I’ve wanted to bring Dune to the big screen for 40 years
As the latest adaption of sci-fi novel Dune hits cinemas, director Denis Villeneuve tells Laura it is the fulfilment of a life-long dream
It has been a long journey to bring Dune back to the big screen.
Frank Herbert’s seminal best-selling novel of the same name tells the story of Paul Atreides, the son of a noble family who leaves the comfortable life he knows for a desolate, dangerous mining planet known as Arrakis, where he is entrusted with the protection of the most valuable asset and most vital element in the galaxy.
The influential 1965 book was previously adapted in a much-maligned 1984 film, directed by David Lynch and starring Kyle Maclachlan.
Now a new version, due to be told in two parts by the French-canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, whose credits include Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, aims to bring a whole new audience to the story.
Starring Timothee Chalamet as Paul, the film also features Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Josh Brolin
Harding and Jason Momoa, and is a realisation of a dream Denis has had since he was a child.
“It’s a book that I read in my youth, at the beginning of my teenage years,” the 54-year-old recalls. “So it has been with me for 40-something years.
“At the time I was mesmerised and deeply inspired by what it was saying about our world. Sadly, the book just became more relevant as time went by.
“And the desire of bringing it to the screen has been vivid since the day I read it, and it’s just by great chance that I happened to start to work in
Hollywood, where such a dream can become reality. But I’m still surprised myself that I got the chance to have done it.”
Denis tried to recreate those feelings of childlike awe while making the film.
“That was the challenge,” he admits, “to try to bring those images that I had in mind when I was a kid, to try to bring them back to life and try to go back to something that was fresh and uncorrupted at the time, that had mostly no influence from other adaptations or anything that has been taught or made after. I was trying to go back to those original ideas that I had.
“The most difficult thing was being a hardcore fan myself, I knew that I would fight to make sure that I would be pleased as much as possible by this adaptation. But the problem was to make sure that people who had never read the book or heard about the book would feel welcome and not lost watching the movie.
“The challenge was to find a way to introduce this world in the most simple way to an audience that knew nothing of the book.”
It’s a story not without its complexities, as warring
factions fight for control of Spice, a rare and highly valued natural resource upon which space travel, knowledge, commerce and human existence all rely.
Paul’s coming-of-age story is set against family rivalries, tribal clashes, social oppression and ecological disaster.
“Timothee has all the necessary quality to bring Paul Atreides to life,”
Denis says. “He has that deep intelligence, that beautiful maturity, and the old soul but at the same time, he looks tremendously young on screen and is super charismatic, and I needed that charisma to bring Paul to life.
“Paul is an intellectual, and we need to feel that throughout the movie, that he is someone that has doubt, that will reimagine the world around him and embrace a different reality and adapt to a new reality. That takes a lot of intelligence, the capacity for adaptation, and it’s something that I wanted to see in Paul Atreides.”
Denis always planned the film would be told in two parts, but must now anxiously wait to see if this first film, which was long delayed because of the Covid pandemic, is a success before he can realise his vision.
“The screenplay is written, the ideas are there, I know exactly what to do, and hopefully we will have the chance to
it.”