Earlier today, nominees for the 94th annual Academy Awards were announced. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, an adaptation of the beloved (by me) 1965 Frank Herbert sci-fi epic, earned ten nominations, including Best Picture and Best Score (but not Best Director?). Only The Power of the Dog earned more, with twelve.
Dune deserves every nomination it received, as well as ones it didn’t. Whether it wins them is a different story. And that may have something to do with my main criticism of Dune: that it, more than even most multi-part presentations of stories in film, is deliberately incomplete, almost abruptly bisected. As I wrote last year:
Dune does not end at a true climax, but rather a contrived one that leaves countless questions in the narrative unanswered. This is a defect on its own terms, in this sense, even as a divided adaptation. When, after this climax, I got a credits sequence, what I really wanted was an intermission. The true way to experience Dune, as Villeneuve has adapted it, would be to see both parts at once, Lawrence of Arabia–style, as I hope to do one day.
I disagree strongly with Ross Douthat, who declared Dune to be “impressive, even remarkable, but not quite all it could have been.” However, I suspect the defect I identified will keep Dune from some of the awards it deserves, even as it cleans up in technical categories, much as Christopher Nolan films do. Things may be different, however, for the sequel, which we are now definitely getting. Like Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, will Dune: Part Two sweep the Academy as a delayed reward for prior underappreciation? Without any spice mélange, I can only speculate.