{"id":4198,"date":"2021-10-27T17:40:04","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T17:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=4198"},"modified":"2021-10-27T17:40:21","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T17:40:21","slug":"dune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/27\/dune\/","title":{"rendered":"Dune"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Way of the Desert<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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True to its source material, Villeneuve\u2019s Dune<\/em> pairs CGI spectacle with dreamlike uncertainty.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Drea Jenkins and Charlie Clark
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What went ye out into the wilderness to see?\u201d asks Jesus. \u201cA man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings\u2019 houses.\u201d The finery and sophistication that attend worldly power are worse than useless out there, says Jesus: don\u2019t expect to find them. \u201cA prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.\u201d<\/p>

In the Hebrew imagination, the desert wanderings had been a 40-year purification from the corruptions learned at the fleshpots of Egypt. When such corruptions were rediscovered in their own royal courts and temple precincts, a return to those wanderings threatened\u2014and beckoned\u2014in the voices of the prophets. Out in the wilderness, far from the noise and bustle of human civilization, the still small voice might still be heard. Out in the desert, amidst the barren sands, we need only clear a few stones to make straight a highway for our God.<\/p>

\u201cGod created Arrakis to train the faithful,\u201d says Paul Muad\u2019Dib, Duke of House Atreides, a prophet who has long since put off the soft raiment of his noble rank. \u201cArrakis\u2014Dune\u2014Desert Planet<\/em>.\u201d Like the Hebrew prophets of old, Paul has gone into the wilderness and returned with a message of strength regained through purity restored. But what sort of faith does the God who made Arrakis seek to train? What sort of sacrifices does He require?<\/p>

Denis Villeneuve\u2019s Dune<\/em>, which adapts the first half of Frank Herbert\u2019s classic novel, is remarkable for keeping these questions in view. It\u2019s not a \u201cmessage movie\u201d exactly. As the title card ahead of the film suggests, any message it bears will come like a beautiful, if violent, dream: oracular and undecidable. But in this age of bathetic, CGI-bloated spectacle, a movie with an idea in its head is a cool drink of water in a dry and weary land.<\/p>

Not that it lacks its share of spectacle. This is a lovingly crafted adaptation with a deep respect for its source material. From the casting (yes, even Timotheeee), to the score, to the costuming, to the production design (yes, even the CGI), Dune <\/em>is fearfully and wonderfully made. But from its opening monologue, which introduces us to Arrakis from the perspective of the indigenous Fremen, the spectacle is secondary to the prophecy.<\/p>

The prophecy is of the liberation of the Fremen from the oppression of the Outworlders, colonizers like the Atreides, who kill the native people and pillage their planet for its precious natural resource, the spice. But life in the desert has shaped the Fremen\u2014like rocks honed to sharp points by blown sand\u2014into perfect conformity with a natural law of scarcity and survival. Their destiny is to rise up and overthrow the Outworlders, not just on Arrakis, but across the Known Universe.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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To survive the desert, you must become a desert.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Paul\u2019s father, Duke Leto Atreides, has some presentiment of this destiny. He envisions making an alliance with the Fremen. \u201cOn Caladan,\u201d he says, \u201cwe’ve ruled by air power and sea power. On Arrakis, we need to cultivate desert power.\u201d It is for Paul to discover that the desert power that Leto dreams of is not so easily harnessed. It is gained only by submission. One does not wield the desert, so much as one is wielded by it, becoming the instrument of a power greater than oneself.<\/p>

This quietism is made explicit in a scene where Paul attempts to pilot an ornithopter (a dragonfly-like aircraft\u2014very cool!) through a dust storm that threatens to pull the flying machine to pieces. He has a vision of the man who will soon initiate him into the Fremen way of life: \u201cThe mystery of life isn\u2019t a problem to solve but a reality to experience. A process cannot be understood by stopping it. We must move with the flow of the process. We must join it. We must flow with it.\u201d So Paul shuts down the \u2018thopter\u2019s engines, closes its wings, and allows the storm to carry them to relative safety. By ceasing to resist, they survive.<\/p>

As advice for survival on Arrakis\u2014a planetary waste where the only Maker is the mindless and all-consuming sandworm (\u201cBless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May he keep the world for His people.\u201d), a god who can be summoned by a drumming piece of machinery and ridden like a hopped freight\u2014\u201cJoin the flow\u201d may be sound enough. But if Paul had read more of the Orange Catholic Bible so beloved of his mentor Gurney Halleck (\u201cfor they shall suck\u00a0of\u00a0the abundance of the seas, and\u00a0of\u00a0treasures hid in the sand\u201d), he might have remembered that there are two sides to the desert.<\/p>

\u201cWhen the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none,\u201d says Jesus. In the Christian imagination, we may find in the desert our deliverance from the flesh and the world, only to find ourselves in the hands of the devil. It is to the desert that Jesus goes to be tempted. St. Anthony makes his home in the desert to drive out Satan and reclaim the wastes for his God. The Fremen \u201cfight like demons,\u201d says Duncan Idaho.<\/p>

The way of the desert\u2014the Fremen way\u2014is to reduce a person\u2019s worth to their strength and their body\u2019s water. Weakness is a capital crime, the penalty literal liquidation. Ironically, the law of the desert\u2014the law that strips us of the full dress of kings\u2019 houses (ceremonial, not military) and clothes us in stillsuits\u2014is the law of the jungle: kill or be killed. To survive the desert, you must become a desert. And Paul knows just what he will unleash by joining the flow: a \u201choly war spreading across the universe like unquenchable fire.\u201d<\/p>

Did Denis Villeneuve make Dune <\/em>to train the faithful? Does he believe that our world\u2014ravaged as it is by the legacy of colonization, economic exploitation, and environmental degradation\u2014is best represented by a planetary desert? Is the true meaning of life \u201cget tough or die\u201d? Is our best hope to \u201cmove with the flow of the process\u201d? How different to remember that behind the surface of scarcity and strife, life is not suffering and that faithfulness calls us to become gracious and loving in submission to a gracious and loving Maker.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Drea Jenkins<\/strong> is a software developer in Lebanon, NH. She graduated from Dartmouth in 2020 and loves to spend her free time reading, writing, praying in the middle of the night, and coding.
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Charlie Clark<\/strong>\u00a0is a writer and retractor<\/a>. He lives in New Hampshire.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Dune<\/strong> was directed by Denis Villeneuve and is based upon the novel by Frank Herbert, first published in 1965. It was released by Warner Bros. Pictures on September 15, 2021, and can be seen in theaters or on HBO Max.
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True to its source material, Villeneuve\u2019s Dune pairs CGI spectacle with dreamlike uncertainty. 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