DENIS VILLENEUVE

DIRECTOR COMBINES LAYERS OF FILM ART FOR PROJECTS

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Director Denis Villeneuve synchronizes the camera with an original music score to build atmosphere and tone, and ultimately, deeply compelling suspense.

Villeneuve cast an ensemble of actors for the sequel to the 1984 David Lynch film adaptation of the Frank Herbert science fiction novel, Dune.

Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgard and Javier Barden star in the film about a noble family protecting the most valuable commodity in the universe, in Dune (2021).

The original Dune (1984) directed by David Lynch, stars Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Francesca Annis, Patrick Stewart, Sting and Sean Young. Lynch films include Wild at Heart (1990) Blue Velvet (1986) and The Elephant Man (1980). Lynch eventually developed a cult following for his film work that culminated in the television series, Twin Peaks (1990-1991).

Villeneuve also directed the sequel, Blade Runner 2049 (2017) starring Ryan Gosling as Blade Runner Officer ‘K’, and Ana de Armas as Joi, Officer K’s love interest.

Jared Leto plays Niander Wallace, the industrialist of the future. Wallace became a global oligarch after taking over the manufacturing of artificial humans.

Mackenzie Davis plays Mariette.

Harrison Ford starred as Officer Rick Deckard in the original Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott. Deckard joins the cast of the sequel as a retired Blade Runner living off the grid in an apocalyptic Las Vegas urbanscape.

Dave Bautista has a short part as Sapper Morton. Bautista played the villain Hinx, in the James Bond franchise film, Spectre (2015). Bautista also has a part in Villeneuve’s Dune.

Villeneuve received an Oscar nomination for directing Arrival (2016). The film depicts the global response to a visit on Earth by aliens during which Amy Adams plays a language scholar enlisted by the United States military to decode the alien language so that humans can communicate with them.

Forest Whitaker plays the military colonel in charge of preventing the advanced alien species from annihilating Earth’s population. Jeremy Renner costars as the science expert.

The director uses a slow moving script to emphasis the trauma that humans would experience by such a visit from alien beings.

In Sicario (2015) Villeneuve develops a suspenseful narrative about a covert operation team meant to deter the Mexican drug cartel from importing drugs into the United States.

Emily Blunt and Daniel Kaluuya play FBI agents duped into helping the CIA run illegal covert operations inside Mexico. Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro play the ruthless, and very determined CIA agents.

Villeneuve also casts Brolin in Dune.

Villeneuve uses short bursts of shocking violence interspersed with scenes of normalcy, almost serene pauses in the narrative.

The director also creates an inner tension, based on a moral and ethical quandary among the officers, in parallel with the tension between law enforcement teams and the Mexican drug cartels.

Blunt’s character takes an evening to decompress after participating in a covert raid, before she realizes that what pleases her in the moment might just be her worst enemy.

The director overlaps slow grinding transition scenes of the police motorcade rolling into a border town with the overhead music score and background sounds to create suspense even though nothing happens. The scenes get faster with second unit aerial shots and close ups of the road underneath, but still nothing happens.

In this police drama, as in his other films, Villeneuve is concerned with aesthetics as much as real life truth.

The films are intended to be stimulating on many levels so as to provoke thought as much as stir emotions, but the director also endeavors to maintain integrity as a storyteller by being honest with the audience about the subject matter.

In Prisoners (2013) Hugh Jackman shows the fear and anger of a father whose child has been kidnapped.

Villeneuve takes a family living a normal life and turns their world into a horrific nightmare. The characters otherwise conformist attitudes take on immoral acts as a result of the psychological trauma. The audience initially empathizes with Jackman’s character, but then viewers develop inner angst at the mere possibility of what the film’s protagonist might or might not do.

The moral dilemma between right and wrong becomes less important for the characters than resolving the internal anguish that has been transferred to the audience.

Villeneuve also infuses dreamscapes into the film narrative as a way of explaining the psychological disposition of the characters.

In a dramatization of the real life mass shooting of female engineering students, Villeneuve portrays the normalcy of homelife as a dreamscape in comparison to the chaos that occurs at the school shooting site in Polytechnique (2009).

The film adopts the documentary genre just enough to make the dramatization of historical events seem to be occurring in real time through the eyes of the witnesses at the Montreal university.

Villeneuve creates trauma by isolating actor performances and contrasting the blackness of the school hallways and the winter night with the beaming lights of an institution and the blanket snow of deep winter.

A wrap around helps create suspense as the killer is shown during the opening scenes practicing suicide with an assault rifle, and then later on in the film, as the film plot reverses, he is seen again, this time committing suicide with an assault rifle.

The director’s camera introduces the serenity of student life to the audience as the days would normally unfold, just before the onset of senseless violence brought to the campus by a stranger.

Common elements in several of the director’s films seem to begin here, but the techniques are then developed further with various mutations as the director gains experience with bigger film productions.

Scripts layer in the subconscious elements of the characters’ actions. Villeneuve clearly indicates as such by using dreamscapes depicting themes of life, death and rebirth. Time is often as allusive in life as obtaining pleasure.

In Arrival, Adams connects the death of her character’s daughter with the frustration in not being able to communicate with and protect the extraterrestrials. The director explains through the story that life experiences may fold into one another in a manner that creates uncertainty as to whether the slow moving memory fragments are occurring in the past, present or future.

In Blade Runner 2049, the creation of artificial intelligence in human form, and the possibility of childbirth, compel the narrative forward, with various subplots and backstories about how the interconnectivity of humanity makes community.

Gosling’s character, Officer ‘K’, must resolve a mystery that once God monopolized, by piecing together clues found in time.

Villeneuve creates several layers within a film, beginning with the veneer of entertainment, then visually stimulating aesthetics, and then psychological intrigue. The director then tumbles the elements about in a life, death and rebirth whirlwind that humanity continually climbs up out of only to fall back down into again.

Villeneuve also underscores that women face a deeply internalized moral dilemma when choosing between the important role of motherhood within the community and that of other roles equally important to society from without the community.

The maternal instinct of women as caregivers is depicted to be important to society as well as women being capable interpreters, police officers, and engineers, although just as subject to human frailties as their gender opposites. And women can do both roles.

Kate Macer, played by Blunt, seems to be the voice of reason in Sicario, as is Lieutenant Joshi, played by Robin Wright, in Blade Runner: 2049.

Villeneuve likes to use a variety of scene compositions and set designs to compel the narrative forward, including second unit aerial shots. The characters must travel down the narrative to get to the plot reversal. And the director compresses time and distance with overhead transitions scenes to help them get there a bit quicker.

A score added to many scenes in each film makes slow moving trauma even slower, but the scenes are also compelling, thereby building suspense toward the plot reversal.

Aesthetics convey a message in scenes, such as the use of Picasso’s anti—war Guernica in Polytechnique, just before the mass killings begin. The image takes on other forms in later films such as the human trafficking scenes in Sicario, and the shots inside the alien ships in Arrival.

The existence of good and bad in the world, and the difficulty in choosing correctly for a better outcome is another recurring theme.

Jackman must choose between the guilt in committing an immoral and unlawful act, and the possibility of living in anguish for the rest of his life as a result of never knowing what happened to his child in Prisoners.

These themes of choice are accented with chiaroscuro lighting symbolic of the duality of human nature, while the score reflects the inner turmoil the characters endure. The audience feels this anguish while watching the characters endeavoring to survive the ordeal.

The films of Villeneuve are compelling art that provoke thought on several levels, from the aesthetics of a mass murder scene to the underwater brawl between the replicant employed in civic duties and the replicant employed in a corporate capacity. Each entity wants to survive victoriously in a ruthless battle for supremacy somewhat detached from justice and fairness.

The aesthetics of each film stimulate the audience as well, but Villeneuve is also creating film art, and thereby commenting critically, often with a moral purpose, on the subject matter as he found the subject matter in society and in the culture of that society.

EPIC STORY TOLD AGAIN THROUGH STYLIZED VISION

IN REVIEW DUNE PART ONE

Director Denis Villeneuve layers stylizes aesthetics onto the compelling remake of the science fiction fantasy film, Dune (2021).

Villeneuve uses an epic sweep of his camera driven by a music score that adds tone and atmosphere to nearly every scene. Hans Zimmer produces the score. Zimmer’s experience as a film score composer includes some of the most important films of the current cinematic generation, such as Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Dunkirk (2017) Hidden Figures (2016) Interstellar (2014) The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Gladiator (2000).

Zimmer makes the scenes go faster and slower and even adds suspense to certain scenes, when the actors just stand in front of the camera as if posing for a magazine cover shot.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated Zimmer for 11 Oscars, including one win for The Lion King (1994).

Zimmer has made the music score in these films as important to storytelling as the narrative device and the acting.

The camera also facilitates creative thinking with each scene a showcase for the director’s pitch and roll of the lens used in telling stories.

In one scene, Villeneuve pans behind the actors who are in a room on the otherside of an arched entrance way. This effect is immediately aesthetically pleasing but the same motion foreshadows assassination scenes in which the rivals to the House of Atreides use a secret weapon and the element of surprise.

Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides is cast well with Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica Atreides, Paul Atreides’ mother. Chalamet and Ferguson individual storylines intermingle to drive the narrative forward.

Villeneuve uses the original screenplay as a shadow within his interpretation of the classic 1965 science fiction novel by Frank Herbert.

Oscar Isaac plays Duke Leto Atreides while Zendaya plays Chani to round out an ensemble cast required by the complicated off-world storyline that includes Stellan Skarsgard, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista and Charlotte Ramping as Reverend Mother Mohiam.

The future is run by dynastic families controlling planets as fiefdoms within a larger interstellar empire. These noble families pass down knowledge and wealth through the generations, and survive by surrounding themselves with trusted advisors.

The interstellar life becomes consumed by the political intrigue of the secular courts vying for control of a spice mined from the surface of the planet Arrakis. Arrakis is composed primarily of sand dunes. The spice is part of a key to eternal life and lots of money.

Villeneuve takes a layer off the science fiction fantasy in an effort to draw parallels to themes that commonly divide and unite humanity in realtime.

Spice is an illicit drug of some sort, the mining of which from the surface of a sand dune planet is fought over mainly out of greed for the wealth that trading in the spice brings.

The film shows distinction of life within different class structures, but Villeneuve also develops the mother-son relationship and the nurturing role women contribute to the family, which is slightly distinct from one class to another class.

The secret codes and languages used by the House of Atreides signify the deep bond between the mother and child and the ties of kinship that maintain the dynasty from generation to generation, and from home planet to the off world plane.

Paul Atreides is well on his way to mastering life skills necessary for survival in a world of constant conflict, but he must still labor, which his mother clearly assists him with, while his father, the Duke, is distracted by more worldly responsibilities.

Villeneuve not only emphasis the secret codes and symbolic, metaphoric meanings, but he relies on his futuristic gadgets and machines. As Villeneuve did in Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival (2016) and even to some extent in Sicario (2015) with the guns, rifles and police motorcades, the Dune narrative is compelled in part by the movement of flying vehicles and secret weapons operating underneath a compelling music score and aesthetically pleasing shifting colours.

The texture and tone of the film shifts with the moving sand.

And the narrative is made all the more compelling with the physical motion of gadgets and machines.

Villeneuve has also mastered capturing the intensity of fighting and the suspense of life and death conflict.

Timothee Chalamet shows how Paul Atreides was under constant scrutiny by his family while being groomed to one day replace his father and become Duke Atreides.

The director follows Paul Atreides through this process, gradually increasing the level of conflict and the need to survive in order to succeed his father.

The 2 hr 35 m runtime ends with a bit of a cliff hanger. The script almost lends to a sequel with much of the same fascination directed toward ongoing storylines and unravelling a secret codified society as other franchise films.

This ‘remake, sequel, prequel’ label proved a real dilemma for the film. Dune is not a mirror remake of the previous attempt to adapt the novel to the screen, but a few of the same scenes were recreated, such as Paul Atreides being forced to put his hand in the box of pain while his mother consents to the milestone test, but also the military training scenes are repeated.

Villeneuve though then leaves out riding the sand worm, which was anticipated in the first film and looked forward to in the remake in part to experience the same scene created with the advancements in visual effects that have occurred since the original 37 years ago.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser blends dark and light colours of the fortified living quarters with the subtle shades of gold and silver on the planet surface. One or two scenes appear to be painted on with a digital brush, but the film overall has stunning visual quality blended well with action sequences. Fraser also worked on Rogue One (2016) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012).

Dune has several important dreamscape scenes that are integral to the entire science fiction fantasy motif that distinguishes Dune from Star Trek and to a lesser extent from Star Wars. Star Wars of course has the secret Jedi order and a united nations of interstellar civilizations, but Dune shares the secrets through a dreamscape that drives several of the narrative’s ‘reality’ scenes.

The acting stands out in several scenes with each individual actor of the ensemble cast ever so briefly giving the best of what they are known for in the film world.

Dave Bautista has a moment of simultaneous loyalty and interstellar rage, while Javier Bardem plays Stilgar, the leader of a rogue group surviving day to day in the desert in search of precious water.

Stellan Skarsgard is cast perfectly in a body suit as the Baron, but Josh Brolin seemed misfit as Gurney, the aide-de-camp. Brolin usually plays a more dominant authoritarian figure, and him serving the lead actor seemed out of place. Even Brolin’s physical presence seems odd next to the petite shape of Chalamet.

Babs Olusanmokun though is cast well as the vitriolic, code bound desert nomad.

Dune is not as flawless as Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival, but Villeneuve does a good job in setting up this cliff hanger for Dune 2, currently in pre-production.