Category Archives: desert

Some notes on the new “Dune” films

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When the first new Dune film came out I never went to see it. I just wasn’t interested, even though I’m very familiar with the story. I’ve read the book often enough, and I was a fan of David Lynch’s 1984 film from before it was even released. I remember watching the trailers in the cinema with great anticipation. What is the story? At one level it is two great houses battling for supremacy in an empire in some star-flung future. It is literally space-opera. It would make a very good opera. At another level, it is an exploration of the relationship between science, technology, religion and politics. The original book, I very briefly review here: https://plateroom28.blog/2018/06/09/dune-by-frank-herbert/.

But in the end I was drawn to these two new Denis Villeneuve films. When the second one came out I came to the realisation that I would have to watch the first one before I watched the second. (Villeneuve has divided Frank Herbert’s original book, which David Lynch made into one very long film in 1984, into two films). I rather suspect Villeneuve has a series of more than two films in mind, for the second film ended almost literally on a cliff-hanger, or at least on the edge of a sand dune.

Speaking of both films now as one: I found both very atmospheric, with cinematography and special effects obviously forty years in advance of the state of the art in 1984. One of the problems I have with modern sci-fi films is that they are so very often a triumph of special effects over plot and story. Others must be the judge of that in the case of Dune: I am too intimately familiar with the original story-as-written, to be an objective judge. But the effects and the atmosphere were stunning.

The plot and screenplay of the first film is almost but not quite the same as David Lynch’s film. Denis Villeneuve differs at the beginning – whereas David Lynch begins with meeting of the Guild Navigator with the Emperor, in Villeneuve’s first film the Emperor is always a sinister effect, never seen, frequently referred to. The Guild of Navigators, fundamental though they are to the original story, are as good as irrelevant, and are not mentioned at all in the second film. Many of the scenes and set pieces are the same – and comforting and familiar thereby. The Emperor, played by Christopher Walken, only appears in the second film.

The dark stars of Villeneuve’s films are the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, who emerge from the films as behind the scenes manipulators of Emperors and great houses, twisters of the truth, spreading religion and lies for their own ends. And indeed, that is more or less the case in the original story.

We see the same characters. Gurney Halleck – which is better, Patrick Stewart (long before Jean-Luc Picard) in the 1984 film, or Josh Brolin? Duke Leto is brilliant in the new film, if a little overplayed a little too conscientious and self-important. The sinister cleaning lady “the Shaddap Mapes” again, pretty much the same in 1984 as today. Duncan Idaho. Dr Yueh. A particular shout-out to Javier Bardem who plays the Fremen leader Stilgar brilliantly – although Stilgar is let down to a degree, as we shall see later. An inspiring move was to cast the Imperial ecologist Dr Liet Kynes not (as in the book) as a rather high-handed white man of a certain age, but as a female of Afro-Caribbean heritage.

Rabban, the Harkonnen enforcer, even LOOKS like he did in the 1984 film. A flaw of the 1984 film was to pitch the House Harkonnen as pantomime baddies. There is none of that here. There is the same dark, weird, Lovecraftian menace, but without the unredeeming vice of out-of-place pantomime humour. One area completely missed in the Lynch film is the gladiator scene on Geidi Prime, where Baron Harkonnen attempts to have his nephew Feyd Rautha Harkonnen assassinated. In the second film, we see that scene played straight from the book, including the mysterious and Machiavellian Lady Fenring seducing the young na-Baron. Although her husband, the equally Machiavellian Count Fenring, is written out. Feyd Rautha himself I thought was excellent, if only a little over-played by Austin Butler as a rather cliched psychopath. But the bar was very low: Sting played him in the 1984 film as a spoilt and petulant buffoon.

All the set-piece scenes are broadly the same in both films; the newer films have time to treat them in more luxurious style, using time and thundering music to create atmosphere. The first film was never boring; I found the second film overlong and it only kept my attention because of my familiarity with the story. The music, though loud, did not really get into its stride, except for moments towards the end of the first film. The music to the 1984 film remains superb to this day and in my view has not dated, which is more than you can say for the rest of it.

Paul Atriedes, the fifteen year old boy: Kyle Maclachlan in the original film, conveys Paul as a much older, more mature man. I was going to make some comments about how young the Lady Jessica (played by Rebecca Ferguson) looks in the new film (compared to Francesca Annis on the 1984 film) but then I looked it up and found that Rebecca Ferguson is quite old enough to have a 15 year old son! One thing I am liking, is the story arc in Paul’s personality, as seen in his face, his mien, his character. We see him hardening from a Duke’s son, to a bereaved youth becoming the Duke himself, and onwards toward the lonely and unwanted destiny of becoming Paul Muad’Dhib. However, towards the end of the second film, we see the mystical, the spiritual, abandoned, and Paul Muad’Dhib morphing slowly into a demagogue and dictator. It will be interesting to see how the screen-writers handle the story from here on in. I will now have to go and re-read Dune Messiah, a book I have not read since my teens. Or perhaps I needn’t bother, as they may just make up the story as they go along.

If I were to criticise the second film, it would be in the way the scriptwriter and director have made a rather coarse over-simplification of the difference between the secular and religious positions. There is even one little bit lifted straight out of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. See my comment above on the unredeeming vice of out-of-place humour. They have drawn a clear line between the ostensibly rational and secular on the one hand (represented by Paul Muad’Dhib’s lover Chani, played with a face like thunder for the latter third of the second film) and fundamentalism and religion on the other (represented by Stilgar, whose noble character in the book is badly let down and maligned in this second film). No such line between the rational and the religious exists. Not in the real world, nor in the fictional universe of the book created by Frank Herbert. It’s all a bit more complex and nuanced than that. Whilst it is understandable, given the times we live in, for people of a certain education and background to effectively dismiss religion as bad, it doesn’t mean it actually is. I found this aspect of the film rather put me off and left a bad taste in the mouth. All that said, if I’m honest, it was a worthwhile reading of the underlying philosophical tension in the story, even though it displeased me and I disagreed with it.

Another criticism I might raise, would be in the inconsistent use of weapons: Frank Herbert quite deliberately restricted the technology in his Dune universe – his soldiers fought with point and edge, not with projectile weapons, and only rarely with what we used to call “ray guns”. Yet we see the use of projectile weapons – machine guns – and laser-like “ray guns” of one kind or another, as and when it suits the film-makers’ needs for a dramatic battle scene.

As someone who is quite literally an aficionado of the original book, I have to dig deep not to find fault with this sort of film adaptation. Yet – adapt, the screenwriter and director must. We can’t slavishly copy something from the past, particularly as it was written to address ideas at a certain time and place, ideas which are only partly timeless. Overall, good entertainment, good cinema, with plenty of room for bar-room discussion and disagreement.

A review of “The life of Wilfred Thesiger” by Alexander Maitland

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On Wilfred Thesiger

Sir Wilfred Thesiger – that well-born “leather-faced explorer” of the twentieth century – has long been a character with whom I’ve been fascinated. Really, ever since I read his remarkable book “Arabian Sands“. My wife bought me this one, thinking I’d like it, although it was on my shelf for some months before I picked it up and read it. I thought – I’ve already read his autobiography “The Life of my choice“. Why do I need to read a biography as well? But I did.

Alexander Maitland, though clearly Thesiger’s close friend and his appointed biographer, does not shrink from writing things that may not be so positive; he does not shrink from saying what needs to be said. He spends quite some effort pointing out subtle and not-so-subtle omissions in Thesiger’s autobiography, aspects of Thesiger’s character that the man himself might have been tempted to gloss over. Yet, Maitland as a biographer is never less than sympathetic. This is no hostile biography.

He writes early on of “paradoxical aspects of Thesiger’s character and temperament…he was a maze of contradictions” and was his own worst enemy. Like the desert Bedu he so admired, he could be a man of extremes. “He could be affectionate and loving, yet he was capable of spontaneous, bitter hatred. He was either very cautious or wildly generous with his money and possessions; he was normally fussy and meticulous, but he could be astonishingly careless and foolishly improvident. He relished gossip, yet was uncompromisingly discreet. His touching kindness contrasted with sometimes appalling cruelty”. And “His vices were fewer, less extreme, and yet more conspicuous than his many virtues.”

Makes me think of the rather entertaining concept of “redeeming vices” – an expression used of Bill Clinton by his biographer. Thesiger once wrote, I recall, of a relative of his who was something of a gambler and a rake, yet married to an uncompromisingly upright and God-fearing battle-axe, that this male relative – not his poor wife – must have been “excellent company”.

Thesiger was well-born, at least by my standards and understanding. His uncle was Lord Chelmsford, one of the last Viceroys of India. He inherited from Lady Chelmsford, sufficient wealth, at least on paper, not to have to work for a living. In that respect he was perhaps a gentleman in the older and strictly literal meaning of the word. As regards him – or any of us – being a gentleman in the more modern sense of being honest, upright and kind, a story he tells against himself, recounted here by Maitland, is instructive.

On a time, he was out in the desert with two Bedu companions, weeks from shelter, carrying for food only water, flour and a handful of dates and some coffee beans. One of his Bedu companions caught a rabbit and prepared it for the pot. As it was cooking, all of them were drooling, ready for rabbit stew after weeks without a good meal. And just as it was cooked, some other Bedu arrived. After the proper greetings were exchanged, the Bedu tribesmen then offered this rabbit to their guests, and it was duly accepted, leaving Thesiger and his travelling companions with nothing. Thesiger wrote in “Arabian Sands” something to the effect that it was at that point he started to learn what true nobility, true hospitality, true generosity, really was.

We see under Maitland’s kind eye, Thesiger’s life progressing from boy in Ethiopia, to young man at Eton and then in the Sudan, to the mature explorer of Arabia he became and for which he is chiefly remembered. We see his very close relationship with his mother, and his domination of younger men around him – Maitland calls him a “gang leader”. We see how he struggled to write, and worked very hard indeed to prepare “Arabian Sands”. He was a prolific photographer and learned much from the great pioneer female desert explorer Freya Stark. He opposed modern progress and machinery, yet discreetly espoused its use when it suited him. In spite of his desire to see the ancient culture of the Arabian desert preserved, one might hold him partly responsible for its destruction. With the best will in the world, he must bear some of the responsibility for the (admittedly inevitable) opening of the Rub’ al Khali (Empty Quarter) to subsequent oil exploration (something I do know a bit about as my first employer was one of those corporations that conducted seismic survey oil exploration in the Oman and elsewhere in the Arabian desert.)

He was very wealthy; he was a scion of the privileged English upper class, and he had an unreconstructed, deeply conservative (and possibly offensive by modern standards) attitude to many aspects of life – for example, to hunting and animals, to relations between men and women, and to technology and machines. Yet, he was perhaps a listener to, and understander of, ordinary people, and he made lasting contributions to tribal life in many places. He was a decorated and notable warrior as well a great explorer and man of letters, a brave adventurer whose explorations still inspire people today.

The year of the lockdown – in books

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I’ve read more books in 2020 than I have read for many years. You might think that NOT commuting means I have less time for reading, but the data clearly do not bear that out. I have finished 57 books during the year. Three of them I started during 2019. As of Boxing Day I am still reading five or six books and will not finish any of them in the year.

Of the 57, 16 were re-reads. 43 books I read in physical copy, the remainder on a Kindle.

Emily St John Mandel’s account of a young actress caught up in an apocalyptic plague – “Station Eleven” – was my first of the year, followed quickly by Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Dogs of War”, which was about a world in which bio-engineered war-animals rebel against their corporate masters. The “collected intelligence” of a swarm of artificial bees was of particular interest in that story. Later in the year I read another high-concept novel about war, Adam Robert’s “New Model Army”, which is unusual and shocking in having descriptions of front-line warfare ravaging modern urban Britain – fighter aircraft strafing Guildford town centre, kind of thing. Some very thought-provoking ideas about direct on-line democracy there, too. Continuing the sci-fi line, I read Stephen Baxter’s “The Massacre of mankind”, being a sequel to H.G Well’s “War of the worlds”. My daughter recommended Margaret Attwood’s very readable apocalypse “Oryx and Crake”, which I perhaps oughtn’t have read during the fevered atmosphere of the first lockdown. I finally got around to reading Chinese author’s Cixin Liu’s “The three body problem”, which I didn’t find as exciting or as innovative as his earlier short stories. Of course I’m aware of the controversy relating to his views on who controls parts of central Asia, which we’ve become aware of since filming of this book was proposed. I was challenged – having had it on the shelf for years – by Ursula Le Guin’s “The left hand of darkness”. I read three Frank Herbert novels. “The dragon in the sea”, “Hellstroms Hive”, and “Dune”. A master story-teller, he. Apart from re-reading a few Heinleins (and Vernor Vinge’s startling “A fire upon the deep”), the final great sci-fi novel of the year was Robert Forward’s startling “Dragons Egg”, featuring a race of people living on a neutron star, and what happens when they encounter humankind.
Big hitters for me this year in the non-fiction space were Austin Kleon (“Steal like an artist” and “Show your work”). Kleon has written a series of short, entertaining books that encourage creativity. I’ve read American journalist Robert Kaplan. I started with his “To the ends of the earth” and “Eastwards to Tartary” and his very instructive book about the middle east, “The Arabists”. Staying in the middle east, I finally sourced a copy of Michael Elkins’ “Forged in fury”, about the creation of the State of Israel. Not a work I’d recommend to anti-zionists. I re-read Tristam Hunt on the English Civil War, I read Beevor on the Ardennes offensive. I read the engaging Andrew Marr on the history of Britain, and finished John Keay’s long and complex account of the history of China. I got through Yuval Noah Harari’s “21 questions for the 21st century” though it took me nearly a full year, and I read an inspiring account of Captain Cook’s life by my namesake Richard Hough. Anthony Beevor tells us, in his account of the Battle of the Bulge, about a certain Sergeant Salinger, who managed to write short stories whilst in the winter trenches in the Ardennes – this was before his big break with “The Catcher in the Rye”.
I re-read Tom Bingham on the Rule of Law, re-read HMS Ulysses, and read a life of Rasputin by Alex de Jonge. Remaining on the Russian side, I read P.S Nazaroff’s “Hunted through central Asia”, and Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The life of a dog”, an anti-soviet allegory whose writing – though not it’s publication – pre-dates “Animal Farm” by 20 years. The Soviets forbade it’s publication; this short and little known work did not appear until the 1960’s.
I’m still reading the official TED guide to public speaking as the year ends. I’m reading Gustav Herling’s GULAG memoir “A world apart”, Sashi Tharoor’s somewhat bitter and twisted “Inglorious empire”, and Muhammed Asaf’s “The road to Mecca”.
Reading should be a pleasure; it should be a distraction. It should entertain and it should inform. One might fall back on old favourites in times of stress. One might also, when feeling strong, test oneself with harder, more challenging material. I leave you with John Martin’s “A raid over Berlin”, an uplifting account of an RAF bomber command flyer’s time as a POW in WWII. Happy new year!