Review – Dune (2021) directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Watched on October 31st, 2021
Rating: 4/5 Stars

So. Dune.

The world has been going pretty crazy about this movie. I've heard about this movie for a long time. Since before the Covid-19 era, this movie has been talked about, being a grand scale epic that would revolutionize visual effects – and honestly people have been talking about this movie like it was going to change the world. And that's scary. Hype is a very interesting thing for me when it comes to movies. I won't lie, I tend to succumb to hype for movies, which isn't always the great thing to do. Hype creates expectation, and expectation for a movie can sometimes be good because when met you tend to enjoy something more, but if it doesn't you can come out even more disappointed despite the movie still being really good. I hate to admit it, but I think this happened to me.

I've been feeling pretty out of it with film lately. At somepoint during this year, my passion for film seemed to fizzle. Part of my thinks that maybe I burnt myself out by putting all of my passion into film and nothing else – for me, when I first "found" film, it felt like one of the first things in a long time that I genuinely felt like I could not only be passionate about, but possibly good at. I dove in head first with everything I had in me, and for a while I loved it! I really did. And I don't really know what happened but at some point during 2021, that initial honeymoon magic felt lost. I've been trying to recapture that feeling for the longest time, but I just haven't felt the same. It's been a bit distressing because I've made film a huge part of my personality over the last year or two, and to suddenly feel lost within your own personality is a bit scary.

Dune had me excited for a variety of reasons. For one, I'm a huge fan of Denis Villeneuve's work, and think he's one of the best modern directors right now. He's one of those people that would get me to watch literally anything he works on, regardless of what its about. Additionally, the cast for this movie was just absurd, with so much star power that felt fitting and right. And, on top of all that, the visual effects were hyped to be on a similar level to LOTR in the sense of how those movies revolutionized visual and special effects for its time. However, more importantly to me, I was really excited for this movie because I was hoping it would live up to all of these expectations and thrust me back into the gauntlet of film, and fill me with the fervor that I had once felt. All of this combined led to me expecting a perfect movie that would blow me away.

And it didn't.

That's not to say this isn't a great movie; it's really spectacular in a lot of way. I could gush about this movie's visuals and sound design for hours but I'll keep it brief: the cinematography is breathtaking and inspiring, the scale is unreal, and the sound design is just unbelievable. On a technical perspective, this movie doesn't just set the bar; it raises the bar and flies even higher over it. The acting is really great and everyone feels perfect for their roles. Timothée Chalamet...I feel like at times he can feel a little stone-faced with his acting, however whenever he does project it makes those moments feel that much more powerful, which I think balances out the more mellow delivery in a lot of his scenes. I'm excited for what he does in the future with the sequel. The music...Hans Zimmer does it again, enough said there.

But I come back to this feeling in my gut that I initially tried to convince myself wasn't true: I don't think this is a perfect movie. And that's hard for me to admit. I was a bit lot for words after the movie ended; I didn't have too much to contribute in conversing about the film with my friends after it ended because I was wrapping my head not only around the film but my inner feelings as well. I wanted so badly for this movie to change my life that I was trying to hop on the bandwagon and lie to myself that this movie was just as phenomenal as everyone made it out to be. But as i started to come around, I realized that I went into this movie with such high expectations that it could never have met that in a million years. Typically, in my experience, a life changing movie tends to come at you by surprise, it's never something you go into expecting for it to happen. It takes away from the punch that a surprise has. But after some reflection I finally came to terms with my feeling that this movie didn't change my life the way I wanted it to, it wasn't perfect, and that was a hard thing to grapple with. My head keeps going in circles the same way that this review is starting to feel like a repetition of the same thoughts in different words, but it's still sitting with me that this movie didn't do what I wanted it to. And not in the best way. Sometimes failed expectations are worse than a movie that was always bad to start with.

As I continue to write this, my brain is still trying to convince myself that this movie still did something for me. My initial feeling as the movie was going on and as the credits rolled was that I felt excited about film again – and that was a really great feeling to have again. I hadn't felt that way in a long time. But I'm still trying to figure out if that was just part of the inner lie that my initial opinions tried to tell myself, or if I really do finally feel like I love movies again. It's not going to be immediate, I don't think that a switch is going to flip and all of a sudden I'm going to be back to being me again – or whatever that means. I don't think it's going to be that simple, at least not for me. And I think I'm going to be okay with that. At the very least, this movie gave me a glimpse at that feeling again, the feeling that this passionate that I've made my life isn't gone, it just needs to reignite again. And that's reassuring. That's how I think I ultimately feel about this movie: it made me realize that my passion for film isn't lost, I just have to continue searching for it.

I bet this sound pretentious, actually I know that it does. But thoughts like this are best left unedited and raw. It's good to get it out, and as pretentious as it feels, I think it shows that this movie is setting me on a path back to finding myself again in film. And I'm grateful for that, regardless of how pretentious it may be. I'd say I'm excited for Dune Part Two...I just hope I find my passion again before then. And to be honest, I feel optimistic about that :)

Check out the original review posted on Letterboxd here.