In 2022, I wrote that Dune takes the prompt of Luke 4:5-6 where the devil tempts Jesus and imagines a scenario in which a young prince might accept the devil’s temptation rather than reject it. This description is even more true of Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve’s magnificent conclusion of his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science-fiction novel. Dune: Part Two is about a young man who is offered a world of power and who resists temptation only until he realizes there is little choice but to drink the poison chalice and become the very thing he hates in order to enact vengeance upon the world that wronged him. It epitomizes a world where the wage of sin is an eye for an eye and that you repay those who do you evil with more evil.
The first half of Dune: Part Two sees the transformation of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) from aristocrat to guerilla warlord. Paul joins the indigenous Fremen of the planet Arrakis and seeks revenge against House Harkonnen through political and military means; he works hard to become a respected leader within the Fremen community and works for their liberation through guerilla attacks across the planet. But eventually it becomes clear that mere temporal power is not enough to release the yoke of tyranny from Arrakis. He must fulfill the Bene Gesserit prophecies and become the messianic figure that the Fremen have yearned for in order to defeat his enemies. But there is a cost to the fulfillment of prophecy.
A key moment to understand Dune: Part Two comes during an intimate scene between Paul and his Fremen lover, Chani (Zendaya). She tells him, “You will never lose me, Paul Atreides…. Not as long as you stay who you are.” The second part of this statement is the crux of Paul’s trajectory in the film as by fulfilling the prophecy he loses himself. In the end, he gets revenge on the Harkonnens. He supplants the emperor. But he becomes tethered to the future through his prophetic visions and enthralled by the weight of his messianic role. In the film’s final moments, he gains everything, but loses Chani, and, thus, himself. In the end, Dune: Part Two recalls Matthew 16:26: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”- Aren Bergstrom (3 Brothers Film)
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2024 Arts & Faith Ecumenical Jury — #9