It’s rare when a soundtrack shines as a star among its top-billed cast. But in “Dune,” the music written by Hans Zimmer is the decisive element in the film. Other aspects are significant — Timothée Chalamet, the presence of Oakland native Zendaya — but it’s the soundtrack that makes this movie so distinctive that it colors the experience.
If you like the music here, you’ll probably like the movie. If you hate it, you can’t possibly enjoy “Dune.”
Zimmer has written scores for many other films, including “Inception,” “Gladiator” and “Dunkirk,” but his “Dune” score is particularly distinctive. It sounds entirely synthesized, though there seems to be a wordless choral element as well. This sonic ever-presence has a marked effect that underscores everything, from intimate conversations to flamboyant action.
Usually, soundtracks work to pump up the action and calm down the quieter scenes. Here, the soundtrack makes everything feel of a piece — the dramatic and the placid, the public and the personal — creating the sense of something strange and unfamiliar. The music never insists that we identify emotionally with the characters. Rather, it makes sure we never forget we’re watching an entirely alien universe.
Of course, neither the movie nor the soundtrack could work if Zimmer were imposing his point of view on the material. He doesn’t. He just brings out what’s already there, and what’s there is a genuine and reasonably successful attempt to create science fiction at its best — not the usual thinly disguised portrait of modern anxiety, but something bigger: a complete and utterly realized other world.
Denis Villeneuve remade ‘Dune’ to ‘satisfy the teenager that I was’
“Dune” is based on the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert. David Lynch made a film of it in 1984 that wasn’t well received. This one, directed by Denis Villeneuve and hitting theaters on Friday, Oct. 22, after its Mill Valley Film Festival premiere on Wednesday, Oct. 13, is better. It follows the book, and it takes its time. (Though maybe too much time — it runs 155 minutes and covers only roughly half the book.)
Timothée Chalamet (“Beautiful Boy,” “Call Me By Your Name”) plays Paul, whose father (Oscar Isaac) is the duke and sovereign of a planet and whose mother (Rebecca Ferguson) has potent mental powers that she hopes to cultivate in her son. The action begins when the emperor arrives and confers upon the duke the control of Arrakis, a wild and dangerous planet that is also the universe’s prime source of spice, an element that instills health and youthfulness and that also makes space travel possible.
Reluctantly, the family makes a trip to Arrakis, half expecting that the duke’s appointment is some kind of setup. From there, things get complicated. A rival local government is against them, and mining spice requires going deep into the desert, where there are gigantic, man-eating worms hiding beneath the surface. There are also the indigenous people of Arrakis, the Fremen. Some of them are friendly, some unfriendly, and all of them experts in desert living.
The movie’s length is, at times, a challenge, but “Dune” is so original and contains so many strong scenes that the length mostly isn’t a problem.
Villeneuve dresses Chalamet in black and makes good use of his lankiness, filming him in long shot so that he looks like a thin, dark sliver moving across the desert. Chalamet appears either interesting enough to be gifted or too insubstantial to matter, and that’s essentially the question of the movie: Does he have what it takes to be a leader?
Chalamet’s physicality makes a nice contrast with Stellan Skarsgard, who appears in an enormous fat suit as Baron Harkonnen, the evil adversary of Paul and his family.
The actors are vivid, particularly Chalamet, who must grow in the role, and Ferguson, who goes through the film seeming rattled yet spiritual. Javier Bardem and Zendaya have featured roles as Fremen. Zendaya doesn’t get to say much, but her grave and arresting aura makes an impression nonetheless. If there’s a sequel, her role is certain to expand.
And there should be a sequel. The modern sci-fi that we usually see in movies is so limited in comparison — the same old movies about postapocalyptic dystopia, or alien invasion, or computers taking over. Not only are they boring, but they’re earthbound and keep audiences earthbound, mired in the same thoughts they had walking into the theater.
At least “Dune,” by contrast, offers the opportunity of genuine transport.
M“Dune”: Science fiction. Starring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson and Oscar Isaac. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. (PG-13. 155 minutes.) In Bay Area theaters and on HBO Max starting Friday, Oct. 22.