The Weekly Gravy #180

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) – ****

Mutiny on the Bounty was touted at the time for its size and spectacle – the poster makes mention of its massive budget and what it was spent on – but almost 90 years later, what keeps it afloat (pun intended) are the characters, namely the three leads who made this the only film ever to have three nominees for Best Actor – the introduction of the Supporting Actor category the following ensured that wouldn’t happen again.

We meet all of them in the first 11 minutes of the film. First there’s Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable). He’s a tough man and believes in discipline – when we meet him he’s leading a press-gang, rounding up men and forcing them into the Royal Navy – but he’s also capable of reassurance and sympathy, treating the men and their pleading ladies with a measure of respect and kindness. It’s a tough situation and he knows it.

Then we meet Roger Byam (Franchot Tone), who comes from an established naval family, but whose main reason for sailing on the Bounty is to compile a Tahitian dictionary. He’s intelligent and earnest, but he’s also young and naive; he respects the system but does not yet know how some men abuse it. He will learn.

Only then, shortly before the Bounty sails, do we meet William Bligh (Charles Laughton) – de facto captain of the ship, but officially only the commanding lieutenant – and if you know about the Bounty, you know that history has made a villain of Bligh, and from the first we see why; he’s a rigid disciplinarian, so devoted to protocol that he orders a prisoner flogged even though the man is dead. He’s cruel and insecure – he tells Christian he’s glad to have a gentleman as his second-in-command, given that he’s a self-made man – but he’s also efficient, and that counts for more than good manners.

These performances are what ensure Bounty‘s greatness, more than the spectacle – which the 1962 version, in color and widescreen, surpasses – and more than the story, which does feel a bit choppy, between the obvious blending of studio shots with second-unit footage and the “wholesale pre-release editing” Leslie Halliwell noted in his own review. The Bounty‘s outward voyage and Bligh’s legendary voyage after the mutiny, in a small boat with a small crew, are reduced to montages which get the point across with more efficiency than grace.

But again, those performances really soar. Gable, even without his moustache, plays the toughness and the charm in fine balance, his very Americanness balancing Laughton’s Englishness (Gable doesn’t attempt an accent) in a way that underlines Christian’s even revolt against the repression Bligh embodies and his desire to form a more just society on Pitcairn Island. Historically accurate it may not be, but Gable makes us believe in the film’s Christian.

Likewise, the film’s Bligh is a much bigger bastard than the real man was, but what matters is that Laughton is utterly convincing as the man who believes in the power of fear, who believes that everything he does is for the good of the ship and the Royal Navy, and who believes that his vindictive glee in inflicting pain upon the men is righteous. It helps that he allows Bligh his softer moments, like his byplay with King Hitihiti (William Bambridge) or his sympathy towards his fellow cast-offs.

And while Tone wasn’t a star on the level of those men and doesn’t give a performance on the same level as them, he’s really quite solid as well, balancing both Christian’s rebellious streak (he objects to the mutiny) and Bligh’s brutality (he faces off against Bligh in the climactic trial sequence). He also respects the Tahitians in a way the other men don’t, living with Hitihiti while the Bounty is moored in Tahiti and learning the language, even as his stuffy Britishness runs up against their relative lack of inhibition, and Tone convinces us of all this as well.

The supporting cast is fine, if a mixed bag; Eddie Quillan is affecting as poor young Ellison, who never catches a break the whole picture, and Dudley Digges is enjoyable as the drunken doctor Bacchus (not his real name – whatever that was, he’s forgotten it), but Herbert Mundin’s comic-relief role as a blundering cook just isn’t funny. Bambridge, despite some contrived pidgin dialogue and culture-clash humor, is a gently wise Hitihiti; that he seems to have been a native Tahitian helps. (His only other film work was in Tabu.)

The film only won the Oscar for Best Picture; it lost Director, Actor, Screenplay, and Score to The Informer and Editing to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Having not seen The Informer, I can’t say if that was the right choice or not, but I can’t really object to its losing Director; Frank Lloyd does a considerably better job here than in Cavalcade, but at best it’s studio efficiency and at worst it feels a bit stodgy, like he hadn’t fully left the silent era behind.

The script is solid, but a mixed bag (the final two scenes should’ve been swapped – ending it on such a note really undermines the whole film), and the editing is somewhat shaky, with some masterful moments – the scene where Christian and Maimiti (Mamo Clark) have an assignation in a secluded bower, the carnal details being hinted at by cutaways to a festive dance, is especially well-done – mixed in with those clunky montages and the obvious blending of sources. The music is fine, but the 1962 version has a far better score.

As for the overall film, Top Hat, at least among the nominees I’ve seen, is a better film and would’ve held up just as well as a winner. But this, for those three fine performances and the inherent interest of the story, holds up well enough; perhaps, 40 years after the third major version (The Bounty), we’re about due for another, one which shows how Bligh wasn’t so bad and Christian and his fellow mutineers weren’t so good.

Score: 87

Oppenheimer (2023) rewatch

Let’s hear it for smart TVs, that can’t properly play 5.1 sound without supplemental speakers. I was trying to rewatch Oppenheimer at home and found myself only getting the score and sound effects; since there wasn’t a 2.0 option on the DVD, I could only get the dialogue by turning on the DVS track, which describes the on-screen action for the visually impaired.

I got used to it quickly enough, however, not least because the movie itself is so good. I’d seen it as the second half of my Barbenheimer double-feature and was pretty tired by the end of it; a second viewing had long been in order. And sure enough, my already strong feelings improved, and I picked up on a number of details I’d overlooked or underrated the first time around.

What really makes this film is the ensemble cast, easily the best of the year. I already knew that Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. were great, but I hadn’t really appreciated Alden Ehrenreich’s performance as the Senate aide to whom Strauss gradually reveals his secrets; he’s stuck with the single worst line in the script, but shortly follows it with a neat little deflation of Strauss’ already-wilting self-regard.

I’d also undervalued Emily Blunt’s Oscar-nominated turn as Kitty Oppenheimer; while I still think some of her drunk scenes are too obviously acted, she has her really strong moments, namely her verbal parrying with Roger Robb (Jason Clarke, great as the obnoxious quasi-prosecutor). Likewise, David Krumholtz’ warmly comic turn as Isidor Rabi (“Tell Groves to go shit in his hat”) and Rami Malek’s brief but pivotal performance as David Hill grew on me, and I moved several others, like Matt Damon as the blustering but honorable Gen. Groves, up my acting lists.

I also moved Nolan’s direction back up the list; it’s not his most innovative or ambitious work behind the camera, but it’s a fine piece of work nonetheless, and his script, despite his occasional lapses into the bluntly expository, reflects his great skill at narrative structure, aided immeasurably by Jennifer Lame’s editing and Ludwig Göransson’s score, both of which, along with Nolan’s direction, are likely to win Oscars. They’ll have earned them.

And while the film still isn’t my #1 of the year, not with Poor Things and Killers of the Flower Moon in the mix, it’s quite good enough to merit the Best Picture Oscar it’s likely to win. It’s a film I really do enjoy, and one I may well return to – once I can hear it properly.

Score: 91

The Great Ziegfeld (1936) – ***

I also decided to return to a Best Picture winner I’d seen years ago, and while I’d never rewatched the whole thing, for a long while I’d pop in the disc and rewatch a favorite scene or two – the climax to the mammoth “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody” number (the end of the film’s first half), the haunting medley of Ziegfeld’s last hits which plays in his mind as he dies, and Ray Bolger’s magnificently acrobatic tap solo. The rest of the film had faded from my memory to a large degree – and there’s a reason for that.

Covering the career of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. from the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 to his death in 1932, Ziegfeld focuses on his devil-may-care approach to business, his love of publicity stunts, his womanizing, and his adoration of spectacle, dressing his performers (especially the girls) in the most lavish costumes available and placing them upon the largest sets he can fit into the theater; in particular, he wants higher and higher staircases – a desire which, in the film’s last moments, combines with a symbolic ascent to Heaven.

Along the way, there’s a fair amount of comedy, especially in Ziegfeld’s rivalry with Jack Billings (Frank Morgan), whom he routinely outfoxes, yet who remains loyal, in his way, to the very end. There’s also a good measure of romance, namely in Ziegfeld’s relationships with the temperamental Anna Held (Luise Rainer) and the sanguine Billie Burke (Myrna Loy). And, of course, there are musical numbers, from light comic solos (“If You Knew Susie”) to sprawling spectacles (“A Circus Must Be Different in a Ziegfeld Show” – and it is, thanks to a lengthy ballet by Harriet Hoctor).

All of this makes for a very long film – 185 minutes, when you factor in the overture, intermission, and exit music – and to what end? You may wonder, long before it’s over, whether Ziegfeld was really worth all the fuss. William Powell’s performance as Ziegfeld, while not his best work, has the sly charm, the quick wit, and the underlying sensitivity to keep us from writing the man off, but as written Ziegfeld is less a charming rogue who’s a master showman than an irresponsible cad who occasionally struck gold. When Anna Held objects to his attempts to concoct a rumor that she takes milk baths, lamenting that in Europe she was prized for her talent, you’re more likely to side with her.

Rainer won the Oscar for Best Actress, and while Anna doesn’t have all that much screentime (less than one-fifth of the film), and her temperamental flightiness can grow wearisome, but Rainer’s eccentric energy makes a nice contrast with all the polished anonymity around her; Loy, so charming alongside Powell in The Thin Man, has rather less to work with here. I did appreciate the presumable in-joke of their meeting at Grant’s Tomb, but any scene of their loving banter in the earlier film tops any scene in this film.

There are highlights among the large supporting cast; Morgan’s jovial bluster is always entertaining, Bolger’s nervous attitude and astounding physicality are mesmerizing, and Fanny Brice, playing herself, brings a comic authenticity to the goings-on – you really feel for her when she joins the Follies, admires herself in her new costume, and is heartbroken when Ziegfeld objects, ordering that she be given an old shawl and a second-hand dress for the sake of realism. Nat Pendleton as the affable strongman Sandow, Herman Bing as a flustered costumier, and Virginia Bruce as the conniving starlet Audrey are also solid, though we’re told of Audrey’s potential and never really see any evidence of it.

More often than not, however, the film focuses on spectacle over character, and the result now seems rather empty. Bolger’s legs are more impressive than any of the enormous sets (though the nomination for Art Direction was well earned), and Seymour Felix’s choreography, which won an Oscar in the brief period the Dance Direction category existed (for “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody” specifically) is likewise more focused on scale than real ability. Robert Z. Leonard’s direction and William Anthony McGuire’s script were also nominated but didn’t win; there’s just not enough distinction to them.

The editing also didn’t win, and it’s a bit wild that it was nominated, given the film’s bloated length. That same year, MGM’s own San Francisco combined music, romance, and spectacle, and all in under two hours; it’s hardly a great film, but it’s far more efficient at delivering the goods than Ziegfeld. And of course, Powell wasn’t nominated for this film but for the wonderful My Man Godfrey, which earned Director, Screenplay, and four acting nominations but missed Picture – one of the most baffling snubs in Oscar history.

Ziegfeld has its moments, especially when it puts the people front and center and stops worrying about dazzling us with vast sets, huge choruses, and ostentatious costumes. Mutiny on the Bounty holds up as a Best Picture winner because, at its core, it’s about the people involved. Ziegfeld doesn’t because, too often, it isn’t.

Score: 68

Drive-Away Dolls (2024) – ***

My expectations for Drive-Away Dolls (or Drive-Away Dykes, if you prefer) were not that high. The trailer, the brief running time (84 minutes) and the February release date (partially because of the guild strikes, I realize) all stoked my doubts. And while the reviews weren’t disastrous, they didn’t promise much either.

Unsurprisingly, it has the feel of a film that’s been picked over, reworked, possibly test-screened, and definitely diminished from whatever the original vision was. According to Wikipedia, the film was first pitched in the early Aughts and first announced in 2007; it’s been a labor of love for Ethan Cohen and his wife, editor Tricia Cooke – who’s an out lesbian. Presumably the two central elements of the plot were there from the get-go, but one greatly outshines the other.

That would be the relationship between Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), two lesbians in 1999 Philadelphia who, needing a change of pace, decide to do a “drive-away” (a kind of combination car rental and delivery) to Tallahassee, where Marian’s aunt lives. They arrive at Curlie’s (Bill Camp) agency right as he’s given a car to deliver to Tallahassee, and he assumes they’re the ones to drive it.

They’re not, because the car has some significant contraband in the trunk, which Chief (Colman Domingo) and his henchmen Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C.J. Wilson) have been entrusted with delivering to Florida. As they attempt to track down Jamie and Marian, the two girls have an eventful journey which includes small-town lesbian bars, lesbian slumber parties with soccer teams, and their own budding relationship – which is impacted by their discovery of the contraband.

Truthfully, I was far more interested in the romance than the caper. That’s partly because Qualley and Viswanathan make for an engaging couple, what with Qualley’s southern-fried wildness (she mugs a bit but it’s committed mugging) and Viswanathan’s neurotic inhibition (she opts to read Henry James rather than join in a threesome). They’re both fine comediennes, but they also achieve a real sweetness together that makes their eventual connection believable.

What isn’t believable is the caper, which revolves around an incredibly silly MacGuffin (I was reminded of The Nice Guys, a film some people really like) and fails to achieve either real tension or a proper farcical pitch, so we’re neither especially invested or amused. Slotnick and Wilson are a solid team, especially when the talkative Slotnick proves more effective than Wilson with his blundering thuggery, but Domingo is really rather wasted.

Camp, with his extreme deadpan – you’re never quite sure where the stupidity ends and the slyness begins – is quite entertaining, but the film drops him partway through for no good reason. As Jamie’s ex, Beanie Feldstein does more yelling than acting; it also seems odd that a film which otherwise criticizes conservatism has a cop more or less saving the day. But a lot about the film seems odd, especially the psychedelic interstitials which are vaguely relevant to the story, but which feel like padding to get the film to feature length – or like a colorful way of papering over gaps in the material.

But then, the material is never that strong and the execution isn’t quite enough to compensate. Ari Wegner’s cinematography is solid, and Cooke’s editing is certainly ambitious, but there’s a hollow, slapdash feel to the film as a whole which makes it feel like one of those films which was too long in the making, such that the spontaneity a film like this really needs to succeed just wasn’t there; it’s amusing, but rarely truly funny. (I’m also not sure what to make of the flashbacks to Marian’s discovery of the female body via spying on her neighbor sunbathing nude.)

Again, it’s the relationship between Jamie and Marian that makes the film worth watching, and you kind of wish Coen and Cooke had let the whole caper plot go and just followed these two as they banter, bicker, and fall in love. I think even those who liked the film would be willing to agree – though even without the caper, they should’ve made sure to keep Curlie in the picture. You can never go wrong with Bill Camp.

Score: 70

Perfect Days (2023) – ****

Oscar Nomination: Best International Film

I don’t usually talk about my job on here (seems prudent), but suffice to say, I load trucks for a living. It’s a laborious job, one which can be done well or poorly, with diligence or with indifference, with a respect for why one is being paid to do it in the first place or a desire to do something more interesting with one’s life. I try to do it with diligence, because if I’m going to be there and get paid for it, I might as well do it to the best of my abilities, chief among which is an attention to detail which some might consider nit-picking.

Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) cleans public toilets in Tokyo. He does so diligently and thoughtfully, in some contrast to his junior colleague Takashi (Tokio Emoto), who sees it simply as a job, and is more interested in impressing Aya (Aoi Yamada) than in making sure the public has clean facilities. Not that Hirayama explains his motivations, or much of anything; he doesn’t say much, even when spoken to.

He lives a ritualistic life, waking at dawn to the sound of a neighbor sweeping the street, folding his bedding, watering his plants, brushing his teeth, dressing for work, taking a look at the morning sky, grabbing a can of coffee from the vending machine, hopping in his van, playing music, doing his job, taking his lunch near a temple and taking pictures of a favorite tree, returning home, visiting a public bath, biking to a favorite restaurant for dinner, heading home, and reading until it’s time to turn out the light.

So in this combination of a seemingly mundane job done with respect and a quiet life which is nonetheless marked by creativity (his picture taking) and curiosity (his avid reading), I found myself more reflected than in almost any film I’ve ever seen. Not that I’m as old as Hirayama (Yakusho is in his 60s), or as seemingly serene, or as taciturn – but then, I could see his simple yet rich existence as some kind of ideal future, assuming that my life continues entirely on its present path.

Moreover, the film depicts his life, his routine, and his environment with a simple directness that makes us feel like witnesses to life, like guests in another’s home with all the awkwardness that can entail. Not that we’re privy to explicit details – though he cleans toilets, Hirayama’s own bathroom remains offscreen – but the cinematography and the environmental sound place us right in his world, which is at once open and vast and profoundly intimate.

Wrinkles in Hirayama’s routine do occur. Takashi ropes him into giving Aya a ride to work, then into visiting a music store to try and sell some of his vintage cassette tapes (which would fetch a pretty penny); his niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) runs away from home and stays with him a few days before her mother retrieves her (and alludes to a troubled past with her and Hirayama’s father); Takashi quits abruptly and Hirayama has to work all day, to his great annoyance; he oversees a favorite restaurateur in a private moment and is so embarrassed he buys alcohol and cigarettes and tries to go on a mini-bender.

But he keeps going, keeps admiring the morning sky, the play of shadows on walls, the sunlight through the trees, and the presence of a homeless man (Min Tanaka) whose life seems to be a continuous performance. And despite his reserved nature, he’s not shut-off; he shows compassion for a lost child (whose mother doesn’t even thank him), welcomes Niko into his home without hesitation, and shares a friendly moment with a man who reveals his own impending death.

The film must pull off a careful balancing act, showing the routine while keeping us engaged in what is, after all, a quiet and undramatic life, then introducing the moments of conflict without obvious contrivance, and showing the nature of life in urban Japan without betraying the fact that director Wim Wenders is German. But it does, quite beautifully for the most part. One sequence towards the end does feel just a tiny bit “written,” but it can be forgiven.

Yakusho won Best Actor at Cannes for his performance, and while the extremely naturalistic nature of the performance won’t be to all tastes – he rarely speaks and reacts naturally to what happens rather than giving a pantomime turn – he embodies the layered humanity, the embrace of simple joys, the reckoning with occasional frustrations, and the resurgence of long-buried traumas. It’s fine work, and he’s ably backed up by Emoto – who gets to show Takashi’s own layers in his friendly byplay with a passerby – and Nakano, who shares some of her uncle’s respect for the beauty of the everyday.

Part of what makes the film work, though, is that it never feels like it’s pushing us to recognize Hirayama as a fount of simple wisdom or his way of living as exemplary, any more than it pushes Takashi as a careless goof or Nakano as a rebellious adolescent. It’s hard not to respect how Hirayama lives, but it’s also the way that works for him, and he never tries to sell anyone else on it. He just is – and his dreams are just fleeting shadows, not Meaningful Symbols.

Maybe, though, it says enough that this film takes “House of the Rising Sun,” one of the most overused in popular culture, and finds a new way to bring it in, a way which fully reflects the quiet beauty and unassuming humanity of this lovely film.

Score: 90

The Eternal Memory/La memoria infinita (2023) – ***½

Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary Feature

Augusto Góngora was a renowned Chilean journalist, reporting on the crimes of the Pinochet regime and chronicling the years after his country transitioned to democracy. He co-wrote a book called Chile: The Forbidden Memory, aiming to preserve the past for the sake of the future. Paulina Urrutia is a renowned Chilean actress who served a term as the country’s culture minister. They became a couple in 1996 and married in 2016.

As the film begins, it is 2019, and he is suffering from Alzheimer’s. These public figures are seen mainly in their private lives, through a mix of present-day footage and old home videos, as in a stroke of supreme irony this chronicler of national memory loses his own, reaching the point where he cannot recognize Urrutia or wholly grasp his surroundings. Sometimes he knows it. Sometimes he’s agitated, sometimes he’s heartbroken, and sometimes he greets the present with good humor.

Urrutia (or “Pauli” as most call her) is devoted to him, but she has her moments of frustration and despair, especially when COVID confines them to their home and he cannot always understand why their friends and family cannot visit them, or when she tries to keep him settled so she can do her own work and he is inclined to get up, to wander and wonder, and to deny that she is her herself or their home is their home.

The film, like American Symphony, generally adopts a fly-on-the-wall approach; I’m not sure how much director Maite Alberdi was present during the production, but there’s no narration and no talking-head interviews; we observe these two as they talk, walk, live, love, and share moments of happiness and unhappiness alike. We see in archival footage what Góngora once was like, and how in some respects he is still gentle and direct, and how in others he has lost his ability to understand what we take for granted – that we are ourselves and that here and now is here and now.

If I fall just short of pushing The Eternal Memory over the top into ****, it’s because the film doesn’t come together quite as well as I hoped. There are truly affecting moments, especially for those who’ve dealt with dementia first-hand, and our two protagonists are an engaging pair; thankfully, there’s no sense that they’re performing for the camera, but they are themselves most winningly.

But once the central irony of the film is established, I’m not sure the film does quite enough with it to justify the 85-minute running time. At 40 minutes, it would’ve been superb. At 85, I personally wanted just a bit more than a compelling thesis and an affecting relationship. Of course, Perfect Days similarly eschews traditional narrative – The Eternal Memory doesn’t depict Góngora’s final months or his death – but that film felt complete in a way this just misses.

Still, it’s a moving and worthy film. one which stands well alongside producer Pablo Larraín’s work about Pinochet and his regime – the fine No and the flawed but intriguing El Conde – and which makes for a solid Oscar nominee.

Score: 86

Dune: Part Two (2024) – ****

Update 3/18/24: I appeared on Words About Books to discuss this film with Ben and Nate! Listen to the episode here!

Dune: Part Two takes just about everything that was good about Part One and builds upon it, just as it takes what was good about the original novel and builds upon that – but isn’t afraid to drop what didn’t necessarily work even in the book, and what wouldn’t have worked so well on the screen. I won’t reveal just what changes director Denis Villeneuve and his co-writer Jon Spaihts made from the source material, but I will say that those changes made for, on the whole, a richer and more entertaining experience.

I say “richer” because the film builds upon the themes of the original as well as the story, most notably the fact that the prophecies which suggest Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is the Lisan al-Gaib, the Fremens’ foretold messiah, were created from whole cloth by the Bene Gesserit, and that the Fremen are divided on the validity of the prophecies, with Chani (Zendaya) as staunch a skeptic as Stilgar (Javier Bardem) is a believer.

The tension between them, and between Chani and Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), who becomes a Fremen Reverend Mother and stokes the flames of her son’s cult, are as engaging as the conflict between the Fremen and the Harkonnen forces, as they seek to reclaim their planet and Paul seeks to avenge his father. When you factor in the tensions between the Harkonnens and Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), the tensions within the Harkonnen family, and the tensions within the Emperor’s court – namely between his observant daughter Irulan (Florence Pugh) and Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) – you can see how the film fills 168 minutes and still leaves a lot in the air for Part Three.

To be sure, there are points where Part Two seems to drag, just a little; maybe I just needed coffee, or maybe the sheer mass of the film, coupled with the fact that, Chani aside, it’s hard to truly root for anyone (not in a “I don’t care about these people” way, but in a “this whole scenario is profoundly corrupt” way), does make for a slightly exhausting experience. Even the romance between Chani and Paul, handled far more organically than ever before, offers little true respite from the horrors Paul’s visions foretell, which only begin with the climactic battle and the duel between him and Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler).

Sting’s campy take on Feyd is one of the most beloved facets of the 1984 version, but what Butler does here manages to be both memorably entertaining and genuinely unsettling; it’s a very distinct take on the character, but it’s effective in ways Sting’s take simply can’t be. With his pale, hairless face, blackened teeth, sneering smirk, and utter amorality, Butler’s Feyd is bad news even without his coterie of cannibalistic concubines. In other words, he’s a Harkonnen.

But when we see the Harkonnen home-world of Giedi Prime for ourselves, we doubt he could have ever turned out better. With a black sun that renders all exteriors in black-and-white and stark architecture that presses down on the inhabitants like a furrowed brow, it’s a wonderfully cursed hellscape where even the fireworks splatter across the sky like oil in water, compared to which the endless sands of Arrakis seem positively Edenic.

On Arrakis, we have masterful images of the dunes and the characters set against them and against the setting sun; Greig Fraser’s cinematography is right in line with his Oscar-winning work on Part One. So is Patrice Vermette’s production design, drawing on Arabic influences for the Fremens’ architecture and adopting a gentle geometry for the Emperor’s planet, a serenity which belies the scheming of that soft-spoken old man and his dignified Reverend Mother.

Jacqueline West’s costume design likewise draws masterfully on a wide variety of influences, the great achievement of it all being that it feels real, that it helps to craft a world we can believe in. With all the time we’re spending there, we damn well better.

With all time we’re spending with Paul, we also better believe that he can lead the Fremen, that he can accept, if not embrace, the path that he must take to achieve…well, peace is a long way off, but the paradise that the Fremen dream of turning Arrakis into may yet come to be. Whatever comes, Chalamet convinces us of Paul’s good intentions and of the doubts and fears which threaten to derail his destiny, which he’s all too able to repress when the time comes to be fierce.

Zendaya likewise convinces us of Chani’s complicated feelings for Paul, and how her refusal to accept his messianic status might be his one remaining link to his humanity. Ferguson takes Jessica ever further into calculating creepiness, and one narrative choice I won’t spoil brings a measure of dark amusement and subtle horror to the table. It is, in my view, wonderfully judged. Bardem is wonderfully earthy and passionate as Stilgar, building upon the promise of his brief appearance in Part One.

Stellan Skarsgård again has only limited screentime as the loathsome Baron Harkonnen, but he’s creepily entertaining (in a very different way than Kenneth McMillan was), while Dave Bautista is properly childish as Rabban, throwing lethal tantrums whenever things go awry (which is par for the course with him). Pugh neatly sets the stage for the larger role she’ll presumably play in the next film; Walken gets a few characteristically eccentric moments, but not at the expense of the tone. Josh Brolin gets to sing a bit (Gurney plays his baliset!) and Rampling gets to be smugly refined.

The sound design is beyond reproach and the visual effects, while a hair less ambitious than those of the first film, are no less well executed; the scene where Paul rides a sandworm for the first time is but one example of the film’s technical brilliance. But it’s in the writing – which finds room for a welcome measure of humor – and direction that it affirms itself as truly great.

Score: 91