Directed by John Harrison and photographed by Academy Award-winner Vittorio Storaro, this second adaptation of Frank Herbert's cult sci-fi novel is gorgeous and long enough that the sprawling story has room to spread out and breathe.
The time is the year 10191, in a galaxy far, far away. Feudal families answer to a hereditary emperor (Giancarlo Ginannini), and the fate of worlds rests on a spice-like substance called melange, which confers extraordinary power and is produced only on an inhospitable desert planet called Arrakis. The struggle to control melange production corrupts one noble family — House Harkonnen — and destroys another, House Atreides. But young Paul Atreides (Alec Newman), sole heir to his family's legacy, escapes with his mother, Lady Jessica (Saskia Reeves), into the brutal desert and finds refuge with Arrakis's oppressed natives, the Fremen. And in the dunes Paul discovers his messianic destiny: Like some interstellar Lawrence of Arabia, he will free the Fremen from outside rule and avenge the wrongs done to his family. That's the story in broad strokes; the rest is pretty straightforward plot/counterplot stuff — power grabs, love triangles, betrayal, guilt, secret economic alliances and personal vendettas. Dune's appeal lies in Herbert's invented universe, crammed to bursting with baroque inventions like the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, psychic seers whose secret, multigenerational human breeding program is designed to create a messiah; the spooky Spacing Guild, a society of melange mutants who can manipulate space and control interstellar travel; and the desert-dwelling Fremen, with their creepy two-tone blue eyes and symbiotic relationship with the shifting dunes and the terrifying sandworms. And of course, a story like this is only as good as its villains: the Harkonnen clan are super wicked, though the fact that we know they're degenerate because big bad Baron Harkonnen (Ian McNeice) is queer is a bit of gratuitous homophobia almost as dated as the Bene Gesserit assertion that their messiah has to be a man because there are some things women cannot see.
Hardcore fans will never be happy with any adaptation that doesn't match the Dune of their imaginations. A vocal segment of them hated David Lynch's DUNE (1984) for reasons that ranged from the petty to the perceptive, but they were absolutely right about one thing: Herbert's epic novel was ill-served by the constraints of a theatrical movie's running time. Overall, Harrison's DUNE, which was made for the Sci-Fi Channel and originally broadcast as a three-part miniseries, looks more like Davd Lynch's than not. But there's much, much more of it, and it's a remarkable piece of large-scale filmmaking for television. Storaro's sweeping compositions don't conform to the squarish proportions of most made-for-TV productions, the crowd scenes are genuinely crowded, the special effects are handsome and the costume and set decoration are truly lavish. The hardcore fans will no doubt have quibbles, but this is as good as Herbert's book is likely to get onscreen. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
