Dune needs some extra spice. It’s too bland, too much like dal-chawal made by some Canadian amateur learning to cook desi khana. Like, we Indians also take liberally from other sources in our cooking, but then we hit it out of the kitchen. A proper gobi manchurian or chicken tikka masala pizza is like a Hamlet or Macbeth for the palate, right?
Here, the whole dish is heavy with FX, advanced level ‘footsteps’ sound — you know, like when you stamp on a wooden crate in a studio to create sounds for the cowboy’s boots as he walks in an old saloon – and lots of sequences in various gufa-like sets with top light.
The story of the power struggle between the House Arthritis and House Harpoonin is meant to be gripping. Still, the multiplex audience has various responses to what’s transpiring on the screen. One woman is rocking her phone, sotto voce instructing her maid on what to cook.
A bro is watching replays of KKR’s greatest winning moments, looking up only when the fighting scenes get loud and gory. And the family of three are having their food trays explained to them by the guy who’s serving them: ‘peri-peri popcorn’, ‘veg burger with jalapeno mayonnaise’, ‘churan masala Thums Up,’ all with more spice than… oh, I’ve already said this.
After a while, I start listing the liftings and pilferage. I know the official graph goes: Frank Herbert‘s original 1965 novel. Abortive Alejandro Jodorowsky film.
Star Wars, which took a lot from the idea.
David Lynch‘s failed, but now cult 1984 version of Dune.
A lot of Transformers-type sentient machinery, which endlessly fires bullets and missile-type projectiles at sprinting bipeds.
Fights with blades of various sizes that we’ve seen in many movies, including the Wesley Snipes-starring Blade franchise.
The familiar and tired tribe-taken-over-by-outsider tale.
Cloyingly cute late teenage love story, which you know is going to end Capulet-Montagu badly.
A huge Gladiator via Game of Thrones arena scene.
In this film, you can see every SF trope from Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis onwards. At some point in this watered-down – or, should I say sanded-down – Greek journey-myth, you also get bald old actors channelling Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Apocalypse Now.
Watching this in India, I can’t help thinking of our filmable deserts. As the story unfolds, I realise this film reminds me not so much of Satyajit Ray’s Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) as Bhuvan Shome, Mrinal Sen’s 1968 B&W plotless classic. In my half-dreams, Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides becomes the leathery babu played by Utpal Dutt, Zendaya as Chani becomes a kind, humourless Suhasini Mulay, the bullock cart becomes a waddling spice harvester-cum-gunship.
Then, there’s something about the soundtrack. It bothers me. Music in the film is hinged around a woman’s voice doing a kind of quasi-Arabic long call, and I keep feeling this reminds me of something, not only how it’s sung, but also how it’s used in a similar way to further the plot and add emotional charge. After a while, I get it. See Anurag Kashyap’s 2004 Black Friday, if you haven’t already.
Now, I already have a friend who caught a major international fashion house chepoing his textile graphic designs for a clothing line of theirs. The fashion house paid up long dollars for this little misdemeanour. I’m not sure that Indian Ocean, the band that did the music for Black Friday, can similarly make any producers pay. Music plagiarism is notoriously difficult to prove. But I think I’ll nudge them.
As to cinema-going in India and my rage at phone abusers and food-noise makers, this time I forgive them.
