You guys can yell at me for that article title choice later, we have to talk! It’s time for some spice-y chat about director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel, “Dune”.
First, Some Light Housekeeping
I’ve gone ahead and changed the title from “A Dribble of Drivel” to “Chaos in the Corner”. All I have to say about that is don’t try to make a title for your newsletter after having one-too-many cold brews, okay?
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Finally, it’s here. A movie adaptation I was excited for since I first saw preview photos two years ago. A global pandemic couldn’t stop this one, baby (after enough people got vaccinated)!
I’m not going to review the movie. No, that I’ll leave to Manhola Dargis in his excellent review in the Times. Instead, we’ll go into some of my favorite parts of the movie (spoiler free).
Rebecca Ferguson, but almost a mute
I will watch Rebecca Ferguson (or Becky Fergs as I, and I suspect only I, refer to her) play anything. A spy with shifty alliances? Hell yes. An opera singer with a proclivity toward married men who smell like circus peanuts? Absolutely. I would even watch her play a shoe. That’s not hyperbole; If someone told me there was a movie in which one of the characters was an anthropomorphized shoe, I’d be “whelmed” about it. But if you told me the shoe was played by Rebecca Ferguson? That ticket would already be sold.
To put it plainly, she kills in this role. What I love the most about her performance is the fact that she has so few lines, and that’s not a dig. No, I think it’s a benefit. Every scene with Ferguson is magnetic. Almost her entire performance is told with micro expressions and she hits the bullseye every step of the way.
All I’ll say about Zendaya
It’s giving …
The MVP - Oscar Isaac’s Beard
We can't talk anymore about this movie without discussing the true star of this film; the absolute lion’s mane that Oscar Isaac grew for this movie. It’s worth pointing out that Isaac’s character is a whole ass duke, but nothing is more regal than that beard. Whereas Isaac’s female counterpart, Ferguson had so few lines, he had no shortage but was easily upstaged by the more flattering Cousin Itt on his chin.
Or, as one twitter user put it more succinctly…
Alternate titles for this article included
“What we Dune in the Shadows”
“What's Love Got to Dune With It”
“Dune I Still Figure in Your Life”
“Dune the Right Thing”
To Sum Up
When I saw in 2019 that Dune was being made I thought “Isn’t there already a movie?” And indeed there was. A 1984 film starring none other than Kyle MacLachlan, Sir Patrick Stewart, and even Sting (AKA Sir Sting). As I understand it though, that film faded into obscurity, becoming more of a cult classic than anything. The truth is that Dune is a weird book. I haven’t even read all of it, and that’s because it’s a bit of a hard read. Someone described it to me that Dune takes place so far in the future that Humankind is now an alien race. And yet, some of the themes in Dune are universal; redemption, duty, honor, colonialism, cultural sanctity. Maybe the previous movie tried its best, but it might not have been fully equipped in the mid-eighties to tell the story. Even though it’s incomplete (the modern film is only Part One of the whole story), this film feels like it’s ready to fully do justice to a beloved novel, as well as deliver a film that feels suited to the modern moment.
Okay, maybe I reviewed it a little.