The man comes up the hillock, with his flowing robes billowing against the gentle breeze of desert winds. The crowd below, till then restive for his appareance, suddenly hush down in reverence, necks craned, ears peaked to hear him speak. The man surveys his subjects in a moment of silence. How far has he come, from being a casual entrant into their group to emerge as their leader, their savior, their messaiah, to deliver them from the oppressors and the imperialists! It had been a struggle for him, to remain grounded, rooted and true to the cause, when words of "Deliverer" were constantly thrown around in his direction and sometimes in his presence. The different warring tribes wandering in the desolate areas for generations trying to protect what little they have in their precious lands, hoping for the prophecies of the rescuer to come true, biding their time in hope and desperation, finally when chanced upon him, latch on to him, his word, his deed, as though his words as sermons and his actions, nothing short of miracles... And what does that kind of deification does to the human psyche? Does it create the God complex or develop the compassion that separation from the subjects often brings?
Call him Moses, Jesus Christ, or from the more recent history, T. E. Lawrence (of the Lawrence of Arabia fame), the story sounds familiar, be it the Jews in Egypt, or the Jews under the Roman empire, or the Bedouin tribes in the deserts of Arabia, the similarity is uncanny, term it the episode from Mount Sinai, or the Sermon on the Mount, or the rallying of troops to attack Aqaba, the resemblance is unmistakable (while at it, Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' too for the "blessed are the cheese-makers" speech)... Frank Herbert's "Dune" is a a curious mix of theology, mythology and history, as he creates his hero Paul Atreides in the mould of Moses, Jesus and Lawrence, and sites him in a context that is ripe with political intrigue, survivalist tendencies and mob mechanics. All this in a science fiction setting. And more, written in 1960's to boot. It is no exaggeration to call "Dune" the mother of post modern science fiction literature and cinema, for, every single idea, trope, philosophy has been further mined to great success in the movies to follow decades later (Star Wars, Matrix etc). The scope and expanse of "Dune" is micro and macro at once, as it pits the struggles of coming to terms with power centered around one single individual, against a totalitarian state (Imperium, here) that doesn't care about the individual - king or subject alike - as long as the state and the status quo are preserved. And embedded along the way are the religious principles and practices of Islam (Jihad, Fidayeen), Buddhism (fear is the mind killer), Hinduism (aham bramhasmi) curated and delivered in a style that is both profound yet prosaic, poetic yet poignant, making "Dune" one of those rare works that caters to different segments for different reasons. Read as a psychological profile of a leader waiting in the wings, "Dune" becomes a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of deification, read as a palace political intrigue, it shows the self-preservation strategies of the heartless state, read as a syncretic treatise on theology, the book beautifully blends the age old mysticism with the new age practices. In short, "Dune" is where it started...
... and the movie version of it remains as faithful to the spirit of the book as can commercially be possible, without compromising on the essence and yet giving a sense of grandeur and scale to the vision and the scope of Herbert's ideas. No where is it more evident than the sandworm-jockeying episode by Paul Atreides, where focus strictly remains on the foreground on Paul, as he struggles at first to find a footing but eventually holds on to the dense hide of the enormous worm, as the background reveals the haze of the sand against the speed at which the worm burrows it, as the camera slowly zoom out from the ground level to the sky level, to reveal expanse of that idea and the imagery. Though it is next to impossible incorporating every single idea in the book into the script (like the transformation of Lady Jessica into Mother of Fremen, or the role of Stilgar in the shaping of Paul), the broad strokes do retain and convey the spirit of those sequences. Where Villeneuve excels however, aside from the mounting of the glorious action sequences, is how tightly he keeps the movie close to Paul's character and reveals the rest of the machinations strictly from his perspective, instead of trying to focus on too many things that would seem extraneous to the evolution of Paul into the messaiah that was professed and prophesized. And suddenly, the book that was once deemed unfilmable, and failed miserably when tried earlier, gets condensed to a shooting script with a proper spine - the progression of power from a popular state to a perilous stage - and the rest of the pieces simply fall in place.
Science fiction, when done right, simply reflects the contemporary in an unfamiliar setting. As the famous phrase in Mahabharata goes "what isn't here is no where else, what's all pervading is all in here", science fiction has to reveal the human condition, even if set in far away lands amid futuristic machinery, the progress of the individual across the dunes of time. So, when "2001 : A space odyssey" reveals a star child at the end of the epic interstellar journey, or when in "Blade Runner" the replicant/ tries to come to terms with his mechanised entity, or when in "Matrix", the individual self opens up and eventually accepts the grander scheme that lays beyond his realms of understanding, all these place the human, and his humanity, at the center of the questions and struggles that persevered through the changing fabric of time. And "Dune" joins the illustrious pantheon above advancing similar questions - role of the individual when confronted with a rigid system - that plagued Jesus as much as Moses, troubled Lincoln as much as Jesus, moved Lawrence as much as Lincoln, and now motivated Paul as much as Lawrence, all through the grains of sand that fall through the hourglass of time, all through the dunes of sand that lay the stage afresh for a new generation to confront the age old questions.
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