‘One cannot see emotion in that glazed stone she calls a face… but she is too frozen.’
Dune, Frank Herbert.
I want to give just one quote from the book here. I don’t know why particularly this one—it just so happened. I believe it to be a very beautiful metaphor…
I have read Dune with a number of breaks. Maybe because I initially thought that there was nothing that special in Dune—how can you say that! it’s Herbert himself! From some point in the middle of the book I finally decided to take it seriously—to read only this book, and to read it every day—and the process went on. Sure, it could be just that I simply reached the place where all those not-so-special parts of Dune gradually came to their end, giving place to a fairytale atmosphere with a creak of the door (as goes the famous Russian film song ‘suddenly the door creaked as though in a fairytale // and I had everything clear // so many years I had been arguing with destiny // all for the sake of meeting you here…’, from Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession). Maybe. Should I experiment and read the book again? Maybe, but I won’t go to such great lengths.
Being serious, it is one of the best stories that I have read and that I have immersed myself into. At least, as of now I acknowledge it as the best. The clan power struggle, politics and religion, a unique world—locally on Arrakis and globally in the galaxy—future tech, supernatural abilities of the Bene Gesserit… what else should I add, I guess the list is pretty impressive as it is.
One thing there is that I regret—the fact that I watched the film first, and only then did I read the book. The film is just phenomenal! and, I have to add, it follows the author’s ideas pretty faithfully. It departs only at 3/4 of the book, I guess—and it will also have a second part! Why do I regret it? When I was reading, I couldn’t help thinking about all the characters in terms of how they were portrayed in the film. Neither the book nor the film got any worse because of that. However, the experience turned out not to be objective—I saw everything through Villeneuve’s eyes first, and only then through Herbert’s.
Among the characters I should surely single out the baron! He got to be very colourful: very interesting, complex, deeply corrupt, and morally wrong. I do like such characters.
What about the film, I would place Dune in the same row with Nolan’s Interstellar, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, and, even though here it might be a little undeserving, with HBO’s Westworld. Oh, and of course, Star Wars. All these films and series are very different indeed. But in my very best rankings these would be the very best.
As a kind of summing-up: if you wish to appear in a hellishly hot place, such as the Arrakis desert, if you want to feel for yourself how it is to be betrayed by those you trusted, if you want to see a hostile world through a teenager’s eyes, and how you would face these challenges—in short, if you seek vivid memories, you are welcome!