One of the keys to the success of the original
Star Wars trilogy
lay in something as elemental as the gift of opportunity.
Lucas's films illustrated, as only the great achievements of popular culture have been capable of, his precise moment
; that strange and crucial moment of transition between the old Fordist production regime and the new place where we are now dominated by a globalized galaxy in the age of networked information. The representation of the hypertechnological ideal was completed with a shrewd game of concealment, contestation and consolation where the cruel reality of the very hygienic production model was replaced by idealized versions of previous production models.
The bright future was presented, but from the nostalgia and comfort of a benevolent past without conflict
ruled by romantic ideals.
In his own way, Frank Herbert's
Dune
staged the same escapist contradiction in the mid-1960s
. There was talk of a universe in crisis in which the greatest of ecological disasters was already foreseen, the world control of energy oligopolies was announced, the mystifying power of bad information served by visionary evangelists was sensed and there was still time to illustrate the consequences of exploitative, dehumanized and anti-enlightened colonialism. But all this
came to life in a mediavalizing scenario of first-blood duels, an honor safe from the stock markets and tribes sustained by the only social non-contract of the tribe.
It was comforting to know that faced with the bill from the energy conglomerates, the Fremen remained.
Decades have passed and, science fiction things, we are still at the same point.
The abysses that Herbert described are still there and, as the philosopher would say, they look back at us.
Denis Villeneuve
knows it.
And to all the preceding and imperishable crises, he incorporates that of the cinema itself.
Not only is the world crumbling, but from
his hand the only decent possibility that the 20th century created for consolation and perhaps even answering is ruined.
The platforms and their enthusiastic celebration of the bulimic entertainment of the identical leave us without that 'melange' or 'spice' that for so long supported the imagination and the dream.
The new version of 'Dune' rises on the screen as a provocation for the viewer
The new version of
Dune
not only manages to become the only homologous one to date, thus ending a curse that would be said to be millennial, it also rises up on the screen as a provocation for the viewer. The director understands that it is not about telling a story (but also) as about recreating a universe with the appearance of a trompe l'oeil so faithful to the meticulous unreality devised by Herbert that it would be said to be completely real. Not in vain, all
Dune
readers
know that you have to start with the appendices, where the author details from the biology that protects his planet Arrakis to each of the twists and turns of the messianic religion that animates its inhabitants. That is to say,
what matters is the ability of cinema and the giant screen to turn the word not so much into a metaphor as into a simple and harsh reality
, and a Shai-Hulud into the most spectacular of the giant worms. Ultimately, what we perceive as real is real.
The director considers the story of the struggle for power between the Atreides House and the Harkonen, with the inhabitants of the sandy area acting as catalysts for the drama of exploitation and freedom, as a contemporary myth narrated in a trance.
All the solutions both narrative and, let's say, technical are correct.
The convoluted plot launched 'in media res' with its innumerable procession of characters obeys the logic of a story that, in truth, wants to be cosmogony.
And the staging, supported by the already ritual cathedral sound signed by Hans Zimmer, is handled with the same clarity in action and in dreams.
There is no choice but to surrender to a mature and perfectly self-conscious entertainment machinery that places popular cinema before the evidence of its transformation and crisis.
The result is
a film that runs across the screen with the certainty of an adventure that questions the same reality that invites you to escape from it.
It is an uncomfortable film for what it has to answer to the evidence.
It is not arranged in three acts nor does it propose a resolution to anything (there will be a second part) nor, if necessary, does it even console.
It is an adventure without adventure.
It is, in short, a film in crisis, a perfect reflection of each of the abysses that inhabit it ... which, in effect, are ours.
+ The feeling of attending an effort, perhaps the last, desperate for salvation.-The longing for the resolution to arrive as soon as possible.
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