Dune (2021); Respect (2021); Summer of Soul (2021)
And Introducing "Glimpses": Respect and Summer of Soul
(Zendaya as Chani in Dune)
I've never seen a movie quite like Dune. By now it's widely known as the saga, set hundreds of decades into the future, of young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), his father Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) and mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and their fates on the planet Arrakis. The Duke, as head of the House of Atreides, has been assigned by the Imperium's Emperor (the overseer of countless planet worlds) to leave his watery home planet of Caladan and take control of dry, hot Arrakis.
Once there, Duke Leto is charged with seeing to the continued harvesting in the desert of a spice called "the mélange", which is vital for both interstellar travel and mind expansion. This life-building substance is only found on Arrakis, so the outcome of the Duke's venture will be crucial for humanity's future.
I was impressed by the movie's enormous, detailed sets, its intricately crafted interiors and costumes, and its whisperingly mystical, savagely military plot.
Or plots. Paul needs accomplices like the warrior most loyal to the Duke's family, Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), and a mysterious young woman, Chani (Zendaya), whom Paul sees in fever dreams and finally meets when he's in greatest danger. And there is always Lady Jessica herself, who teaches her son the powers of the Voice, which can bend the will of those it's brought to bear on.
The director, Denis Villeneuve, has shown a fascination with gigantism onscreen before. With Arrival (2016), I wondered whether his entrancement with movie technology, which he wielded with consummate ease, might have begun to supplant the basic killer directing instincts he demonstrated so implacably in Sicario (2015), which was boldly visceral and harsh.
Here, Greig Fraser's cinematography – it’s essential that it be viewed on a big screen, preferably in IMAX – is both sweeping and eerie. His visuals evoke the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), mixing aridity with wonder. His compositions don't sit prettily. The eye is drawn further inward and onward.
What I sometimes find a little alarming about Villeneuve is precisely what should be admired: his unwavering confidence. He both moves the camera and cuts with the eye of a hawk.
But that deftness can sometimes short circuit a viewer’s own stake in, or undercurrent of feelings about, what’s unfolding. Within Dune I find little of what was once so enjoyably subversive and edgy about Villeneuve's directing. His pristine technical skill here almost seems like it's now become his primary artist's resolve – to make a movie that stuns with its look. To grip the audience, he and his co-screenwriters, John Spaihts and Eric Roth, need their plot maneuvers to be upheld by brilliant visuals and production design. Their language itself doesn’t conjure much soul-stirring wonder or actual dread.
To be fair, Villeneuve's clever cuts, swirling camera and golden/hazy lighting aren't mere show. They're meant to express the characters' dire positions. But, beneath the visual dazzle, what we mostly have here is a basic Messiah story, the question of whether Paul will one day assume the mantle of his father, and, even more portentously, lead humankind to some sort of rough peace in a turbulent universe. But no matter how hard Villeneuve applies himself to this schema, the story's idealism flickers, and isn't the prime mover urging Paul or those around him to action.
Maybe Villeneuve is simply being true to his source. And at the opening we're shown on screen that this movie is Dune: Part One, so we know from the outset that it's introducing us to worlds and conflicts we won't fully comprehend until Dune: Part Two is made.
Fair enough. This movie is an origin story. And as such there’s a lot to learn. Arrakis has been the domain of the evil Baron Hakonnen, who, when forced by the Emperor to hand over control of Arrakis to the House of Atreides, plots his savage revenge. Paul's outwitting of this conspiracy, masterminded by the Emperor himself, comprises most of the action.
And to escape the Baron's clutches Paul will need the help of the Fremen, natives of Arrakis, desert maestros tied to the supremacy of the spice, and practiced in not being devoured by the giant omnivorous earthworms that roam beneath the planet's surface, rising from the sand to swallow anything in their path.
But are we meant to believe that Paul, arriving from another planet, was born to set this roiling domain right? Part One poses that question, and only suggests an answer before coming to a fiery but indeterminate end. We've seen the House of Atreides under attack, but we have no idea whether the mystic wiles (derived from a religious cult) Lady Jessica shares with her son will be enough to guide Paul on his path to power.
And will the Fremen, who've controlled their own fate without help from what they call "Outsiders", find reasons to trust Paul? Some of them believe him to be The One, the Mahdi, the fated leader who can deliver them to freedom. Part Two will tell us if they're right.
Chalamet's uneasy hesitations and growing sense of self as Paul are nicely managed. His main restriction as an actor is that the princeling he’s playing still reacts more than he’s able to act. Jason Momoa has a lively, humorous outing as Duncan Idaho. And the rest of the cast all perform ably. I was especially taken with Zendaya's haunting Chani, brief though her appearances are. And Sharon Duncan-Brewster, as a seasoned Arrakis ecologist, is crisp and commanding.
So, the question of whether Paul could be the Mahdi underlies the movie's final third and hovers in the air at the end. That’s standard messianic, or would-be hero, storytelling. Yet as I left, I wondered whether Villeneuve and his co-screenwriters might have more up their sleeves to be tackled in Part Two.
Hans Zimmer's piercing score, filled with primal instrumentation and raging cries, might offer a clue. The score captures the howls and snarls and grit of the dispossessed, those forgotten millions Frantz Fanon called the wretched of the earth. Paul foresees holy wars across the universe, and our last several decades here on Earth have seen appalling variations on that grotesque historical fact.
This movie's rousing anticipatory final scene suggests that in Part Two Villeneuve and his collaborators might take us onto a more real-world, consequential journey. I hope so.
Meanwhile, Villeneuve has earned the right to finish what he's started. I want to go on with Paul, Jessica, Chani and the others, and eagerly await Part Two.
Today I’m introducing what will be a recurring Section, “Glimpses”.
Glimpses
(Recent movies now gradually slipping from notice or out of circulation)
This Week’s Selections: Respect and Summer of Soul
Respect (2021)
(Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin in Respect)
I never saw Aretha Franklin perform live. But I’ve always remembered what a friend told me after he did. He said, “She was most powerful when, seated at the piano, she just laid her head back and moaned.”
With that word “moaned” I thought I could almost hear the religious passion and ache issuing from Aretha’s body. In some of her television appearances I’ve noticed a reverence I thought was similar to the rapture my friend described. Her head held to one side, her eyes closed in communion with a spirit whose sources I’d seen in the Black church, Aretha seemed beholden to a force greater than herself or her listeners. She was both singing out the pain and spreading the good news.
The movie Respect reaches that mountaintop in its final segment, recreating the 1972 Los Angeles church concert Aretha both performed in and produced. Jennifer Hudson, with the camera slowly circling her, seems to discover and express a veneration not just artistic but spiritual. Her voice dips and soars rather like Aretha’s, and, even more impressively, her devotion to Aretha’s memory pours from the screen. Rite and moviemaking fuse. Hearing her, I so wished I’d been at that church ceremony.
Secular moments in the movie are immersive, too. The musicians’ give-and-take at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio (in Sheffield, Alabama) provides an inside look at the way beats, insistent notes and background vocals can come together in exultation. The work is propelled by an indefinable – is it trained or innate? – feel for sounds that grab a listener, are amplified, then impulsively swell. In this session, the song “I Never Loved a Man (the Way that I Love You)” was the spellbinding result.
If only this kind of bred-in-the-bone musicality had been this music bio’s lodestone. Instead, the director (Liesl Tommy) and writers (story by Callie Khouri, screenplay by Tracey Scott Wilson) offer a weakly focused exploitation of Aretha’s past without explaining much of it. I’m left with colliding impressions.
One thread of the tale, unsurprisingly, was that the child Aretha was precociously talented, and the charming Skye Dakota Turner deftly finger-snaps and head swerves to bawdy roadhouse ditties for family and friends as Aretha reaches her early teens. The young Aretha’s sparkling eyes and – already – jazz-inflected vocalizing mark the true prodigy.
Music propels her. The richly endowed voice Aretha possessed very early meant that she’d arrived at an expressive zenith well before age 20. Her talent could be downgraded as “raw” only in a too-slick professional recording studio. Once she reached there, her chief non-industry supporters – slowly revealed to be, in fact, sinister control freaks – were two men convinced that women’s freedom needed restraining. She resisted, and her voice won even when she herself could sometimes be overruled.
The first tyrant in her life is her patrician, domineering father, the formidable Rev. C.L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker, in a massively menacing performance), whose force in Black religious culture extends beyond his Detroit Baptist congregation into the highest reaches of the Black church’s influencers, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (an excellent Gilbert Glenn Brown). Aretha, too, deeply revered the civil rights icon and appeared beside him whenever he summoned her.
Dr. Franklin aims to steer Aretha’s career between the saintly and the secular, but he doesn’t reckon on Aretha’s second nemesis, the scheming Ted White (Marlon Wayans, odious and compelling), a violent alcoholic who tries to micromanage Aretha’s rise, constantly by her side, occasionally offering a sycophant’s praise only to glower and nitpick when she falters.
The script cursorily watches Aretha’s attempts to free herself from the grip of these headstrong Black men. Not that there aren’t also white men, i.e., ambitious record producers, who want to mold Aretha to their liking. First is the gentlemanly John Hammond (Tate Donovan), who signs Aretha to a Columbia Records contract that consigns her to glossily-produced cuts – and no hits.
He's not exactly replaced but gradually overshadowed by the pugnacious Jerry Wexler (Marc Maron) of Atlantic Records. Wexler takes a much stronger hand, and, despite his eagerness to take credit for Aretha’s success, he slowly leads her to trust her own musical instincts. He still wants to manage her every career move. But the manipulative Ted tries to intervene. He’s not savvier, but believes that if he can call the shots, he’ll keep Aretha in thrall.
From our vantage point today, it seems sad that these grasping men could oppress or loftily try to subsume a great, inimitable talent. But the movie shows that Aretha indeed has to fight to manage her career, and, as the battle is waged, she isn’t always polite when setting the ground rules. Her own demons lead her to drink, promiscuity and occasional cruelty. Even her devoted sisters come in for some machine-gun nastiness when the Queen feels crossed.
Over and above this squabbling Aretha clings to the memory of her mother, Barbara, played with polished ease by Audra McDonald. Barbara Franklin died early in Aretha’s life, and thus is lost to her as a companion, but remains an inspiration. When her mother sings a few bars to the young Aretha at the piano, it’s clear that McDonald deserves a movie musical all her own. This singer/actress’s bright, meltingly precise voice, though we get to hear it all too briefly, seems nearly an equal to Aretha’s.
For now, though, we have this movie’s meandering excursion through roughly the first third of Aretha’s life. There’s little depth of understanding of the woman Aretha, of what drove her as an artist, of how she estimated her own talent. Until she returns to her gospel roots in the movie’s final passage, she rarely gets to expand on her wary dodging between hurled bottles, threats and insults.
Thankfully, there’s Hudson’s fine fathoming of the deep musical ocean that was Aretha’s voice, with its swoops and cries, shaking rhythms and buoyant self-possession. That resilience lives in Hudson’s stellar work here, from her triumphant rendition of “Respect” at Madison Square Garden to the achingly elongated phrasing of “Amazing Grace” that closes out the movie. Through the storm, the Queen has doggedly kept open a path to heaven’s door.
Summer of Soul (2021)
(Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson in Summer of Soul)
This is a live concert film culled from the Harlem Cultural Festival in the summer of 1969, which spanned six weeks.
This compilation’s two hours of footage is winnowed from a vast array of artist-audience encounters, with mostly Black and some white musicians singing and playing their hearts out, watched by an overwhelmingly Black audience swaying in what seems like perfect ease in the just-right baking sun, sporting elegant home- and neighborhood-grown fashion and hair styles, trading joyful, teasing looks, soaking up both the music and the sunlight – which seem to bounce off each other – in Mt. Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park).
The performances boom like cannon fire. Among the artists are B.B. King, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, David Ruffin, Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension, Clara Ward, Nina Simone, the Staples Singers and, most devastatingly, Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples in a gospel duet that rings with the kind of “church” authority that cuts through sin as if with a sacred knife.
To assemble this marvel, the DJ and artist Questlove pored through 52 hours of footage, and, having struck gold, performed, through discerning selection and sharp editing, filmmaking alchemy. He saw the force and beauty of the footage’s tenderness, heartbreak and blistering licks, all emanating from a modestly-sized stage with only natural light casting a spell on the proceedings.
He also doesn’t spare us news clips of the era’s uprisings and street protests that were met with police brutality. (A kindly drop-in visit from a smiling, earnest Mayor John Lindsay feels as if it comes from a different political universe.) The musical numbers are interlaced with recent interviews from some of the performers looking back on their brave, bell-bottomed and tight- or mini-skirted younger selves. Also, the Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks powerfully both in 1969 and today, and the Rev. Al Sharpton reminds us that Black Moments Matter.
This movie lives – and churns long after it’s over – in the gut. I hope to hear Oscar talk about it for Best Documentary Feature.
From the defense of the 1619 Project, to new attention brought to the Tulsa Massacre (1921), to a planned TV series on the murder of Emmett Till (1955), to heated arguments about critical race theory, to a number of institutions now seeking to provide reparations, there's an immense unearthing underway about what's been left untold in America's racial history.
Summer of Soul is a prime document to add to the growing stack. America needs to see this movie whether it realizes it or not. Thank you, Questlove. The whole world can now witness and reflect on this pulsing, galvanizing chunk of the truth.