International Booker 2024 broke me and I’ve been in a bit of a reading “slump.” To get me out of this rut, I started Shōgun Part 1 since I have been enjoying the show.* In non-bookish news, I bought my first bottle of ink: Robert Oster’s Caffe Crema, and had some soft serve ice cream on a beautiful day!
I watched Dune: Part One exactly how Denis Villeneuve intended: on a tiny little screen high up in the air, sitting next to a girl who was watching Killers of the Flower Moon and picking her nose.
Dune: Part One is a decent adaption of half of Frank Herbert’s dense novel of the same name. Unfortunately, neither Timothée Chalamet nor Zendaya, nor any of the other stars, could keep my brain from screaming: This is the world of Rick Owens! This is the ideal landscape for his garments! This is where his clothes are meant to live and breathe and move! This is the future! I wanted to turn to my churlish rowmate and demand she bask in the glory of Rick Owens. As I did not do that, I’m telling you.
It is incredibly revealing of Rick Owens’ reach that I could not divorce the brand from my perception of the film. But, when it comes to the over 1000 outfits created for the first film, costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan did not pull from Rick. Instead, they looked to historical sources for inspiration.
West told Vogue, “It’s a futuristic take on the past and immediately made me think of medieval references, ancient tarot cards, and alchemy. We went back to Greek tragedy, [as] I felt there was a correlation between the house of Atreus and the house of Atreides. Our references were primarily historical, and Denis loved that.”
When outfitting the men of House Atreides she added, “We’re dealing with the downfall of a monarchy, so the Romanovs were the obvious reference… Their uniforms were so elegant, and I referred to that for Paul, Duke Leto, and all the men of Caladan.”
Outside of the royal uniform, West referenced arachnids and insects for the Harkonnen armour while the Arrakis costumes were made by Demobaza, a Bulgarian brand that fuses a “post-socialist spirit” with “futuristic dreams.” The brand’s deconstructed aesthetic is achieved through the use of textured fabrics that nod to the natural world as well as layers and architectural forms. For the launch of the first film, the brand even created a capsule collection.
The above look worn by Lady Jessica might just be the most expensive costume ever created. The chain mail was hand made and fitted. West looked to both medieval dresses and Balenciaga while envisioning this look.
DUNE: PART TWO:
Dune: Part Two was fun, but hollow. (Why is there always a but with me?! Why can’t I be happy?! Why must I critique?! Am I “the preeminent and most widely read critic of my generation?!” (No, obviously not, as that role is already taken.))
Despite watching this film in the theatres, I was not enamored. I often found myself distracted by the many stars featured in this film and it was hard for me to separate their past films from their present role.** And though there were moments that I found the film to be visually entertaining, I still left the cinema thinking: all that glitters in the Arrakis sand is not spice.
As such, below you’ll find some complaints, questions, musings, etc., etc.
Sandworms:
Why don’t the sandworms travel through/under the sand once their riders are atop them? How do the Fremen make the sandworms stay above the sand while they travel the great expanses of Arrakis?
From a more tactile perspective, how do the industrious Fremen get off the sandworms? I understand the mechanics of getting on. But off is out of my purview. I can’t recall the book mentioning it either.
Consumption of the coveted, powerful spice makes eyes blue. Why weren’t Chani’s eyes blue anymore? Were any of the Fremens’ eyes even blue?!
Zendaya and Timothée do not have very convincing romantic chemistry which is unfortunate as belief in their love is tantamount to Paul’s success.
Chani’s character seems to be the most altered from the book and I don’t think were for the better.
Chani tells Paul that she does not like her true name because it’s connected to a prophecy. She then proceeds to not tell Paul the prophecy. Later, Reverend Mother Jessica demands Chani fulfill the prophecy. Why were we, the viewers, never told the prophecy? Not even once. They didn’t need to spell everything out. They could have used coy, poetic language. It just felt like such a missed opportunity to build out the lore of this world.
Someone make a film about Jessica and the Bene Gesserit! Those ladies are wild and the ones I’m most curious about.
Some small things that I need to get off my chest:
Way too many fetus shots… That screen time could have been better used elsewhere.
Why was Princess Irulan “dressed like she's heading to a Renaissance fair?”
Where was Thufir Hawat at?
End of the film:
Why was Baron Harkonnen crawling towards the throne? What did he think he was going to do? Sit on it and get a power up?
Paul casually jaunts into the throne room as if he’s pulling up to his local bodega to ask for a bacon, egg, and cheese. He immediately declares the royal court his prisoners and then instructs his men to kill all of the Sardaukar army. Why didn’t he just tell the army to stand down because their leader had been captured?
And, finally, my main gripe with this film: fundamentalists!
This word was over used. It was said at least four times.*** Every single time the word was said I was ripped from the world building and found myself questioning… Why this word? Would there not be a more appropriate and unique word to use in 10191? Had the film even showed accurate representations of fundamentalism? If the Fremen were suffering from a problem of fundamentalism, how were they even tackling this amongst themselves? All we see is Chani arguing that the fundamentalists’ beliefs are wrong because Fremen freedom should come not from an outsider but rather from within; that it is through their own efforts that freedom would be worthwhile.
By callously and regularly throwing around the term fundamentalist, the film equates religious belief with irrationality. Why are the Fremens’ hopes something to mock and besmear? Most of the supposed fundamentalists that we encounter are defenseless women clothed in long robes of tan, camel, and brown. Regulated to the South of the planet, they are the stewards of the domestic space. These women are not the outfitted warriors we see demolishing Harkonnen equipment with stealth moves and high-powered weapons. Don’t these women have a right to believe that salvation and freedom is possible? Don’t the Fremen, oppressed for centuries, deserve the right to yearn and hope for freedom even if the promise of this freedom is Bene Gesserit propaganda?
RECENT READS:
I may have spent a lot of time on The Atlantic…
I need to find an obscure Medieval poet to fall in love with! Pls pass along suggestions.
Theo Von is very curious. It will be interesting to see what happens to him in the future.
“So Von’s a man of the Now. Mentally, he’s in his own place, but his powers of connection are considerable. People open up to him. And like America, he’s on the cusp…”
Bad news for all you chocolate fans, not only is the cost going up but it looks like these prices and flavor adjustments are here to stay.
The apps are out and AI def is not the answer.
“Dating apps once looked like the foundation of American romance. Now the cracks are starting to show. In 2022, a Pew Research Center survey found that about half of people have a positive experience with online dating, down from October 2019.”
Even without the apps, dating in America has never been simple:
““I wish I knew some young men!” the writer Eliza Orne White declared in The Atlantic’s July 1888 issue. “I am fully aware how heterodox this sentiment is considered, but I repeat it boldly, and even underline it—I should like to know some interesting men!””
Potential future reading includes:
Vogue Fashion News Writer José Criales-Unzueta chatted with Byline about his path to writing and pop culture.
Some interesting anecdotes about Raymond Radiguet, the author of The Devil in the Flesh, who died before his twenty-first birthday.
100 writing tips via Lithub, below are some of my favorites:
“Step away from your screens and devices. Go outside and touch grass. Grab a blade of grass, uproot it. Look at it. Look at it closer, longer. Then eat it.”
“A writer’s only measure of success is the well-wrought sentence. And a six-figure advance.”
“Don’t rely on the televisual. Unlike other media, literature can engage in the gustatory, the olfactory, and the tactile.”
“Every fourth book you read should be in translation. You wouldn’t solely eat American cuisine, would you?”
“Since nobody knows what they’re doing, successful authors create myths around themselves by necessity—it helps with interviews. Look forward to the day you can extract myths out of all this frustration.”
“Marry rich.” (À la this Cut writer.)
Some things I read or quoted in the process of writing about Dune:
How Dune’s Costume Designers Created the Definitive Sci-Fi Fashion Fantasy
DUNE: Part one movie and DEMOBAZA fashion aesthetic: A perfect fit
*No affiliate links, maybe by end of Q2 I will have made some BIG MOVES.
**I don’t actually know most of their names lol. But I know there were a lot of famous people in the film.
***I think it was said exactly four times. But, I’m not watching the film again to get to the bottom of this. Couldn’t find the script online either.
Special shout out to Owen for their edits. Any errors are mine and mine only.
In the July 2024 issue of Harper’s Magazine there’s an article titled, “The Gods of Logic” by Benjamin Labatut describing the potential threat to humanity posed by AI. The article begins and ends with references to Frank Herbert’s “Dune” saga, in which mankind is described as having fought and won a desperate war against machine intelligence in the far distant past. “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free”, wrote Herbert. “But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” That is why in the world of “Dune” there are no robots and no computers, for humans had long since learned the dangers of delegating their thinking to machines.
I don’t know enough about AI to decide whether it is a genuine threat to humanity or not, though I don’t think we will ever be able to design a computer that has self-consciousness. No matter how complex or sophisticated, an assemblage of wires and circuits will never be anything more than an assemblage of wires and circuits—though I may well be advertising my own ignorance by making such a statement.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to ignore the experts in the field who speculate that the rapidly developing field of AI may pose risks that we are only now beginning to become aware of. The article presents one authority who speculates that the digital intelligence we are designing may one day decide it can dispense with the humans who created it. “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind” is the most important commandment of the world of “Dune”, one we should pay heed to before it is too late.