moves beyond the fight scenes, the approach to Fremen traditions is a bit shakier. As Paul builds trust among the Fremen army, his mother plants rumors among the people in the caves that her son is the Messiah. Despite Paul’s protestations, Lady Jessica and her “pre-born” fetus want to fulfill the mission of the all-powerful matriarchal religious group Bene Gesserit. (“Pre-born” is a term used to describe a fully aware being who can access ancestral memory.)
Chalamet and Ferguson’s performances are strongest when mother and son tussle about the right thing to do. Through these arguments, Chalamet sheds the boyish innocence of the first film for a darker, more complicated persona. Ferguson’s character also enters more morally ambiguous terrain when she is asked by the Fremen to become the group’s Reverend Mother. Accepting the role means inheriting the memories of the Fremen. It’s here that Villeneuve’s film could have seized the opportunity to interrogate the implications of Paul and Jessica, two outsiders connected to the imperial regime, inheriting the secrets and traditions of the indigenous Arrakis. That transference, a fellow critic noted after the press screening, is its own kind of colonial violence.
Instead, Dune: Part Two undercuts attempts to complicate this more textured understanding of imperialism by repeatedly and subtly playing the Fremen’s religiosity for laughs. It would have been far more interesting to parse, even briefly, why there are intra-Fremen divisions about the existence of a Messiah in the first place. Why does Chani (a compelling Zendaya) vehemently fight Paul’s increasing popularity, whereas Stilgar falls over himself to embrace it? Can these factions be attributed to more than Bene Gesserit machinations?
Villeneuve’s film is far better at showing the more obvious violence of imperial power and staging a more familiar and basic battle between good and evil. Part Two broadens the Dune empire. There’s the introduction of the Emperor (Christopher Walken) and his daughter, Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), as well as the Baron’s sociopathic nephew Feyd (an excellent Austin Butler). Through these characters, Villeneuve builds our understanding of the political and personal ties at work, and sets up Paul’s absorbing vengeance narrative.
Even as the Duke learns from the Fremen, wrestles with the existential crisis of submitting to the Bene Gesserit prophecy, and falls in love with Chani, he keeps his father (played by Oscar Isaac in Dune) close to his heart. Much of Paul’s personal journey and character development are tied to a desire to avenge his father and the people. It’s within the spirit of the young fighter that the stakes of Part Two’s most interesting questions about destiny and loyalty, individual grievances and the greater good, and the future of Arrakis in general, are truly felt.
