Dune II Very Loud Everyone Yelling
Mar. 7th, 2024 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soosifrooshWe saw Dune 2! I want to talk about it!
1) Did I... enjoy that movie? I don't THINK I enjoyed it. I think I paid $12.50 to feel extremely tense for two hours, which as the parent of an ambulatory toddler was a feeling I can have for free.
I will say that it's maybe a useful benchmark on the numerical stress scale: my life feels about as tense as watching Dune II.
2) I would read one million essays on feminism in Dune and Dune adaptations? I stopped trying to read the books when I was about twelve (at which point my midcentury scifi defense strategy of "aaaand then the villain, like, murdered a bunch of sex workers while cackling about it or whatever, I'm just going to flip forward a few pages" was sadly well-honed). But I had to go back and check after Dune I that I remembered correctly and that Lady Jessica just hadn't had much of a perspective. She's important in setting up the chess board, but she rarely appears on it? Channi was of course epic but also kind of faded off the page eventually and let the men get on with it. And there ARE by midcentury standards quite a lot of women in Dune, doing quite a lot. But honestly so far the Villeneuve movies feel like the kind of missing-scene fanfiction I used to write, where I would take characters that were kind of cyphers in the text and try to work the problem of what on earth their interior worlds were like. It's really weird and interesting to see that on screen.
3) I am kind of tempted to re-read the books just so that I can get a sense of what the costume designers were starting from. I'm FASCINATED with Irulan's three outfits, where she starts wearing a little beaded cap and a bridal white dress and then is wearing essentially a beaded mail coif with pretty floral beadwork and by the last scene is wearing essentially chainmail with dangly bits. It's such an interesting visual journey from "bridal candidate" to "combatant". I also thought the clothing that Lady Jessica starts in is visually very referential to the Bene Gesserit but at first it looks very, idk, European-myth-of-the-odalisque and then as her character develops a viewer who's not perfectly tuned into the cues realizes that it's the clothing of authority.
On that level I am also fascinated with the gaze in the film, because I swear to god the only body part you see that isn't meant as body horror (next section) is Timothée Chalamet's tiny little butt. Just full screen height in leather chaps over close-fitting shiny leggings.
3.5) We also see Lady Margot Fenring's shoulders, during what is meant as a seduction scene, but there is this absolutely fantastic bit of face acting where she turns her back to Feyd Rautha and you can see on her face that she is absolutely, 100% aware that this is the moment she might die. I also think that it's very interesting that the body part chosen for "SENSUAL, SEDUCTIVE LADY SPY" was just like... literally just her shoulders.
I'm also fascinated with places where you can see women dressed in early 1960s silhouettes, mostly the Harkonnen concubines and some scenes with Princess Irulan. It's just a really interesting way to reference the world Dune comes from.
4) Okay but on the other side, when will it become inappropriate to fully lean into the historical trend of obese disabled people as body horror villains? I understand that this is very explicit in the book, but there are other things in the Dune books (like saying "jihad" a million billion times) that were over the line of modern sensibilities and got walked back a little, to mixed success. When exactly will disability body horror in general be understood as being in poor taste and need to be softened a little?
5) I would be really interested in reading about how people are taking the knife's edge Villeneuve had to walk between Frank Herbert's historically positioned obsession with Islam and making a movie that will have Muslim viewers and will be viewed through a different lense. I spent a while this morning looking up the gestures in salat to make sure that I wasn't misremembering and that for instance the hand-over-head scooping gesture was a part of Muslim prayer, and yeah, it's visibly something like the gesture takbir, but also plausibly NOT QUITE.
I'm going to have to reread the stupid books, aren't I. And possibly, in all my copious free time, a book of commentary if I can get it.
Anyway it was a very tense movie full of violence and people screaming at each other in a made-up language, and I didn't enjoy it in the traditional sense, I think, but I found it really interesting to think about as a movie that someone made on purpose?
Also if you want to see a Lady Jessica supercut, there's a great fanvid/supercut from Dune I here (warning for a threat of sexual violence). It also gives you a good look at her costume choices.
1) Did I... enjoy that movie? I don't THINK I enjoyed it. I think I paid $12.50 to feel extremely tense for two hours, which as the parent of an ambulatory toddler was a feeling I can have for free.
I will say that it's maybe a useful benchmark on the numerical stress scale: my life feels about as tense as watching Dune II.
2) I would read one million essays on feminism in Dune and Dune adaptations? I stopped trying to read the books when I was about twelve (at which point my midcentury scifi defense strategy of "aaaand then the villain, like, murdered a bunch of sex workers while cackling about it or whatever, I'm just going to flip forward a few pages" was sadly well-honed). But I had to go back and check after Dune I that I remembered correctly and that Lady Jessica just hadn't had much of a perspective. She's important in setting up the chess board, but she rarely appears on it? Channi was of course epic but also kind of faded off the page eventually and let the men get on with it. And there ARE by midcentury standards quite a lot of women in Dune, doing quite a lot. But honestly so far the Villeneuve movies feel like the kind of missing-scene fanfiction I used to write, where I would take characters that were kind of cyphers in the text and try to work the problem of what on earth their interior worlds were like. It's really weird and interesting to see that on screen.
3) I am kind of tempted to re-read the books just so that I can get a sense of what the costume designers were starting from. I'm FASCINATED with Irulan's three outfits, where she starts wearing a little beaded cap and a bridal white dress and then is wearing essentially a beaded mail coif with pretty floral beadwork and by the last scene is wearing essentially chainmail with dangly bits. It's such an interesting visual journey from "bridal candidate" to "combatant". I also thought the clothing that Lady Jessica starts in is visually very referential to the Bene Gesserit but at first it looks very, idk, European-myth-of-the-odalisque and then as her character develops a viewer who's not perfectly tuned into the cues realizes that it's the clothing of authority.
On that level I am also fascinated with the gaze in the film, because I swear to god the only body part you see that isn't meant as body horror (next section) is Timothée Chalamet's tiny little butt. Just full screen height in leather chaps over close-fitting shiny leggings.
3.5) We also see Lady Margot Fenring's shoulders, during what is meant as a seduction scene, but there is this absolutely fantastic bit of face acting where she turns her back to Feyd Rautha and you can see on her face that she is absolutely, 100% aware that this is the moment she might die. I also think that it's very interesting that the body part chosen for "SENSUAL, SEDUCTIVE LADY SPY" was just like... literally just her shoulders.
I'm also fascinated with places where you can see women dressed in early 1960s silhouettes, mostly the Harkonnen concubines and some scenes with Princess Irulan. It's just a really interesting way to reference the world Dune comes from.
4) Okay but on the other side, when will it become inappropriate to fully lean into the historical trend of obese disabled people as body horror villains? I understand that this is very explicit in the book, but there are other things in the Dune books (like saying "jihad" a million billion times) that were over the line of modern sensibilities and got walked back a little, to mixed success. When exactly will disability body horror in general be understood as being in poor taste and need to be softened a little?
5) I would be really interested in reading about how people are taking the knife's edge Villeneuve had to walk between Frank Herbert's historically positioned obsession with Islam and making a movie that will have Muslim viewers and will be viewed through a different lense. I spent a while this morning looking up the gestures in salat to make sure that I wasn't misremembering and that for instance the hand-over-head scooping gesture was a part of Muslim prayer, and yeah, it's visibly something like the gesture takbir, but also plausibly NOT QUITE.
I'm going to have to reread the stupid books, aren't I. And possibly, in all my copious free time, a book of commentary if I can get it.
Anyway it was a very tense movie full of violence and people screaming at each other in a made-up language, and I didn't enjoy it in the traditional sense, I think, but I found it really interesting to think about as a movie that someone made on purpose?
Also if you want to see a Lady Jessica supercut, there's a great fanvid/supercut from Dune I here (warning for a threat of sexual violence). It also gives you a good look at her costume choices.
