The weight of the inevitable “Dune: Part Two”

It is the vastness of this world that is prioritised, not the people. In a world of such inevitability, the actors are given a hard task that they, mostly, rise to. Villeneuve makes explicit attempts to ground the middle section in a humanistic compulsion resting on the relationship between Paul and Chani. Chalamet and Zendaya have warm, if not quite fiery, chemistry that helps although both feel less confident in their work than their peers. In the major adaptation change for the film, Villeneuve has turned Chani into the sceptic of the world and it’s a decision that offers Zendaya a chance to put her contemporary affect to good use. Better performances come from Ferguson, whose turn towards fanaticism is helped by a fiercely committed performance, and from Javier Bardem whose blind-faith feels tragic and familiar. You can see how much Austin Butler relishes the thrill of playing his deranged psychopath and it’s a turn that plays well with others especially in brief moments opposite Lea Seydoux as a member of the Bene Gesserit.

Despite its nominal lead in Paul, the sprawling ambivalence of this space future feels more aligned with the dynamics of an ensemble film. It’s an unease that feels closest to the despair flowing through characters in Villeneuve’s “Prisoners”.

Whereas in “Prisoners”, though, entire sequences in the film felt imitative of the performers themselves and their characters (Jackman’s righteous fury, Dano’s inveigling anxiety, Gyllenhaal’s stolid scepticism) the performances in “Dune: Part Two”, all feel rendered secondary to the scope and weight of the planets they live on. There are people here, but more than people there are places and buildings and sand, endless sand. By the end of the film when Paul makes fateful decision after fateful decision on the way to an assured tragic end, the compulsive decay of this world seems assured.

Villeneuve’s bleak outlook will not find favour with many, but I’m impressed by his resistance to contextualising or explaining much of the meaning here. This might seem like a weakness for some, but instead I find myself intrigued at how the rhythms of “Dune: Part Two” take for granted our ability to make sense of the religious logic. It feels as if we are dropped into a world existing for years on its own. The political and religious weight of this world are presented as matter-of-fact realities, and this solemn approach to it – as if it were a Cecil De Mille epic, but bleaker – adds weight to the drama even when individual elements do not quite coalesce. We take the events here with operatic seriousness, all the way to their bitter end.