Kian Henderson-Cowley’s review published on Letterboxd:
Dune Part Two’s the article of a primal perspicuity of directorial and adaptational vision, singing out its overwhelming anthem of corrupted purpose, like ruptured shooting stars sprinting towards every uninitiated corner of the known universe. Enlightening and tainting with their adamantium musculatures so damn yoked, you’re practically blinded by the unprecedented awesomeness of Denis Villeneuve’s opened door into a brand new form of majestic enormity and cinematic divinity. Lawrence Of Arabia’s sole competitor if ever there could be one. This is the new king in town.
After 3 watches and a first read of Frank Herbert’s encyclopaedic novel, I still cannot believe Dune Part Two exists! I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve been wishing for a sci-fi/fantasy picture of this startling beauty and eruptive vitality since I was a kid. The stupendous visual wizardry and breathtaking emotional peaks are a diamond distillation of my two great loves of the genre: The Two Towers and Return Of The Jedi. I never thought that bar could be matched again, and what I got was so much more than I could have dreamed for a story of such foundation-shattering, apocalyptic protagonism. 3 watches down, and my positive giddiness is in infinite supply! Denis actually made hard sci-fi look as cool as it does in our imaginations! AAAHH!!
Following Part One’s slowly roasting, molecular elaborations of setup, each domino toppling in accelerated succession here provides so many chills, that your nerves turn to jagged icicles! The majority of criticisms regarding the previous film aren’t even an afterthought in Part Two’s melodious banquet, defining character, conflict and self-fulfilling powerlessness like you’ve never seen them achieved before in the blockbuster format. And oh how this offers all new sights and sounds to intoxicate us with! From the magma fireworks of Giedi Prime’s monochromatic pits, to the unstoppable worm-tides of righteous rebellion and every one of Ron Bartlett and company’s incredible sound designs in between. There’s nothing quite like feeling you’re sat on a washing machine in the theatre while watching Timmy ride the worm. Absolute tidal waves of sensory immersion which leave you hankering for more!
In Villeneuve’s condensed simplifications and tweaking of Herbert’s themes, rewriting Chani as an incensed proxy for the audience is a devastatingly stellar move! As the Fremen’s Sayyadina, book Chani and Paul are love-bound by her sudden comprehension of his burden. Film Chani’s still stuck in the centre of the book’s chessboard, however Zendaya’s sensitively defiant performance magnifies her distress as our own, witnessing this grandly speedballing exorcism of individual morality and common humanity we’re unable to deviate from. Modernised implications of disbelief over warmongering that in no way interferes with the original fabric.
You see compared to the book’s formal detachments, Dune Part Two lasers in on how repellant the half-ed desire for a quiet between the storms is to prophecy-in-action. Villeneuve’s characterisations display so much more helpless resistance than Herbert’s who are chained to strictly pragmatic, if resigned mitigations. Clinging to their souls’ and their loves’ last breaths, before they’re nothing but disappearing abscesses on the raging tenets of absolute control.
Under the throes of manufactured domination, Paul and Chani’s tender embraces are as priceless a commodity as the spice itself, and Zendaya and Chalamet’s restrained soulmate chemistry aches with each step of the long walk towards their splitting, impermeably shifting values. Said manufactured domination disavows humanism in service of meddling with determinism, and whether they be via every flurrying grain of sand, or the fated skirmishes bringing the Jihad nearer, the hoarse whispers of a million intermingled sorrows across the cosmos can be heard crying out over its collateral graveyard. The vaguest past fusing with the certain future. Unholy bondage making us responsible for our victimisation. A cyclical correlation in the third act’s pulse-pounding cinematography. You could spend hours dissecting Greig Fraser’s communicated ideas alone!
Hans Zimmer’s score ups the ante once again, turning Arrakis into a torrid thunderdome unleashing Krakens upon The-Powers-That-Be with violent woodwind and string arrangements. Stilgar’s Life Of Brian-isms don’t wear out their hilarious welcome, and Timothée Chalamet has delivered the defining performance of his career so far! The monstrous transformation he undergoes scarily captivates with his messianic furor. Consuming any ounce of willpower that remained to him, and percussively beaten in by the generational, backstabbing hubris commanding so much of Dune’s suffering. Genuinely astounding to watch!
How could I forget Denis’s inclusion of straight up monomythic imagery during the climax of this ultimately subversive story! Depicting Paul as a man between two worlds, Irulan’s of thankless duty and Chani’s of peace and love, raises Part Two to a godly tragedy. Or perhaps neither exists in a realm where everyone’s a pawn. The unknowing outside of their entrapment proves to be of an equal dread, because we’ll never truly know either.
Whereas Frank Herbert ended Dune on a stalemate of false hope, Villeneuve presents its most literal meaning as unfathomable ideological horror, as frightening as it is epic. A confirmation that Mankind cannibalises itself in spiritual slavery, lighting the stove under our preconceptions of our unquenchable, wretched addiction to control and suring ascension to staunch the bleeding of its aftermath. We do this to ourselves, and so “lead them to paradise” becomes the most horrifying declaration ever uttered. A merciless war game justified by those we were meant to grow beyond, in an endless line of heaven’s exterminations. If this is just the beginning for philosophically advanced sci-fi blockbusters in their highest form, I may shed a tear.
Dune Part Two is that rarest of cinematic splendours. One which you feel coursing throughout your body. A film as fibrous and enriching to us, as wind and rain to the greener pastures of our aspirations. Let it take ahold of you, again and again, because it’s a platinum grade work of art daring to demolish and broaden the very nature of our reality. A hellfire juggernaut, vengeful of our incapacities ensuring we stay who we are. Denis’s crafted a stunning marvel that leaves you agape and shellshocked. Feels like no words can do it justice, except that if this is a new dawn, then I’m gladdened by the sunrise.
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