Denis Vil­leneuve: ​‘I’m obsessed by the idea that humans can evolve’

Denis Vil­leneuve loves a chal­lenge. The Québé­cois film­mak­er turned a hor­rif­ic real-life misog­y­nis­tic mas­sacre – the sort of mate­r­i­al that would nor­mal­ly yield only the low­est form of exploita­tion – into 2009’s sen­si­tive Poly­tech­nique (shot twice, in French- and Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sions). He adapt­ed José Saramago’s unfilmable nov­el ​‘The Dou­ble’ into 2013’s sub­lime­ly sin­gu­lar Ene­my. He took on a sequel to Rid­ley Scott’s much loved Blade Run­ner and craft­ed from it a soul­ful epic of humanity’s evolution.

Blade Run­ner 2049, from 2017, and 2016’s excel­lent Arrival, marked Villeneuve’s own evo­lu­tion towards sci­ence fic­tion, and now he is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly essay­ing anoth­er impos­si­ble work: Frank Herbert’s expan­sive 1965 nov­el ​‘Dune’. Shot in IMAX, the first part of this sprawl­ing space saga, with its internecine, inter­plan­e­tary dynas­tic strug­gles, its desert upris­ings and gigan­tic worms, is now com­plete. Vil­leneuve talks us through the col­li­sion of this arid alien world and his own wild­ly fer­tile imagination.

LWLies: From your fea­ture debut August 32^nd on Earth to Incendies, Sicario, Blade Run­ner 2049 and now Dune, you have often been a direc­tor of deserts. What keeps draw­ing a film­mak­er from cold-cli­mate Cana­da to the dry sandy wastelands?

Vil­leneuve: I was raised by the St Lawrence Riv­er, and I was some­one who spent a very med­i­ta­tive child­hood look­ing at the hori­zon. There are sim­i­lar­i­ties, in win­ter­time, with the hori­zon. It’s like some­thing that has an impact on the soul. I think that my deep attrac­tion to the desert is that the empti­ness – the infin­i­ty – of the desert is like a kind of mir­ror. It’s like an inner jour­ney – being in con­tact with infin­i­ty. It’s bring­ing you back to your own humil­i­ty, your own place in the world, your own sin­gu­lar­i­ty. Its silence is my best friend, my com­pan­ion. Silence is like a com­fort for me. It’s a mir­ror of your own inner soul. The mag­ni­tude is like a mag­ni­fy­ing glass. I’ve been dri­ven to bring char­ac­ters into that space so that they are naked spir­i­tu­al­ly, and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, and you can explore, like under a micro­scope, and mag­ni­fy their inner jour­ney. It’s like a quest for purity.

Your broth­er Martin’s film Mars et Avril is also sci­ence fic­tion. Was there a lot of SF in the Vil­leneuve house­hold when you were grow­ing up?

I have been attract­ed to sci­ence fic­tion since a very ear­ly age. My father was obsessed by tech­nol­o­gy, and all those sci­en­tif­ic mag­a­zines about new dis­cov­er­ies, like Pop­u­lar Mechan­ic or Sci­ence et Vie. So there was that pres­ence of how the world could evolve with tech­nol­o­gy – of what the world of tomor­row could be. And I must not under­es­ti­mate the pres­ence of a nuclear pow­er plant that I could see from my kitchen. I was raised in the atom­ic age where the big fear of the time was not the cli­mate, but the atom­ic bomb. And to know that you had that pow­er just a few kilo­me­tres from home – I think it’s some­thing that sparked a lot of imag­i­na­tion. You eat your cere­al in the morn­ing and you look at the nuclear pow­er plant.

At what point did you first encounter Frank Herbert’s nov­el? And did you imme­di­ate­ly think, ​“One day I will make a film of this”?

I read ​‘Dune’ when I was very young, specif­i­cal­ly at the moment when I was start­ing to dream big about cin­e­ma, fol­low­ing film­mak­ers, start­ing to be very inter­est­ed by what a direc­tor was doing, being drawn to the film­mak­ing process. And I remem­ber start­ing to do sto­ry­boards and ear­ly draw­ings of ​‘Dune’ with my best friend at the time who want­ed to be a direc­tor as well. We were obsessed with this world. I’m not say­ing that I was dream­ing to make a movie about it right away, but def­i­nite­ly I was deeply inspired by it. For me it was one of my big dreams. If you had said to me, ​‘Ulti­mate­ly what would you like to do as a film­mak­er?’, I would have said, ​‘Dune.’ When I land­ed in Hol­ly­wood, and peo­ple were ask­ing me, ​‘What would be your dream?’, it’s always those four let­ters that were com­ing out of my mouth. It’s a book that stayed with me through the years for sev­er­al rea­sons, and still today every time I open it, I get the same kind of deep joy read­ing it.

‘Dune’ is a mind-bend­ing­ly com­plex nov­el which famous­ly foiled Ale­jan­dro Jodorowksy’s attempts to make it, and led to David Lynch’s most com­pro­mised pro­duc­tion. Were you anx­ious about the novel’s per­ceived brand as a film mau­dit?

I always relat­ed the birth of my rela­tion­ship with ​‘Dune’ with the love for a book – with the sen­sa­tions, the images, the inspi­ra­tion com­ing out of the pages. So I would have done Dune even if it had not been attempt­ed by any­body at all. I think it would have been com­pli­cat­ed if I had dis­cov­ered ​‘Dune’ through David Lynch’s eyes, or through Jodorowsky’s eyes. Then it would have been more dif­fi­cult, maybe. But I have my own very pure, inti­mate rela­tion­ship with the book. My roots were deep into the book, so I didn’t mind about the wind.

In a weird way, even your Dune is a film mau­dit, in the sense that it was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to come out in late 2020, but then was delayed by Covid. As the direc­tor, did you regard this as a frus­tra­tion, or an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do more post-pro­duc­tion tweaking?

I will not say that we changed the movie, but I had more time to make sure that every­thing was per­fect, that it reached the qual­i­ty that I was look­ing for. I would have done it before the pan­dem­ic, but it was like a race, and then, instead of run­ning, it became more like a ground­ed walk. Also I feel that it brought things to the movie – it forced us all to do things a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent­ly – and more specif­i­cal­ly the music. I think Hans Zim­mer was kind of desta­bilised by the pan­dem­ic and, in a good way, I’m sure the score is dif­fer­ent to it would have been had he been more in his usu­al envi­ron­ment. I’m talk­ing about Hans because he was obsessed with ​‘Dune’ for decades. It was one of his big dreams to do a ​‘Dune’ score. When the pan­dem­ic land­ed and time was stretched, it gave him more time to exper­i­ment, def­i­nite­ly. I’m all good with the movie right now.

What kinds of lib­er­ties have you tak­en, through adap­ta­tion, with the orig­i­nal text? Is this a close adaptation?

Yes, it’s a close adap­ta­tion. The first lib­er­ty that I took is to make the movie in two parts. The sto­ry is so rich, so dense; ​‘Dune’ is all about details. It’s so sophis­ti­cat­ed and there are so many rich cul­tures that are described. There is sub­stance to make tonnes of movies. There’s so many things that I need­ed to approach, to describe, to shoot and to bring to the screen, that I thought it would def­i­nite­ly need a min­i­mum of two movies. And I think that, by doing so, there are things that I did explain in the first movie, [but] there are also things that I didn’t tack­le, that I didn’t describe, I just skimmed the sur­face of some ideas that will be approached deep­er in the sec­ond movie. I need to find the equi­lib­ri­um between both movies. So the first one is just like open­ing the door on a world.

Could you have man­aged to make some­thing on the scale of Dune with­out hav­ing first made Arrival and Blade Run­ner 2049?

No. All my fil­mog­ra­phy has been built like bricks. I’m think­ing projects that are more and more tech­ni­cal­ly com­plex, and big­ger chal­lenges. I would nev­er have been able to do Dune with­out doing Arrival or Blade Run­ner. I would not dare to say that they were rehearsals, but def­i­nite­ly I was able to do Dune because I did Blade Run­ner. I learnt so much doing it about world build­ing, and about VFX. It’s accumulative.

The pro­tag­o­nist of Dune, Paul Atrei­des, will even­tu­al­ly lead desert-dwelling reli­gious fanat­ics in a jihadist cru­sade that inevitably evokes the iconog­ra­phy of al Qae­da or Daesh. Is it your inten­tion to sub­vert the con­ven­tion­al Hol­ly­wood notion of the hero, and to reject see­ing ide­o­log­i­cal strug­gle in black-and-white, us-vs-them terms?

Very ear­ly in my film­mak­ing life I’ve been in con­tact, in a very beau­ti­ful and pow­er­ful way, with the com­plex­i­ty of the world. I start­ed my career by mak­ing doc­u­men­taries alone around the world, in most of Asia, the Mid­dle East, Europe, North­ern Africa. I trav­elled to the States, I trav­elled to most parts of the world. At a very young age I was in con­tact with tonnes of dif­fer­ent views of the world where every­body thinks they have the right answer. And it cul­ti­vat­ed so much doubt and humil­i­ty inside me, see­ing how grey the world is. It’s all about points of view and per­spec­tive – on which side of the fence you are stand­ing. As a film­mak­er I have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to try my best to bring that com­plex­i­ty, and to build bridges. I don’t like black-and-white. I don’t like the way the world is brought to the pub­lic by politi­cians right now. Polar­i­sa­tion is dan­ger­ous. I like com­plex­i­ty and dia­logue, yeah.

With its evo­ca­tions of Greek myth and of Lawrence of Ara­bia, and its pro­tag­o­nist who can see into the future, Dune seems as inter­est­ed as, say, your pre­vi­ous films Ene­my and Arrival were in the col­laps­ing of time and the cir­cu­lar rep­e­ti­tions of his­to­ry. Is this how you see your role as an artist: to present, in the myths you realise on screen, echoes of past, present and future, and to reflect who we are and how lit­tle we change over end­less trans­fers of power?

I’m deeply obsessed by the idea that we can change, that we can evolve as human beings, the idea that we are strug­gling with the bur­den of genet­ics, edu­ca­tion, fam­i­ly, the past, pol­i­tics, reli­gion – all the influ­ences as a human being. Real­ly, I think that these movies have that in com­mon: this quest to free the soul from that her­itage and this rela­tion­ship with the past. That’s what brings me hope for human­i­ty as well: I think we can evolve. But if we are not aware of it, we are con­demned. Hell is repetition.

How much do you see your Dune as look­ing back mil­len­nia to our own immi­nent future of harsh cli­mat­ic con­di­tions and deplet­ed resources? Is this an envi­ron­men­tal­ist call to arms?

When Frank Her­bert wrote the nov­el in the ​’60s, he was inspired by the new cur­rent of ecol­o­gy where peo­ple were try­ing to use nature to con­trol nature. He was into the idea that the sal­va­tion of human­i­ty could be by a dance with nature instead of the dom­i­na­tion of nature, and there was already a seed of that in the nov­el that is very impor­tant. It was writ­ten 60 years ago, but he was already fore­see­ing the forces that were about to clash togeth­er between extreme exploita­tion of nat­ur­al resources and cli­mate change.

You know, Roger Deakins and I some­times talk togeth­er and say, ​‘My god, it’s like we are get­ting clos­er to [Blade Run­ner] 20fucking49.’ It’s crazy! I always saw one of the ideas behind mak­ing this movie was to bring eyes back to the nov­el, and as a call to arms to the younger gen­er­a­tion to react and to move for­ward to try and build a world where we are not into dom­i­na­tion, but more into sym­bio­sis with nature.

You shot Dune in IMAX, but there must have been con­ver­sa­tions dur­ing the 2020 lock­down about releas­ing it direct to stream­ing. As you make a film, do you have to think about all these dif­fer­ent for­mats of recep­tion, or is your eye always on the biggest form, in this case the IMAX ver­sion? Do you lament what a grand inter­plan­e­tary epic los­es to the small screen?

Dune is very epic, but at the same time it’s an intro­spec­tive movie. I mean, we are very close to a young man who is defin­ing his iden­ti­ty, find­ing his space in the world and being in con­tact with a new envi­ron­ment, and the impact of the land­scape and envi­ron­ment on his soul. Real­ly ear­ly on, I remem­ber talk­ing with Greig Fras­er, the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, and the first thing we talked about was IMAX, that this movie will need [IMAX]. That was my aim. It was to embrace the desert. Also, it was inter­est­ing to approach the desert in a more ver­ti­cal way. We have seen the desert – very often, in my own films – as a land­scape. I want­ed to approach that land­scape with a dif­fer­ent scope, and be more epic and more immer­sive. So we designed the movie for IMAX right away, and it was the first time that I was shoot­ing a movie on pur­pose know­ing that some ele­ments will be in IMAX and oth­ers will be in 2.35 in the movie, which was not some­thing that we could decide in post-production.

It’s a new lan­guage, it’s a new way to cre­ate impact, to desta­bilise the audi­ence, to cre­ate emo­tion on the screen. I deeply love it. I think IMAX is the future of cin­e­ma. I want to go full IMAX on the next movies that I do. I think it’s a very pow­er­ful for­mat. And I think watch­ing Dune on a TV screen or at home is, to use an anal­o­gy, like dri­ving your speed­boat in a bath­tub, or try­ing to use a motor­bike on your dri­ve­way. I mean, there’s no… you will nev­er have have the real Dune expe­ri­ence if you watch it on the small screen. It’s a movie that has been designed, dreamed, thought, built and done for a full IMAX and widescreen expe­ri­ence, so I will not rec­om­mend watch­ing this movie on a small screen. It’s like a waste of time for me.

Has there been dis­cus­sion around con­tin­u­ing the sto­ry with Herbert’s sub­se­quent nov­els? Or are you mov­ing on to some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent and putting this world behind you once you’ve com­plet­ed your adap­ta­tions of the first novel?

Right now I’ve done half of a movie, and I have to fin­ish for my men­tal san­i­ty, and I think also for the audi­ence we have to fin­ish it. There will be a Dune: Part 2, and I can fore­see mak­ing a Dune 3, which would be ​‘Dune Mes­si­ah’ from 1969. That has a very pow­er­ful ground to make a very impor­tant movie. That’s like three movies. And those movies will take a very long time to make. But that was the ini­tial move­ment, the ini­tial dream: to make a kind of tril­o­gy. After that, we’ll see where we go.