Road to Oscars: Dune
Added 2022-03-24 14:55:32 +0000 UTCI am a bit disappointed. As someone who is unfamiliar with Herbert’s novel, I had a lot of trouble keeping up with this film. Denis Villeneuve has really mastered the art of epic visuals – but I felt that his insistence on uniformity, symmetry, and muted colour palettes did not pull me into the narrative. Since the colours were all so similar, I had trouble distinguishing between the different warring factions and did not feel very compelled by the world building - which is so unfortunate because it’s such a rich and complex world! Some of the costuming was interesting, but for the most part it felt uninspired. Much of the time I felt like Villeneuve was echoing visuals from other sci-fi epics rather than inventing his own. This might just be because Dune is so influential to the sci-fi genre, and because I have not read it. Though I believe a viewer who is unfamiliar with the source material should still feel welcomed by a film - which I did not. That being said - I understand why people enjoyed it so much, it just wasn’t for me!
