Dune (2021)

If anyone asked me what film I was most looking forward to over the past two years, my answer was Dune. Now having seen the film comes the hard part of actually needing to think about the expectations I had placed on it, as well as questioning whether the moment for Dune has passed, whether the counter culture of the 60s has said all it could have and this is yet another stale repetition of mystical white heroes wandering around in the desert. In short, Dune must answer the question "why don't I just watch Lawrence of Arabia instead?". Having seen the film twice now, once in IMAX and the other on a more reasonably sized screen I think I can confidently say that Dune meets the challenge set by its predecessors and exceeds them not by attempting to subvert the themes of its source material, but by overcoming them. The thoughts here are of course contingent on the upcoming film's ability to deliver on the promises set by part one, an ability I once ascribed to Star Wars: The Force Awakens; however, unlike that doomed project, Dune has signalled a recognition of what makes its story stand out from those around and before it.

In The Empire Strikes Back (a film I have a great deal of fondness for) Yoda describes the force as something that binds all things in the universe, a pantheistic vitalism that confirms that “luminous beings are we, not this crude matter”. Despite various handwaving allusions to midichlorians (the spiritual powerhouse of the cell) this core claim that the force is something that transcends location or culture is maintained through the series, with the final shot of The Last Jedi encapsulating the emancipatory promise of this idea better than perhaps any other Star Wars film (the discussion of The Last Jedi is for another time perhaps). It would be great for something like the force to exist wouldn’t it, indeed the appeal of this sci-fi spirituality is so intense that there are people who claim to actually practice the Jedi religion though their midichlorian counts are still unconfirmed.

Yet despite this idealistic potential the Star Wars films remain focused on the adventures of a single family and their aristocratic pals, as the actual power of the force seems to be concentrated in the chosen few who are gifted enough to control it. Were the Star Wars films that simplistic that most likely wouldn’t have achieved the longevity that they currently possess as the most powerful moments of the series come from the virtuous rejection of this power. Luke’s confrontation with Darth Vader at the end of Empire comes after his rejection of Yoda’s teachings, and it is only by rejecting the power of the force at the end of The Return of the Jedi that the Emperor is defeated. One could argue that the lesson here is that the noble response to being handed power is to reject it, retreat into the solitude of the temple or swamp and preach a kind of guided passivism, and yet the films themselves are in constant tension with these ideas. Instrumentally all these ‘rejections’ of power result in the outcome that would have been desired by its use. Yoda’s wisdom is not helpful when the Death Star needs to be exploded, the neutrality of the Jedi Council leads to the destruction of the republic and in the sequel films… something something dark side bad, found family good. Real life, material reality makes impositions on people that can’t simply be brushed away as “crude matter”.

Dune is different in that in many ways it inhabits a more spiritual world (unlike Star Wars where the Jedi religion is seemingly forgotten, everyone in Dune is very religious), that spirituality is first and foremost a materialist one. The consequences of the Butlerian Jihad with its ban on thinking machines has created a world where the minds of humans must be manipulated just as machines would have been. Mentats supplement their computational minds with juice from the Sapho root, the Bene Gesserit engage in millennia long breeding programs to produce carefully constructed human minds, and the navigators of the Spacing Guild infuse their bodies with spice such that their metabolism becomes dependant on the drug. These are all fantastical exercises of mental power, yet each of them is reliant on the innate physicality of the human body. Physicality here is not simply a physicality in simple contrast to a cartesian idea of the soul, but one that exists at the confluence of the biochemical forces of life, geology, ecology, and physical spacetime that manifests differently for each system the bodies are located within. The sense of purpose, solidarity, metaphysical presuppositions, and power to influence the world and others that was achieved by the transcendent force, is here achieved through an immanent spirituality that emerges from these enmeshed materialist forces.

There is no greater example of this approach to spirituality than the culture, ecology, and faith of the Fremen and Arrakis, which is convenient as that is where the film spends most of its time. The spice that forms the foundation for the Imperial economy is a by-product of the life cycle of the sandworms, who also happen to be the greatest logistical impediment to the harvesting of spice (big worm eat spice harvesting machine). Unlike the homeostatic balance of the force which seems to flip back and forth between light and dark, the logic of Arrakis is profoundly ecological in that its foundational concept is that of the feedback loop (the weird is also associated with such loops, as such it is no coincidence that the Fremen call the Bene Gesserit witches “weirding women”). Sandworms produce spice but they also impede its harvesting, to kill the worms would be to kill the spice leaving the system not in balance, but in tension. This tension is seen throughout the cultures of Arrakis and indeed, the wider Imperium. The Fremen way of life requires non-indigenous plants and animals to be cultivated and protected from the sandplankton and sandtrout that ensure the homeostasis of the sandworm/desert ecosystem; and yet, the desert provides the Fremen with their material protection from the off-worlders as well as connection to the sandworms which are sacred and venerated as gods. Without spice harvesting there would be no need for the Imperium to come to Arrakis, robbing the Fremen of their access to the resources they need and yet it is Imperial spice harvesting that threatens the Fremen way of life.

That the Fremen’s plan is to terraform the planet through hoarding vast reserves of water speaks to their understanding that the desert itself is not enough to sustain them, and yet without the desert, there could be no sandworms, the very basis of their way of life. The prophecy that the Fremen venerate, that of the voice from the outer world that will lead them to paradise is the very same one that Paul knowingly exploits in order to secure his power. When Paul arrives on Arrakis he dismisses the myths planted by the Bene Gesserit as superstitions meant to control the people, but once he finds himself deep in the desert he has no issue promising the total terraforming of Arrakis. We could stop at this level, leaving the Fremen doomed to worship an apocalyptic religion, where paradise comes at the cost of their own destruction and is offered by those with no intention to provide it; however, Dune does not stop there, as Paul is painfully aware, the Jihad that his coronation would begin is not one that he can control as the nature of an ecological feedback loop is one without a single causative element. Paul’s justification for this is that without his guidance this Jihad will spread further and wreak more destruction than with him at the helm, but it is this very position of leadership that destabilises the ecological tension that sustains the culture of the Imperium.

That the Fremen serve self-destructive goals is not a fault but is rather a product of being embedded in ecology. Aeons ago the insulating shroud of carbon dioxide that maintained earth at a pleasant temperature for carboniferous plants lead to their proliferation across the earth, they were so successful that for millions of years no other organism could even decompose their dead bodies, such was the radical innovation of lignin, the chemical compound that gives wood its strength. In so doing these carboniferous trees spelled their own doom, as the carbon taken from the atmosphere and locked in their indestructible bodies caused their greenhouse to disappear and the earth cooled. These reserves of carbon are now fossil fuels, the geological power of the earth having turned them into coal, oil, and gas. On Arrakis a similar process happened with the Sandworms, except it was not carbon that was locked beneath the earth but water, and just as a low CO2 atmosphere allowed a new ecosystem to supplant the old on earth, so too did a low H2O atmosphere allow the ecosystem of Arrakis to form. Ecosystems are constantly producing conditions such as this, are constantly in tension with their own destruction and are only held at bay by an inconceivably vast interrelation of other forces each trying to do the very same thing. What is important is that these goals are held in tension, and that one is prepared to deal with the consequences of what happens when this tension is released. The carboniferous trees are gone, but their invention of lignin can be seen in every tree growing on earth.

The “terrible purpose” that Paul chooses to follow is the logic of unleashing this tension, of removing the balances that preserve the ecological loops that his world depends on, and in so doing placing him outside the position in which he was able to take power in the first place. Just like Star Wars, Dune also advocates for a virtuous rejection of power, but it does not reward those who do so. Duke Leto is the epitome of this noble virtue, he is the leader of a single house among many and his power derives from his allies rather than his wealth. Leto also doesn’t choose to do what he does, but rather follows his place within the wider system that surrounds him. He is commanded to go to Arrakis and does so. It is in this position of powerlessness that he seeks to form an alliance with the desert power of the Fremen. Yet it is this embeddedness in the systems that sustain him that seal his fate, unlike Baron Harkonnen, who floats above the world extracting value like a bloated tick. That is the cost of this style of living, as the strength of an ecosystem is not the strength of the individual. The bright colouration of animals advertising their poison is of no use to the animal currently being eaten but is of great use to the species. There is a cost to this nobility and it is a cost that must be borne by the individual for the sake of the collective.

Leto understands this, thus his insistence that Paul not take risks that undermine the security of their house, but this is not Paul’s path and in so doing he destroys his father’s legacy. In the film Paul expresses to his father that he might not be the future of House Atreides and Leto responds that such duties are not sought out, but are offered and chosen, and that if Paul chooses not to lead he “would still be the only thing [he] ever needed him to be, [his] son”. By the end of the film, Paul knows that if he becomes emperor the Jihad will spread across the galaxy in his and his father’s name, a cause that would be the antithesis of everything his father stood for, and rather than heed the wisdom and support that his father gave him, he chooses to seize power and release the ecological tension of Arrakis. That Leto’s warning to Paul is given surrounded by the tombs of his ancestors speaks to the dire nature of Paul’s decision to abandon his father’s way, to destroy house Atredies.

If my hopes are well placed, Dune part two and hopefully Dune Messiah will go down the path of showing the consequences of breaking apart the ecologies of Arrakis and the spiritual and political destruction this wreaks on both the Imperium and the planet itself as the most exciting scenes in the second half of the book are all those that embrace the culture and religion of the Fremen that Paul is on a mission to destroy. Rather than the wish fulfillment of Star Wars, where spirituality allows one to transcend the issues of the material world, Dune has the potential to articulate a form of engagement with the world in which it is transcendence itself that is the cause of this suffering in the first place. Just like the Fremen, tapping into the water beneath the planet and in so doing returning the ecosystem to its previous form, we are doing this with the carboniferous forests deep beneath our feet. The question we should be asking is not one of the ethics of “destroying” the planet as we are simply returning it to a form that it once held, but rather what parts of ourselves are we destroying when we unleash the tension of these ecosystems.

What made Leto and the Fremen noble was their respect for their place within their ecologies, that there was nothing about them that transcended the material, but rather all that they valued was immanent to it. In imagining oneself outside of these systems, in trying to produce a mind that can deliver us from the tension that is required by such systems, we walk a dangerous path. What Dune articulates so well, is the allure of this path as well as its consequences and I am looking forward to seeing what the following films do with these ideas, and how people react to the conflict between what Paul promises and what he delivers. Unlike previous films that have walked this path like Lawrence of Arabia, Dune frames these ideas of religion in a materialist context that makes it impossible to isolate a single variable as the cause of any particular action. This is true environmental filmmaking as one cannot tell the story of Dune without any of its constituent parts, just as one cannot describe the story of modernity and industry without the hubris of the Carboniferous trees. I’m not willing to definitively praise Dune for achieving all these goals as so much of what I’ve written lies in the future, but what I have seen gives me great hope for what is to come.