EPISODE 257: Dune: Part 2
It's arguably the best horror film of our age. In this deep dive into Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part 2, Jett and Gareth talk about the film's relation to the 'myth of redemptive violence', bring in L.A. Confidential, The Manchurian Candidate, The Exorcist: Believer, personal trauma, the DP of that Dollar Shave Club ad, David Lynch's beautiful attempt at a Dune and more.
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Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. The Spice exists on only one planet in the entire universe. A desolate, dry planet with vast deserts.
Hidden away within the rocks of these deserts are a people known as the Fremen, who have long held a prophecy that a man would come, a messiah, who would lead them to true freedom. The planet is Arrakis, also known as Dune.
Oh, my God, folks, this show is going to be a banger. I can't believe this, Gareth. We're going to talk about the best, I would say arguably the best horror film of the last several years.
And, you know, apologies to our friend of the show, writer and director Scott Teams. I haven't seen his new Exorcist movie. What is it?
Exorcist, Colin Believer. Did he direct it?
No, he didn't direct it. He co-wrote the story. And full disclosure, Scott's one of my best friends.
And even if he wasn't, the new Exorcist movie is fantastic. And maybe, maybe, maybe in decades it will be recognized as such. It's fantastic.
One can only hope.
I haven't seen Exorcist, Colin, The Exorcist, Colin, Believer.
Believer.
Maybe it is, but I'm telling you. Is it called The Exorcist or Exorcist Believer? It's called The Exorcist, Colin, Believer.
But let's talk about the horror film of our age. Dune, Colin, Part 2. And I got one quick question before we get right into it, Gareth.
I call this a teaser, this little teaser for the episode. While watching, wait for it. While watching Dune, Colin, Part 2, there was one film that kept occurring to me throughout the entire multiple-hour runtime.
Gareth Higgins, co-host of The Film Talk. What was that film?
Well, it has a lot of sound in it. Yes. Was it Caddyshack?
You know, you're not far off.
It was, of course, 2008's Mike Meyer vehicle, massive comedy flop, The Love Guru.
That was going to be my second guess.
You were so close. I am going to tell you why in this episode, also why I was reminded of LA. Confidential, Curtis Hansen picture and John Frankenheimer's, The Manchurian Candidate.
I call that a teaser, Gareth. Are you excited to do the show?
Yeah, that's an interesting cornucopia of comparative cinema there. I'm excited to know what you think about Dune the 2nd.
Well, first, I'm going to tell you. We're continuing the teaser.
I believe it.
I believe it. I believe you're going to tell me.
There's a lot of teasing going on here. First, I do want to say a quick thing. Quick shout out.
Big thanks to Pat Floyd, listener Pat Floyd, who did our Film Talk logos and our banner. Gareth and I stopped doing the show 10 years ago, and when we were rebooting it, we thought, well, we need a different name for some reason.
And we went through like 100 different names. And then I was looking through the old archive files, looking for old shows of ours. I found these graphics.
There's fan produced. This is fan graphics here by Pat Floyd. And they're great.
So we said, hey, let's just call it The Film Talk.
Content followed form in this case. Thank you, Pat. And actually, you know, Pat's kindness and love don't want to take it for granted.
And thank you to all of you who've come back to listen after all these years and to new listeners too. We look forward to this conversation with you as well.
Speaking of listeners, one of our listeners, Brendan Rogers, just dialed in. He dialed in, Gareth, through technology, through speakpipe.com/ The Film Talk. He's left us a message that I think might be germane to this week's episode.
Let's listen.
I'm interested to hear it.
Let's listen.
It's great to have you back, Film Talkers. But I have one question on my mind. Will you still agree to disagree?
I'm hoping so. Stay golden, fellas, over and out.
Are we going to agree to disagree on Dune? Because I know you walked out of Dune. You told me you walked out of Dune, part two.
Yes, I did.
I did walk out of Dune, part two. I will explain that in a moment. I want to say thank you to the listener who left that question.
I want to respect the question. Are we going to agree to disagree?
I didn't hear that question as being specifically about Dune, but I think it's generally, and I would say my answer, my response to that question is yes, we are going to agree to disagree, but perhaps we will do it agreeably.
Well, that's the idea. We agree to disagree. Always with comity and friendship.
One less thing, folks, is anecdotal evidence. You can't see Gareth. I can see him on the whatever we're using.
It's not Skype. Is it Microsoft Teams? Is it Teams?
I don't know.
No, but I literally just got a text from Scott Teams while you were saying that. I'm not kidding.
While I was saying Microsoft Teams, I manifested him. Ask him if he can come on the show.
I will.
One more bit of business. There's anecdotal evidence that if you give us some ratings on Apple Podcasts or write reviews, that'll help move the show up in terms of being featured on New and Notable and all that. If they are good reviews.
Any press. Any press is good press. So if you do listen on Apple Podcasts, please leave us a review or some star rating.
All right. That's enough. All that bits of business, Dune, Part 2, I believe, colon, Part 2, I believe.
We have a clip.
Moideeb. The prophet. The one who points the way.
These are our own religious patterns, aren't they?
This is our doing.
Moideeb means kangaroo mouse. An unusual warning for a Fremen.
What if all the treaties were still alive? Enough!
This must not come out.
Even to your father's ears, understand? I do, Reverend Mother.
And that is Dune, Part 2, directed, of course, by French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, based on the novel by Frank Herbert, beloved.
Beloved.
Read by a massive number of people, considered by many to be perhaps the greatest sci-fi epic saga ever written. I have not read any of the books. I've been close to people.
I've been close to people who have absorbed the books.
So were they like spice, and it just kind of got in you, and you started having visions of possible futures.
Often the case one writes something off or one isn't interested in something until someone one trusts or has affection for encourages them to open their mind. And my mind is open to Dune, but I don't read a lot of fiction.
So I'm so glad that these films exist and that they are as deep and complex as they have turned out to be. But before I say anything more about Dune 2, I have a question for you, Jett. I have a question for you.
This happens in the movie. I've seen this part of the movie three times now. I think I've seen this part of the movie three times because I didn't like it the first time I saw it.
I went back and saw half of it and needed to do something else. And then I went back and saw the second half, but there was an overlap. And here's my question.
I thought of you and this question was asked, Jett. Have you made peace with Shay Halood?
Have I made peace? I mean, there's never been any differences. I don't need to make peace with Shay Halood.
Shay Halood and I...
You and Shay have already been... You've been... He's in a pod.
We go way back.
Ever since 1984, when I saw Kyle McLaughlin and who's the wonderful actor who played Stilgar in David Lynch's Dune? Ever since they climbed the world.
He's got a great, not to digress, great line reading when he goes, You'll be known as Paul Moideer, you know, or Oosle, the base of the pillar. And he is, I mean, he's great. That guy is, who is that?
Oh, you have strength.
You shall be known as Oosle, which is the strength of the base of the pillar.
This is your secret name in our troop, but you must choose the name of manhood, which we will call you openly. What you call the moush shadow in the second moon? We call that one Maudib.
Could I be known as Paul Maudib?
You are Paul Maudib.
Yes, him, that guy.
Tip of my tongue.
I absolutely know who you're talking about.
Of course you do.
He's in Twin Peaks.
Yes, he is.
Everett McGill. Everett McGill. That's who you're thinking of.
Wonderful.
His intonations in 1984's Dune.
Doesn't play still there the way the comic genius of our time, Javier Bardem, does. A great comic role.
We have to talk about this because if he did not have the comedy chops, if he couldn't pull off the comedy, then the tragedy of his character, and it is tragic, it is shocking, would not have the same effect, and we're already derailing 10,000 times,
there's a shot in this film, The Listener, in which it's a turning point for his character, in which he comes to fully believe that this young man from the outer world is the Messiah, and it is heartbreaking. You see the fanaticism in his mind, this
independent man, the man who was introduced, though, was a comic performance in the first film, in Dune, colon, part one. It was a comic performance, but he was a leader of men, and now you see him, his self subsumed into that of another, and it is
heartbreaking. So it sounds to me like you've come around, I know you didn't care for the film at first, and I badgered you, I badgered you, I badgered you, I said, Gareth, I'm telling you, you gotta see this film.
It was a triple badger. I was triple badgered.
Yes.
I want to tell you about my experience of Dune Part 2.
Yes.
Okay, so I saw it in one of those kind of oversized, non-IMAX screens.
The only seats that were available far too close to the screen, it was relentless, it felt like being beaten up by the film, it was too loud, and I couldn't, my eyes couldn't adjust to what was on it, and there was just a bleakness to this story, and
there was a bleakness to Denis Villeneuve, filmmaker who I've liked, and I've certainly appreciated every film of his I've seen, I think, and I've seen almost all of them, that doesn't mean that I enjoyed them, but I'm a huge fan of Arrival. I really
like the world building in his Blade Runner sequel, and I appreciated what Prisoners was trying to do, but again, the relentless bleakness of it was overwhelmed my capacity to engage or connect with it in a different way. I knew I needed to go back
and see Dune Part 2, partly because of your encouragement, partly because other people, I know whose sense of film I tend to resonate with. Having seen it again, having seen it two and a half times, here's one sentence about Dune.
I have a lot more to say, but I'm going to say one sentence. Then I want to hear from you and then we'll get into it. My honest assessment of Dune Part 2 is that it's like Star Wars if you actually felt the pain of what happens in Star Wars.
And that is high praise. I loved it. I was genuinely moved.
It's thrilling. It has things to say. And that's where we'll leave it from now.
Like Star Wars if Star Wars felt real.
Well, you bring up something. You're touching on something there because, famously, the original Star Wars, it was mocked for. You had a whole planet blow up.
And then this story moves quickly, quickly along. And people have pointed out, it's like also you got Princess Leia consoling Luke Skywalker because Obi-Wan Kenobi dies. Because wait a minute.
Only like 12 hours ago, you lost, or whatever it was, a day, a Solari or whatever they call the time in the Star Wars universe, you lost billions of people.
And you compare that to the weight of Dune where in the first one, Paul has a vision of this genocide in his name. Billions of people die in my name. And it's absolutely horrific.
So this film does have a weight, even I would imagine if you don't see it in IMAX like I did, which made a huge difference, I imagine, with all the sound effects and what have you. Here's all I'm going to tell you why.
I think this is a magnificent film for so many reasons. And here's why I kept thinking of The Love Guru, this 2000, what was it, 2008?
Remade by Ari Oster a few years later. As Hereditary.
Wow, well, that sounds like a bonus episode right there, folks.
Well, aren't they the same story?
The Love Guru?
The Love Guru and Hereditary and Dune are the same story. They're all about someone who receives the projections of a community about their salvific power. Hereditary is a bit bleaker than The Love Guru.
It is, yeah, but it's got more laughs.
The main thing is I'm not lying. If I'm lying, I'm dying. I'm telling you, in a holy war in his name.
No, The Love Guru, yes, that's one aspect of the reason. But the main thing is that the younger listeners may not know this or remember this, how popular Mike Myers was.
The Austin Powers film, he was already successful in Saturday Night Live, Wayne's World. The Austin Powers film came out, didn't do great business, but it became a huge hit on VHS, on home video, followed by two sequels.
Hugely successful comedian, really captured the zeitgeist of his time. And then The Love Guru came out. And what he plays, I guess he's Indian?
His character's name is Pitca. And The Love Guru was so clearly and obviously appallingly bad and unfunny right from the very first frame that while you were watching it, it retroactively made his other films worse.
Because it was so bad, you're thinking, wait a minute, maybe he was...
I can't have been right about the others.
Yeah, maybe he was never funny. And we were just caught up in a consensual hallucination. That's how bad The Love Guru was, at least how it was received.
I haven't seen it since then. I don't have a huge desire to do it, but we can run a poll on our Patreon page to find out what people say. And this is the thing with Dune!
Part 2, it is so good that it retroactively made Dune! Part 1 better. I filmed it, which I thought, well, this is okay.
It's got some great visuals and a nice score, but it just didn't feel thin to me. And in retrospect, he was making a massive, painting on a massive canvas, right? Because there are two halves of a whole.
We'll see what happens with the third one. All the things that are set up are implied in the first one. I want to talk about implication on how Denis Villeneuve implies things.
It was very, very interesting. They come to fruition in Dune, Cullen, Part 2 in this new film. It's so good that it makes the first film better.
And that's why I was reminded of Love, Groove. It sounds like a flippin joke, but it's true. Oh, and also I want to mention, also I was thinking about LA.
Confidential and Manchurian Candidate. Because both those films, you think about LA. Confidential, I don't know how you feel about the film, Gareth.
Curtis Hanson, I mean, Curtis Hanson, did he do The Hand that Rocks the Cradle? He did. And he did Killers on the...
But he also did Wonder Boy's masterpiece.
Well, you and I can disagree about that.
But he also did the, you know, the River movie with Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon. And LA. Confidential, to me, is at a whole different level.
And so is The Manchurian Candidate, but Frank and I, we did a lot of great films, like The Train. I've got a funny story about The Train and we'll save it for another show. They did, like, The Train and Seven Days in May and The Amazing Seconds.
But Manchurian Candidate is also, like, LA. Confidential. It feels like this is the best thing that these folks have ever done.
That everybody was operating at such a high level, all the actors, the production, script, everything came together to make a product, if you want to use the word product, that was higher than anything the other, the filmmaker had done.
And if that's how it feels to me about Dune, Part 2, that everybody is operating at such a high level to me. This is Hans Zimmer's, you know, it's an incredible score, him and his team.
Rick Frazier, of course, the DP on the Dollar Shave Club advertisement, Get Ready, great work on that. Also, he did Killing Him Softly, which is fantastic, and he was co-DP on The Creator, fantastic work.
So everyone is operating at their highest level. And the film does something else in terms of retroactive making the first one the better. And here's what it does.
In the first film, it surprised me when it happened. I was like, wow, that's a bold choice. The first film opens up with Chinese narration.
It's the narration of the person who's worried about who the next colonizer is going to be. And then this film ends, the last shot of the film is on her. This is the character played by Zendaya.
So it reconfigures the whole story to be focused not on Paul, like David Lynch's version, but on the people that are being colonized rather than the colonizer. So for instance, David Lynch's version opens up with a princess, Virginia Madsen.
Is she Michael Madsen's brother?
She's not Michael Madsen's brother.
In my mind. That's why I always think about reservoir dogs.
Michael Madsen may be her brother, but as far as I know, she's not his brother.
Listen, in my defense, it's late. It's late here where I am. We're in a different time zone.
It's already 3.02.
I'm in the mountains.
AM. Is she Michael Madsen's sister? I don't know, but my point stands, regardless of familial relations, though that is the big subtext of all the Dunes, is that it's posited here.
Then the book does this too. This opens up with a narration from the princess of the known universe played by Virginia Madsen and by Florence, the great Florence Pugh, by Pugh in the new Dunes. But here this reconfigured to be about the colonized.
And this is, for me, a big structural change. It adds to the horror of this film because the film does not feel good. It's about someone descending into the worst impulses that humanity can offer.
Yeah, and it also does that in a way that feels credible.
I feel like I should say at this point for listeners who haven't seen or read any of The Dunes, a little bit of the premise is that you've basically got these things happening a long way in the future in various other worlds.
There are various kind of people groups and houses, like I guess Quidditch teams with big spaceships who are rivaling...
Do you think there's a Harry Potter Quidditch fan team that's called Quidditch at Iraq? That's a little dune.
Hey, as someone who's not read the books, like I have, was it clear to you, and I don't know how familiar you are with David Lynch's version, but was it...
The Florence Pugh as a doctor?
Little Oppenheimer. Little Oppenheimer. You would watch Oppenheimer.
You don't know her character as a doctor. Okay.
Would you know, did you have any sense that 10,000 years before the events of the films, that basically AI and modern had been eliminated, and that's why the culture is the way that it is, or an aspect of it.
No, I got some sense that something had happened that made, like, what we might call as the, like, unitary notions of progress had been interrupted...
Yes...
. to some degree. But beyond that, you got these houses rivaling with each other.
There's an emperor. There's a planet that has this magic spice on it that helps people be healthy and live longer, and also permits interstellar travel, even in the absence of a five-dimensional bookcase.
And there's a prophecy that these oppressed people will be saved by a messiah figure, and that that can only be done through bloodshed.
And our central figure, central figure, I guess, in the book, but as you've said, this film is painted with such depth.
There is more than one central figure, and the Zendaya character, she's sort of the moral anchor for the film because she loves this character of Paul, who has had this prophecy projected onto him, and she is terrified that he's going to go along
with it, and the film does end by centering her. She's clearly supposed to be the main point of identification for the audience.
What I find most interesting about the plot of this film, again, don't know if this is how the book turns, is the desire of people to have a king who will solve things for them by force. It's deep in human nature. It's in the Bible.
The people of Israel are warned against having a king because it takes away the idea of personal and communal responsibility. And we are warned against the idea of the quick fix. So I find that interesting.
And even more interesting is the notion that this prophecy may or may not have, I don't know, shall we say supernatural underpinnings to it.
It may simply have been a political strategy that was put in place a long, long time ago by people who were playing a long game about wanting to see their lineage stay in charge.
And so in that sense, it's a very rare film and it compares with, I mean, I enjoy the Star Wars films, no doubt, but you can't really do much with the Force, right? The Force doesn't really have much to say to us as we go about our day to day lives.
But the idea that I've been shaped before my birth by the hopes that previous generations had for me, that my parents had for me, that my grandparents had for me, and perhaps shackled to that is something I think most people can identify with.
Most of us can't identify with the idea that people think we are the Messiah, but this is something that does happen in all of our lives.
We have to contend with what are we going to be, what are we going to do with the power that we have and confronting the reality of what other people think of us. They either think less of us than they should or more of us than they should.
And that this is dressed up with like this massive world that feels so real, that also feels tactile. You feel the thuds in this film. It feels like a lived-in world, unlike a shiny world that's just been made for the film.
It feels like this world actually existed before the film was made. And it also has, in terms of its cast, it has its mad, mad, mad, mad world levels of supporting stars all the way through.
I was surprised to see the three stooges come in at the end.
And when Cesar and Jimmy Durante did that dance number.
The holy jihad. You know, you're right. What you're talking about is made explicit in the film, the weight of expectations.
There's a whole, the point of the whole scene with, in the graveyard with Paul and his dad in the first one where his father talks about, you know, the inside Llewellyn Davis guy. Tells him that...
Oscar Isaac.
That's him.
Your knowledge of film stars is voluminous.
So, hopefully luminous. That's the point. Hopefully we can illuminate something on the show.
But he talks very explicitly that he wanted to be a pilot, right? He wanted to do this thing. But instead he has to...
You know, these responsibilities were put on him. So that weight is there. And there were these, you know, the nightmares that Paul has about the jihad.
I don't think they call it a jihad in the book and in David Lynch's version. I think this one is... They cut that out.
They don't use... Just like how they don't cut out that urine and feces are processed in the thigh pads of the stillsuit.
And in all seriousness, they limit the egregious homophobia certainly of the Lynch film, which I've heard is in the books as well. And I think it's okay when you're adapting something...
Are you talking about the relationship between Stilgar, Ever McGill and Paul?
No, I'm talking about in the Lynch film, the homophobic way that the Baron is portrayed is just disgusting and so I think it's okay when you're adapting something...
It's supposed to be disgusting. I mean, he also flies. He flies and he has a heart plug, so homosexuality, I don't know.
Okay.
It's also homophobic. I'll have to see that again. And this film isn't...
Anyway, you were in mid flow.
No, he has these dreams and nightmares. Paul, if that is his name... Has there ever been another film in which somebody has so many names?
Can you think of... I'm trying to think of when someone had... So because he's Paul...
Doesn't Lawrence of Arabia have lots of names?
Not that many.
So you got Paul, you got the Lisan Al-Ghaib, you got Usul, you got Maudib.
Maudi, Maudi.
Or Maudi, depending, Maudi slash Maudib. And is he the quitsats hat? I don't know.
He was in the Lynch version, we find out. I don't know if he is in this one. We'll see.
But he has these nightmares about a holy war in his name. He resists. And then by the end of this picture, he gives this monologue.
He kind of shouts down, you know, thousands of fellow Fremen and the leaders in this incredible set piece. And he becomes this person, right? He insists upon it.
And that's really striking. That's why, to me, it's a tragedy. And as I said, at the top of the film, a horror film.
Part of the horror for me is something I don't think I've...
I'm sure I've seen it before, but I can't put my finger on where I've seen it. And that is there are moments in this film when powerful villains look scared. And the first time I noticed, I'm not speaking particularly of the Emperor of Villas.
It's lovely to see Christopher Walken in something substantial. Dave Bautista, there's a moment where Dave Bautista looks terrified. And he's this kind of monstrously violent figure who just uses his physical strength and rage to harm people.
And there is a moment where he looks scared. I'm not sure I've...
That's when his uncle, you can hear his uncle killing people behind a closed door.
That's actually not the moment I was thinking of. It's a moment when he's fighting in the air when the ship takes him up into the air. But yes, he is scared when he's outside that door.
You know, he's also scared when he runs away in another scene.
And then he's scared when he's seen... Basically, he's just scared.
He's scared.
But you know, that's so well done, because that's the old cliche in Star Trek, The Next Generation. Maybe there's a colon there. Is it Star Trek colon, The Next Generation?
How do you want to show an alien is really terrifying face to face is you have him beat up Worf. You just throw a Worf around. That establishes, oh, well, that's pretty serious now.
Worf's getting hit. I want to talk about the incredible visuals and stuff and the scripts specifically.
Some of the most spectacular desert images in cinema since Lawrence of Arabia.
Absolutely, and ones that I don't recall. I saw the first Dune as well. I saw it partially in IMAX as well, and the visuals did not affect me the way they did here.
Well, again, I only saw it in IMAX. To me, it felt, through all watching, I know I made the joke, but it's true about the love guru making the first film better. To me, he felt almost as if there was more freedom and more confidence.
Not that his other films have not shown confidence. I mean, we talk about Arrival. I've got a degree in film history and criticism, and one of my teachers, the whole semester was on Arrival.
Good. By the end of the semester, It's a wonderful film. I could not stand, I'm sure it's a fine film.
It was a long semester. But it felt there's a freedom and a confidence that opened up this movie. To me, I rewatched the first one after watching the second one, and to me, the visuals, like we see this autocar floating up.
There's incredible like vistas and the characters are small. It's really extraordinary. You can see it on, I would say see it on IMAX if you can.
But I do want to address one thing that a listener did on, wrote on our Facebook page. We have a lot of people talk there, which is fun. facebook.com/ The Film Talk.
And this is a listener, Ryan Vandalinda. And he writes, my one criticism of Dune, colon part two, thanks for the colon there, Ryan, is I wish the film featured more juicy monologues in it.
Most of the great monologues you see performed in media these days is on episodic TV. And you know, and he's right about episodic TV. I don't know if you've seen Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass, for instance, Gareth, which is a lot.
I mean, we talk about monologues. We're talking about the camera slowly pushing in for a 12-minute scene. And it's like, as a monologue, it's just monologue after monologue.
And it's great. To me, the great strength of this film, and also to the first one, to a similar extent, is the way that Villeneuve uses... Is it pronounced Vien-nouf?
I guess it's Villeneuve, but...
Villeneuve?
Also, wait a minute. Why is it the pronunciation? Every pronunciation is different in this one.
I love that Lynch is, you know, Harkonnen, not Harkonnen. You know, it says, Kill was killing me.
But anyway, one of the great geniuses, I think, of this film, I'm going to use that word, and to a similar extent in the first one, is that the visual language of cinema is being used to imply so that you don't actually have to have it in the written
word. So in the first film, for instance, the Duke is weak, he's not strong, it's his son who will be strong.
So when the big, you know, globe comes out of the sky to say, here's some wax paper or something, because that's how they do things 20,000 years in the future. It tells him that you're now in charge. The Duke moves his head, he's nervous.
Did not say you could have a bit of die if it was David Lynch's film. There would be a whole dialogue in a monologue if you were in Pachau, if that's your pronounce his name, talking about how nervous he is.
Instead, you just see him adjust his neck, then he looks at Paul, and Paul gives him a nod, almost like giving him approval and an okay. And all those things are done just through the slightest gesture.
In Dune, Cullen, Part 2, the way that Lady Jessica just rubs her stomach, that tells us volumes that she's concerned about the child and that she's caring and what have you.
And so that elegance of doing things just through cinema language, to me, is wonderful. It kind of serves the film, because thousands of years in the future, they're speaking a different language, often the film is subtitled.
We don't know the intricacies, but all of these little visual details just imply a lived-in world that you talked about, Gareth. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it absolutely does. I also want to mention that the fireworks, I guess you'd call them, which are these kind of sky-bound inkblots, another lovely call back to your favorite Villeneuve film, Arrival.
The whole semester.
So here's an interesting thing, and we try to be positive on this show.
One of the things that we kind of discussed, years and years and years and years ago, was how there are some people working in the industry who are really good at one thing, but then they get hired into the wrong role.
The Transformers movies have incredible art direction and a sense of design to them. And I think it would be fair to say that neither of us thinks that Michael Bay, who directed them, has the most elegant directorial stamp.
Well, hold on now. All I can say, I remember one of those Transformers pictures in which Indiana Jones' son is running through Shia LaBeouf, the late great... No, no, he's still with us.
He's still with us.
I don't even know if that's a joke.
It just came to me. I hope he's doing okay, wherever he is, whatever his path is. There's a, I don't know, 15-minute sequence and his houses are blowing up and he's running.
And I realized in the middle of it, wait a minute, this is supposed to be thrilling. And instead it was just stuff on the screen. Zack Snyder is like that way too in the sense that, wow, this guy is an incredible art director.
But he opted for directing.
So, you know, it's always tricky to say this because there are art directors and production designers on these films who work as part of the team and they execute the vision too.
By the way, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I should have said production designer, not art director, sorry.
Gotcha. So, Denis Villeneuve has a magnificent way of looking at things and making them look.
I thought, while watching this film, I mean, I'm not sure why you don't like Arrival, but I kept thinking, you know, when I see these fireworks, these inkblots in the sky, which are very much like how the aliens in Arrival communicate.
I'm also thinking a lot about how the Blade Runner sequel, there's this scene where I think Ryan Gosling is talking to like a massive projection of like a holographic woman.
And it felt to me like we're watching in the development of this guy's career, it's a little bit like the musician whose music I've spent the most time with, and that is Van Morrison.
At one level, there is nothing that Van Morrison is singing about today that he wasn't singing about in 1968. And Philip Glass is another example. To some people, Philip Glass' music just sounds like every piece is the same.
Or one way you could look at it is he is drilling down into this thing that he's called to be good at. And he may just change, tweak a little bit here and there each time, but there's growth and development every time he makes a movie.
I felt the opposite of what you thought about Dune 2 making Dune 1 better.
I went back and watched the first Dune after seeing the second one, and it felt a whole lot more like the first Star Wars felt after I watched The Empire Strikes Back, a much richer, deeper film in which there was more, you know, bigger budget, more
opportunity to, you know, to be able to trust there's going to be more of these movies. So that's a piece about how the thing looks and feels. And I do want to go back and see it again in a large theater to feel those feelings again.
I want to move on to talking about the violence in the movie. Sure.
Can I just say one last thing? I just realized while talking, again, coming off of Ryan Vandalin and the idea of what you're saying but visually, and I think for me now, again, this just came to me. So if it's more half-baked than usual, I apologize.
When we think about the David Lynch version and so many monologues and everyone was talking, then think about how the worms are designed. They're like giant mouths opening. But in Denis Villeneuve's Dune, what do the worms look like?
Like eyes. Like the iris of an eye, close up. And so even at a very basic level, the film is communicating that it's about communicating visually at a very fundamental level, and that does harken back to arrival.
Sorry, I just had to get that out. Harken back.
It harken back. Okay, so the violence, here's the thing. The violence isn't gratuitous.
Honestly, one of the reasons that I've found watching it the first time so uncomfortable was the gladiator scene with Austin Butler, who is, I mean, Austin Butler is a fantastic actor. A fantastic actor.
In my lifetime, I never thought I'd see someone doing an impersonation...
Of Stellan Skarsgård.
Of Stellan Skarsgård. I believe it's pronounced Skarsgård.
Yes, yeah.
So much so, did you think he was actually Stellan Skarsgård dubbed in or mixed? That's how good it was.
No, I can't say that I thought that. I just think, I mean, he's remarkable. He's remarkable in Elvis, he's remarkable in this.
And the cruelty of his character is so in your face that watching that on IMAX, that gladiator scene, was distressing to me.
And part of it is, I guess, part of me is not even sure I want to talk about this in the podcast, so I'll risk it and see where it goes. You know, like a friend of mine survived an attempt on her life with a knife a year ago.
And so I think it's, and thank God she's doing very well. And I think it's worth exploring here, violence in movies and violence in this, and how it speaks to violence in the real world.
And I've always had a preoccupation with that because of where I grew up, because of the peace process in the North of Ireland and of the recognition that violence to achieve political ends is at best futile and at worst it just destroys people's
lives. So, you know, I'm acknowledging my, why I care about that comes from this lived experience. And lived experience can actually blind you to how good a film is. And I think that's partly what was happening the first time I saw Dune.
I was just personally uncomfortable. And so second time it was easier for me to go back and get a different view of this.
And so what I think about the violence in this second Dune movie is it's not gratuitous because you feel it, because you feel it.
I'm not sure that that gladiator sequence needs to be as long as it is to establish just how cruel the Austin Butler character is.
But, you know, especially if you're a new listener, one thing about how I relate to film is I'm always thinking about what it telegraphs about the real world and about what is, what are the limits of the possible and what stories and characters we're
supposed to identify with are mirroring about what we think is real and what we think is permissible and what we think is advisable or to be pursued in the world. And the other part about that is, and I really do want to hear your thoughts on this,
the idea of there being a savior for people who think they're oppressed, who's going to lead them out of Egypt and do it by cleansing the world through rage. And, you know, we happen to be living at a time when there are a number of people who
portray themselves that way on the world stage. And I really, I think it would be, it would be a misdirection to simply name the one or two that some of us are most concerned about.
But I'm interested in your thoughts generally about what happens when people, when people are susceptible to those kind of militant savior narratives.
And what you think about violence and distressing things in films that you may have some experience of in your own life.
Well, sure, no, I've, you know, I've had a gun drawn on me. I've had other, I've been attacked with a knife in a very distressing situation as well that we won't go into at this point.
But there is the, the, the coming from the book and the films expand on this in a way that or deal with it or engage with in a way that David Lynch's version, I can't speak to the, the sci-fi TV series version, don't, in that we are susceptible.
We are susceptible to the figures that tell us that only they can fix it, that they can fix it. You want that solution. And, you know, on the old show that we did from, what, 2006 to 2014, we talked often about the myth of redemptive violence, right?
This, this story and narratives that violence will solve the problem, right? So John McClane is able to save his marriage by killing Hans Gruber and Die Hard. His marriage is saved.
Could have been married, could do marriage counseling, but no, there had to be, you know, he had to kick that ballerina's, not ballerina, what do you call them, male ballerinas? You call them ballerinas, right? Alexander Goodenough, right?
Isn't that who that is?
I think you just call them ballet dancers.
Ballet dancers, sorry, not ballerina, ballet dancers. And this film explores that.
This is this horrific, what's interesting also, for me principally in that is that the main character is aware of how horrible this is and yet cannot escape that he's trapped.
He's trapped by history, trapped by circumstance and his own character that he does not reject it.
And now you're talking about Paul?
Yes.
Okay, so I think it's not only that he... There's a sense in which he's choosing it too. Because he's seeing there's no...
It's both seductive and he believes there's no better option. But Chani does believe there's a better option.
And I'm really interested to see if the film explores that because the challenge with the dominance of the myth of redemptive violence and the way we tell stories is not that people go out of their way to prove that there is no option short of lethal
violence or genocidal violence. It's that any alternatives short of lethal violence or genocidal violence are hardly ever explored narratively.
It is so rare. They're not contemplated.
And a film, I hope we'll do a bonus episode on Wonder Woman 1984, is one of the few films on a big scale that actually does explore an alternative to lethal violence.
Is that the most misunderstood film?
It is absolutely one of the most misunderstood films. What fascinates me about it, no spoilers, is that it does something extremely rare in that it explores the motivations of the villain.
And let's just say it does something other than lethal force to resolve things at the end.
When I've talked with people about this film, they haven't noticed that that's what, the people who've seen the film, they will say, oh yeah, I hadn't noticed that. And there's something, it's not about any kind of moral or philosophical superiority.
I just happen to have been around people who've researched this and taught this for decades. Sure. And I've had the opportunity to listen.
So you're not saying it's a failure of the film?
It's not a failure of the film.
It's a challenging commentary on the way narrative is embodied and replicated in our society in an us versus them way. And that, I mean, to be clear about the myth of redemptive violence, it's not just that violence solves things.
Mythically, the myth of redemptive violence cleanses things. So we blow up the shark at the end of Jaws, and the act of blowing up the shark has actually made the world safe and better. It hasn't just gotten rid of the threat, it's cleansed things.
And I'm sure we'll have lots of conversations about this to go on with. Something I really appreciate about Villeneuve is there's no, I don't remember there being gratuitous violence in any of his films.
In fact, one of his earliest films is about one of the most shocking invitations to not take retribution.
That if people really sat down and thought about it, they might be horrified at what he's asking people to imagine doing instead of taking retribution, instead of an eye for an eye, instead of just pushing them out so that we can own this place.
So I value that. And if you're of a similar constitution to me, you'll probably find Dune to be a bit rattling.
Well, you know, he also does it in terms of the filmmaking here. He does the smart thing where we have the deaths off screen. So we hear something horrible.
We don't know exactly what it is. And this is again, another scene in which the always afraid and scared or Dave Bautista's character.
I just wanted to hug Dave Bautista.
No, he really comes, again, this is another aspect of the beautiful way things are implied. Why is this guy a bully?
We see why he's this horrible person because he's clearly living his whole life in fear of God knows of being killed or tortured or what have you by this whole abusive system. His uncle and the whole society seems to be horribly sadistic.
So it's like the creation of a bully and it becomes almost sympathetic in that way. We've talked for a while. Is there anything else you want to say about Dune, Cullen, Part 2?
Just that frankly the destruction of what I guess you could call the holy wells, the place where...
I mean, first of all, there is a... It's a beautiful and challenging idea that the Fremen, when one of their number dies, they extract the fluids from their body and they pour them into a well.
It's a sacred well that no one's ever allowed to drink from. And in fact, you know, this lovely Stilgar character, Uncle Stilgar, says something like, even if he was dying, a Fremen would not drink this water.
And there is something beautiful about that. There's something sacred about that. There's something really challenging and kind of scary about that.
And it makes me ask, okay, what's sacred enough to value that much?
And I suppose you could point that toward, you know, the think pieces that came out when Notre Dame Cathedral burned down a few years ago, and there were people saying we shouldn't spend all this money when there's people starving in the world, and
let's rebuild, to rebuild a cathedral. So I'd say you can do two things at once. In fact, we have to be able to do two things at once.
We have to be able to learn how to share the resources that we have and to ask for what we need, and beauty is worth preserving. That's one piece.
That scene is necessary because later, this is a spoiler, when those holy wells are destroyed by an artillery bombardment, and I think that may be the scene where, is it the Baron who says something like, you know, just good old-fashioned
He actually says, genius.
Yeah.
Oh, does he?
Yeah. That's a bit high praise there.
Right. So the destruction was...
No one's thought of attacking them before, apparently. I don't know why. We'll just walk into the desert and everything will be fine.
So you feel the gravity of the destruction...
You do...
.
of those wells because of that earlier scene, and I thought about the Taliban in Afghanistan destroying statues when I saw that scene. And it's kind of churlish and diminishes it to relate it to any specific act of horror going on in the world today.
Because I think anytime we name one act of horror going on in the world, we're always failing to name another and it can get into virtue signaling. And I don't want to do that, certainly not for its own sake.
But that was the moment in the film in which I thought about the world we live in and about people suffering under bombardment today. And the film doesn't exploit that.
But if you really spend time thinking about Dune and thinking about where power comes from, what happens to people who accept power and are well motivated to that? What happens to people who are consciously venal about it?
And then what happens to the rest of us? Most of us are somewhere in the middle. Most of us actually don't even recognize the power we have.
And the worst thing you can do with power is to pretend that you don't have it. I am just grateful and kind of amazed that a film of this scale has so much to say and so much to ask. And thank you for pushing me to go back and see it again.
It's one of the great films, and it does that thing that all great art does, is that it helps illuminate our world.
After I saw Past Lives, we talked about this in our Oscar show, you know, the world was larger after seeing Part, Past Lives. And Dune, for all of its commercial success, does the same thing. It's a great work of art.
It's a great piece of popular art, and the way we think back in the 50s and 60s, you would have popular novels that people were excited about, big blockbuster novels. People were excited about, you know, Norman Mailer or Philip Roth.
This is a great piece of popular art, and the world is richer for having it in it. Ladies and gentlemen, Dune, Part 2.
Will you do me a favor?
Always. I'm doing the show. Oh, no, no.
It's a mutual thing. Just because we had a 10-year break.
Give my best to Shay Halood next time you see him.
You know, we go way back. Can we talk about one last thing? Maybe we should do a bonus episode on David Lynch's Dune.
If you want to compare the two, compare David, the two films, just pick one scene, and I would pick the worm ride.
So when Paul learns how to ride the worm with music by Toto, when he gets on the worm and the guitars start, and compare that to the Villeneuve version, Villeneuve is going for realism. We can feel those sand particles.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
What? What?
Toto is the best at doing what Toto does.
I'm pro-Toto. I'm not anti-Toto.
Are you pro-Toto in Toto?
I'm totally into Toto. Totally.
All right. And what about the Zimmer? What about the Zimmer?
That's great.
I got both soundtracks queued up right there on Apple Music. That's still plug for Apple Music, but that's what I've been listening to all day. Today's Toto and Zimmer are all training tracks.
I also did a thing where I took some footage that I got from somewhere of the first film, and I put Toto's music over it for fun. So that's how I like to pass my time.
Busy man. Busy man.
The thing is that it's clear, looking at those two scenes, Villeneuve is all about the reach, but he's trying to capture a sense of this is really happening, got the sand flying. It's a astonishing sequence, and Lynch has got a surrealistic vision.
It is like something out of a dream. He lives in a dream world. Think about Blue Velvet, the opening of the camera going down underneath the grass to see the ants and what's really looking underneath.
That's what interests Lynch, and Villeneuve is doing something totally different, making the fantastical real, rather than making the real fantastical. Ooh, I think I coined something.
That's a tagline for the show.
It is. Any last thoughts, Dune, Colin, Part 2?
Oh, last thoughts about Dune? I thought you meant last thoughts generally.
Come on, man. We're going to be doing the show for years. Let's not end it so quickly.
My last thoughts are, again, in all seriousness, Dear listener, Jett and I have talked about this off air.
We do have an off air life, but it's mostly about talking to each other about movies. Since rebooting the show, I have had more space in my mind and heart and more appetite for movies than I've had in years.
So I want to thank the listener for giving us a reason to do this. And I want to thank you, Jett, for bringing this conversation back into podcast form. Genuinely.
I've got to be good for something.
I'm not going to be leading a holy war. This is the least I can do. Folks, if you enjoy the show and want to support us, you want to get access to bonus episodes, we just released our Indiana Jones.
That's an unreleased pilot we did on Dial of Destiny.
The greatest Indiana Jones film.
So you say. Patreon to hot take. The greatest out of five.
I know I said that.
Of course, Spielberg made better Indiana Jones films than James Mangle did. But it's a great movie.
It is a great movie. You may be chopped down on the tuk tuk chase. If you want to support us, get access to bonus shows.
We also have archived episodes. We did 253 episodes back in the day. You can do that.
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What did Wittgenstein say? What is that?
I don't think he was a listener to The Film Talk.
Well, you know, surprisingly, I think you're correct. Didn't he say something like, of that which we know nothing, we must be silent or something along those lines?
Then it's definitely time for me to go. I've been Gareth Higgins.
I've been Jett Lo.
We'll keep talking, next time.
And how can this be?