The breathtaking locations are only one of the many ingredients that helped make the second part of Denis Villeneuve’s work one of the best films of the last two decades, in my opinion. The location of Dune in Italy is also unusual and beautiful, one of those places that I discovered just because of the film.
This world is beyond cruelty.
Paul Atreides
Dune – Part 2 first shows the Emperor’s daughter – Princess Irulan (a name known only to readers of the book, because it is never said in the film) – intent on writing her memoirs, while on Arrakis Paul Atreides and his pregnant mother Jessica reach Sietch Tabr. Here they are accused by some Fremen of being spies, while Stilgar – the Naib, the leader of Sietch – and others see in Paul, and in their arrival, signs of the prophecy according to which a mother and child from the “Outer World” will bring prosperity to Arrakis.
The Reverend Mother of the Sietch is dying, so Stilgar suggests that Jessica, Bene Gesserit herself, should take her place. To do so, Jessica will have to drink the Water of Life, a fatal poison for untrained men and women. Jessica, taking advantage of her Bene Gesserit training, manages to transmute the poison and survive, inheriting the memories of all the past Reverend Mothers. The liquid also prematurely awakens the mind of her unborn daughter, Alia, allowing Jessica to communicate with her. The two decide to focus on convincing the more skeptical Northern Fremen of the truth of the Prophecy. Many however, including Chani and her friend Shishakli, believe that the prophecy was made up to control the Fremen, but even they begin to respect Paul after he declares that he only wants to fight alongside the Fremen, and has no interest in ruling them.
Paul becomes immersed in Fremen’s culture, learning their customs, traditions, and desert survival, riding worms and raiding against the Harkonnen. He becomes a Fedaykin fighter alongside Chani, with whom he falls in love, reciprocates. He adopts the Fremen names “Usul” and “Muad’Dib,” officially becoming one of them.
Meanwhile, in Arrakeen, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen replaces the nephew Rabban, unable to stop the Fremen, as ruler of Arrakis with his younger nephew Feyd-Rautha, more cunning and psychopathic. The Bene Gesserit also make him part of their schemes, sending Lady Margot Fenring to assess Feyd-Rautha as a potential Kwisatz Haderach and secure his genetic descendants. In the meantime, Jessica travels south to join the fundamentalist Fremen who firmly believe in the prophecy. Paul remains in the north, fearing that his visions of an apocalyptic holy war will come true if he goes south as the messiah. During another raid against the Harkonnen, Paul finds Gurney Halleck, who leads him to the hidden atomic reserve of House Atreides. Feyd-Rautha unleashes a devastating attack on the northern Fremen, destroying Sietch Tabr, killing Shishakli, and forcing Paul and the survivors to travel south where the Fremen leaders are meeting. Upon arrival, forced by his mother, Paul drinks the Water of Life and falls into a coma but Chani saves him. Now Paul, the real Kwisatz Haderach, also possesses clairvoyance through space and time. He sees an adult Alia on Arrakis filled with water and, of all possible futures, a single path to victory.
As I said, the film succeeds in everything: cast, music, cinematography, screenplay, choice of locations and, most difficult of all, even in reproducing the setting of the book in the best possible way, a goal that very few directors managed to reach. Even Steven Spielberg was impressed:
«This is truly a visual epic, and it’s also filled with deeply, deeply drawn characters. Yet the dialogue is very sparse when you look at it proportionately to the running time of the film. It’s such cinema. The shots are so painterly, yet there’s not an angle or single setup that’s pretentious… you have made one of the most brilliant science fiction films I have ever seen.
There is such a yearning for water in this movie. For all the sand you have in this film, it’s really about water — the sacred waters that you are yearning for; green meadows and the blue water of life. You filmed the desert to resemble an ocean, a sea. The sand worms were like sea serpents and that scene surfing the sand worm is one of the greatest things I have ever seen, ever. But you made the desert look like a liquid.
Let me start by saying there are filmmakers who are the builders of worlds. It’s not a long list and we know who a lot of them are. Starting with [Georges] Méliès and Disney and Kubrick, George Lucas. Ray Harryhausen I include in that list. Fellini built his own worlds. Tim Burton. Obviously Wes Anderson, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, Guillermo del Toro. The list goes on but it’s not that long of a list, and I deeply, fervently believe that you are one of its newest members.»
With a global box office of $712 million – $82 million in its debut alone – it is Timothée Chalamet’s highest-grossing film ever and made Warner Bros., along with the grosses of Godzilla x Kong – The New Empire, and the first studio to earn $1 billion at the Box Office in 2024.
It is considered one of the greatest science fiction films ever made and has been called “Pure Cinema” by James Cameron.
As Spielberg mentioned, Villeneuve managed to produce a masterpiece by building an entire world. As Tolkien did for Elvish, he invented an entire language: Chakobsa, the language of the Fremen, really spoken by the actors on the set – which is derived from Arabic and also contains parts of French, Greek, Romani and Slavonic, as well as some alterations of Sanskrit and Hebrew, such as the word “Kwisatz Haderach” referring to the Hebrew Kefitzat Haderech, meaning ‘a miraculous journey between two distant places in a short time’.
A bit of trivia: Villeneuve has included a small homage to David Lynch, director of Dune (1984), in the film: at the end of Dune – Part 2, Baron Harkonnen’s corpse is shown and the camera closely frames his ear-swarming with ants. It is a reference to Lynch’s Blue Velvet, in which Jeffrey Beaumont finds a severed human ear swarming with ants.
Trivia about the film’s production and locations
But let’s talk about locations.
For this second film, Villeneuve strongly wanted all new locations that were never used in the first film. In an interview, he said: “One of my main concerns was making sure that the audience did not feel a sense of déjà vu. I wanted to find new locations, and all new sets; we didn’t go back to where we left the characters in Part One. So Patrice Vermette (the set designer) had to design new vehicles, new environments… he was deeply inspired. What was beautiful from Part One is that everybody knew the boundaries, the colour palette, so we didn’t have to redefine those elements, just use the very specific language that had been tested,. And Patrice was more creative than ever and really blew my mind with what he brought to the movie. One of my favorite sets was the Cave of Birds, it is meant to be carved in rocks where birds are nesting. It represented a kind of Fremen shelter… very poetic and one of the most beautiful sets.”
The movie was shot in Budapest, Abu Dhabi, Jordan, Namibia (here only Anya Taylor Joy’s cameo, shot separately by a special production unit) and Italy. Patrick McCormick, producer, commented, “I don’t know what other word to use to describe the excitement of being in those places. In Jordan, it seemed to me that each of those rock formations was a kind of independent work of art, sculpted by nature, rivaling medieval or Renaissance cathedrals all over Europe. We were in a place called Al Siq near Wadi Araba, a little further than our usual territory, which was Wadi Rum, and it is another amazing place, with rock formations and a canyon that are simply majestic. Photogenic and powerful. That’s all I can think of. So lucky to have been there, really.”
And in Jordan, the director and Greig Fraser, the cinematographer, often chose desert locations based on specific sand dunes with a certain shape that Villeneuve wanted or the perfect orientation of
the sun that Fraser needed. To keep the desert vistas as pristine as possible, they had to maintain strict discipline with the crew, making them walk in narrow corridors so as not to disturb the sand with footprints before filming. There was even a special “Sand Team” that swept the sand to clear the footprints for the next morning.
Right here in the middle of the Jordanian desert, the crew had to build nearly 30 kilometers of new road to transport all the equipment. To shoot the most romantic scenes, they took advantage of the
so-called Golden Hour, so they had to go as fast as possible having just one hour a day to film those.
The worm ride scene, on the other hand, was the one that made Greig Fraser think “How the heck are we going to do that?” after reading it the first time. Eventually, it took 44 days and a 28-by-7-meter platform on which Chamalet had to work with individual takes of 20 to 30 minutes each.
A curiosity about the desert: the opening scene in which the Fremen ambush a Harkonnen squadron, was shot on October 25, 2022, taking advantage of the light of a real solar eclipse, the very one seen in the film.
The filming location of Dune – Part 2, in Italy: the Brion Memorial
In Italy, the crew only stayed two days to shoot the preliminary shots in the beautiful Brion Memorial, at Altivole in the province of Treviso (to be precise, in San Vito, a burg of Altivole).
On this location for Dune – Part Two in Italy, producer Tanya Lapointe revealed: “It was the inspiration for most of the Caladan architecture in the first film, but we never shot there. For the second film, Patrice Vermette contacted the Brion family and asked, ‘Would it be possible to shoot on location?’ They had always said no: no other film had been shot there, but as it happens, the Brion family had read Frank Herbert’s Dune and loved the film directed by Denis Villeneuve, so they permitted us. The only thing we changed was adding some furniture to create Princess Irulan’s office. Otherwise, it was so beautiful that there was nothing to do.”
Donated to FAI (Italian national trust fund) by Ennio and Donatella Brion in 2022 – after being restored to its original beauty – it is an architectural masterpiece inspired by absolute love, created by mixing modernism, Venetian art and Eastern philosophies. A work in which Carlo Scarpa – among the greatest artists and architects of the century – condensed all his knowledge. It was Onorina Tomasin, wife of Giuseppe Brion (founders of the Brionvega brand), who commissioned the work from Scarpa in 1969, to remember her late husband. The architect agreed on one condition: Onorina had to swear that she would never marry again and that Giuseppe would remain her one true love. Onorina agreed without hesitation, and so, in 1970, Scarpa began to work on the memorial, which is a hymn to true love that is achieved by first going through self-knowledge.
The project engaged Scarpa until 1978, when he died falling down the stairs while in Sendai, Japan. But he was so attached to the Memorial that he even designated it as his personal burial place.
It is from the entrance to the small cemetery that a tour – free if unguided – of the complex begins. One passes through a small path leading to a large weeping willow tree that embraces the entrance to the Memorial, immediately beyond which awaits the most iconic point of the entire complex: the two intertwined circles representing the Ying and the Yang, the opposites that meet and merge into one entity and soul.
From here one can go right or left, an invitation to get lost and then find oneself again.
If you go right, you reach a side of the work that is very reminiscent of Scarpa’s Eastern thought: the Zen Garden, resting on water, symbolizing rebirth. A pavilion dedicated to meditation (it is also clearly seen in a scene in the film when the Reverend Mother talks to Princess Irulan and Lady Margot Fenring) surrounded by water lilies.
Instead, going to the left, a pathway leads to the arcosolium, decorated with colorful mosaics, where the tombs of Joseph and Honorine are located, carved from a single block of marble with the couple’s names inlaid in ebony and ivory.
Continuing further you can reach the small building that houses the chapel inspired by Japanese tea rooms and the graves of the Brion relatives. In the movie, it is Princess Irulan’s study, where she is seen recording her memoirs. Cuts and inlays are studied to perfection to make light the protagonist and create striking effects. Every detail is attended to perfection and handcrafted, custom-made. A perfect blend of avant-garde and oriental traditions that manage to create an isolated harmony overall. The architecture throughout seems to have been created especially for Herbert’s saga, and it is easy to see why Tanya Lapointe felt so inspired for Caladan by this place.
As you leave the chapel, you reach another small garden with pools of water, from which you can view the complex from a different angle and reflect on the final revelation Scarpa gives us: love is the opposite of death, the only thing capable of surviving it.
Useful info:
Access to the Memorial without a guided tour is free.
Guided tour
February 23 to December 22, 2024, reservations are required.
- FAI members: € 5
- Full price: € 12
- Reduced (6-18 years old) and students (19-25 years old): € 7
- Children up to 5 years of age: free admission
Open to the public with the following opening hours:
Friday, Feb. 23 to Thursday, Oct. 31
Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday, November 02 to Sunday, December 01
Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Friday, December 6 through Sunday, December 22
Friday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
