They see you, they see the signs," Jessica tells Paul, informing him that the Bene Gesserit have been planting superstitions that the messianic Lisan al-Gaib, meaning the Voice from the Outer World, will soon arrive. "These people have been waiting for centuries for the Lisan al-Gaib. When House Atreides lands at Arrakis, they're greeted with cheers and chants from the native Fremen, who Paul notices are all pointing at him. Chalamet has always been a more of an introspective actor, and his subdued performance in "Dune" has earned him criticism for being bland but I think it's all intentional - Paul is very much this blank slate upon which other characters, and the film itself, project their chosen one agendas. He doesn't lash out against the burden (until much later anyways) but rather grimly accepts it, as if he's been cornered and left with no other solution.
There's a cynicism to which Paul treats this fate that's been thrust upon him. But even as she opines to Jessica, "so much potential, wasted in a male," she tells her that the Bene Gesserit have still laid the path for them to be accepted as a mythic savior in Arrakis. He can't make heads or tails of his visions, and this sows doubt in the Reverend Mother that he is the Kwisatz Haderach. It may be a result of his unplanned birth - as the Reverend Mother tells Lady Jessica, she was only supposed to bear daughters, but she instead gave birth to a son that she trained in the Bene Gesserit way - and Paul's conflicted bloodline leads him to be torn between his Atreides family duties and his emerging powers from the millennia of Bene Gesserit engineered breeding. Some seem to be visions of possible futures, some seem to be mostly symbolic, a few seem to point to Paul's death. But interestingly, these visions - which appear with increasing frequency throughout the film as Paul gets further exposed to the ability-enhancing "spice" - aren't exactly cut-and-dry prophecies. But are they all exactly as they seem? These visions that Paul receives, starting with fleeting images of Chani (Zendaya) and the sun-drenched planet Arrakis, appear to signal that he is indeed the Chosen One, with the ability to see the future. Here is our hero, here is our evil, hulking villain, here is our shadowy empire, here is our oppressed minority. Rather than dig into the minutiae of Herbert's world, Villeneuve's "Dune" is a film of broad strokes and ambiguity, and of a gnawing uncertainty.
0 kommentar(er)
