Desert Power: The Eerie and Disenchanted Philosophical Landscape of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to contribute to the discussion and debate on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One by using a film-philosophical approach, which will take into account how particular aspects of the storyworld, stylistic patterns, and specific chronotopes inform the film’s singular take on the famous story/saga. The article gives major attention to the film’s aesthetics and themes by highlighting, in particular, the importance and role of desertic ecologies. Indeed, one of the main theses of this paper is that the film puts forth an operatic aesthetic of disenchantment and misrecognition and strategically uses ambiguity and uncertainty as existentialist motifs to deconstruct ideas of heroism and predestination. These affective dynamics provide the storyworld with an eerie tension stressing lack, loss, mourning, and powerlessness. Concurrently, the desert of Dune, in contrast with that of classic epic films such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) by David Lean, exists as a living and immanent organism highlighting existential uncertainty and, at the same time, existing as a dense field of possible ethical experimentations.