ERIS. a dune sideblog. SEMI-HIATUS.ask me about my alia x marie agenda. analysisabout/tagsmetaaskboxhome
183 posts
Latest Posts by mariefenring - Page 3
“Your habits always come hunting after you. The self you construct will haunt you. A ghost wandering around in search of your body, eager to possess you. We are addicted to the self we construct. Slaves to what we have done.”
— Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
I know people like to interpret Paul as an outright villain of the story and while that's not unreasonable, I personally love another interpretation.
It doesn't matter if you are a kind person with good intentions, it doesn't matter if you are smarter that anyone else and it doesn't matter if you can literally see the future, NO ONE has the right to hold absolute power over other people.
Systems with strict vertical hierarchy cause oppression. There is no way around it. Even that one guy who you think is better than that shouldn't be put at the top.
Paul being portrayed with many positive character traits doesn't muddy the message, it enhances it.
“Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune
dune chronicles — chani kynes.
“Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.”
A Dune thought I was having recently is about when Leto II bonds with the sandtrout in Children of Dune. I was thinking about the role of the sandtrout in the sandworm's lifecycle, as larva, but how it cordons off water so the worm can flourish. When the sandtrout bonds to Leto II, it's like it would cordon off the water in his body so it can begin to flourish.
So he's watered and unwatered, human and sandworm, male and female, ancient and of the future, merciful and notoriously without mercy, Tyrant and redeemer... and like where the Fremen take the dead to sap their water, he's a living deathstill. It's good, it's very good.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear’s path, and only I will remain.” | Dune (1984)
Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica in “Dune” (2021)
[Foaming at the mouth while gripping you by the shoulders] You don't understand. Chani leaving at the end was about so much more than the romance. It outlined the entire point of the story. Chani in the film STANDS for the POINT Herbert was trying to make. About how wrong Pauls actions really were, about how religion was being utilised as a tool of political power, about how her own people were turned into tools of invaders. Chani is the voice of reason in this film and she leaves. She just leaves. She wants nothing to do with what Paul has become. Do you understand.
“You know the ancient tongues.” “I know many things…”
REBECCA FERGUSON in DUNE (2021) dir. DENIS VILLENEUVE
“And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!”
DUNE (1984) - dir. David Lynch
Something I find interesting when viewing the two recent Dune movies as a whole is that initially, Paul is more than willing to use the prophecy and his visions for his own gain to convince Liet to help them, while Jessica whispers "careful!" at his side, and she later recommends they leave the planet entirely. But Paul decides they'll stay with the Fremen. Even at the beginning of Part 2, Paul is like "fuck yeah let's wage war on the Harkonnen" and Jessica is again counseling caution: "your father didn't believe in revenge." She goes through the Water of Life ceremony not because she wants to help Paul fulfill the prophecy but because she's forced to: do this or die. And even then, the old Reverend Mother had to use the Voice on her to get Jessica to drink.
That all changes when Jessica nearly dies during the ceremony. After that, Paul becomes more wary of embracing the prophecy, and she just throws herself into it. Paul nearly loses his mother (and his unborn sister) to a painful, agonizing poison - mere hours/days after losing his father and all their friends/allies to the Harkonnen slaughter - and decides it's not worth it. Meanwhile, Jessica gets a direct download of memories of millennia of oppression and goes "yeah let's burn everything to the ground."
It's an interesting, quick reversal at the beginning of the second movie, and it's great.
Ooh thank you for this great ask. I can always count on you for smart and thoughtful Jessica takes!
You make a really good observation about their reversal of positions--I had been struggling to figure out how Paul's line about "I must sway the non-believers" fit into his overall arc, but you are absolutely right that this feels like a continuation of how he talks to Liet. We're seeing the first stirrings of that little "maybe I am special" thought that later takes center stage.
For most of Part Two, Paul has several reliable counterweights pulling against that streak of arrogance and high-handedness that he's had from the beginning. Jessica almost dies drinking the Water of Life, which, like you point out, has got to make him think twice about encouraging people to believe in the prophecy. Then, he spends most of the movie surrounded by Chani and her friends and comrades, who seem the most skeptical of the prophecy and also aren't going to give his ego the time of day. And at the same time, he has an opportunity to pour his desire for revenge into collective political action that seems to be making a difference.
It's only when those countervailing forces start collapsing (the people who had started out as his equals are now becoming his followers; the Harkonnens attack Sietch Tabr and other civilian population centers, proving they are far from militarily defeated; Gurney shows up and immediately offers what seems like an easy solution to their problems that only Paul can access) that the little maybe I am special voice starts winning again.
As for Jessica, her journey doesn't get as much focus in the movie but it's also fascinating. She's a great character because she is so fucking smart at navigating power structures from what seems like an unenviable position. Did she have any choice about being sent to Caladan to become Leto's concubine? I am guessing she did not. But she sure figured out how to work that situation to her advantage. It happened that along the way she and Leto came to genuinely love and respect each other. But I'm sure she would still have figured out an angle even if that had not been the case.
In Part Two she starts out in a frankly quite terrifying position: she can undergo this unknown, dangerous ritual or die, and also possibly put Paul's safety at risk by raising doubt about whether he is the Lisan al-Gaib. But after she survives the Water of Life, she is launched into a powerful position in Fremen society and pretty quickly realizes she can use that to both protect Paul and get her revenge on the people who tried to kill her whole family. And unlike Paul, she is much more cognizant of the intergalactic power structures at work and aware that the Harkonnens themselves were a pawn in all this, so her target is the Bene Gesserit and the emperor.
I would have loved more time to explore Jessica's relationship to Fremen society and her POV in general. Because in some ways she becomes as Fremen as it's possible for her to be--she has access to thousands of years of memories of Fremen history and culture and politics; she becomes instantly fluent in the language and she is immersed in Fremen daily life in the sietch. (If there's one single thing I wanted more of, it was daily life in the sietch.) But she's still the same person she was, so she hasn't lost that ability to be ruthless and calculating and see people as forces to be manipulated. In Part One, her love for Paul and Leto provided an interesting counterweight to this that allowed us to see some moments of vulnerability from her (ie. she knows Paul has to undergo the Gom Jabbar test but she's terrified for him while it's happening). In Part Two she is so isolated for most of the movie (away from Paul; surrounded by followers who were never friends; I think we can all agree that talking to your unborn fetus doesn't really count) that we don't get a lot of these more unguarded moments from her. (I would have loved some Jessica/Stilgar action and it seems like the potential was very much set up for that, but I understand why they didn't have time.)
But in general I thought they did a great job of setting up this contradictory tension between Jessica and Paul, where they both want so desperately to protect each other and they both want revenge, but the way they each go about it ends up putting them in direct conflict with each other.
“I’m following someone, and it triggers a Holy War.”
Lady Jessica and Paul Atreides in Dune (2021) // The Road; The Shadow; Too Long, Too Narrow, Maria Martins (1946)