‘Dune’ Director Denis Villenueve Breaks Down a Scene | Vanity Fair

hi my name is daniel love i'm the director of dune and this is note on the scene the test is simple remove your hand from the box and you die nuts in the box pain so this is a very iconic scene taken out of the book paula 3ds the hero of the book will go through some very specific tests called the gum jabar and it's a test that is designed to see if is humanity will overcome his animal impulses defiance in the eyes like his father leave us i deeply love the idea to start a sci-fi movie in the li

brary i think is that that the counterpoint of it is kind of beautiful why a library it says a lot of things about dune's world there's no computers in this world in dunes world ai has been banned there's no more artificial intelligence it's uh june is about triumph of the human spirit patrice vermette designed an insane amount of beautiful carpets in order to bring the idea of ancient culture as you can see the chairs are are be designed so the reverend mother looks almost like a chess figure a

sk greg fraser the cinematographer to bring a level of darkness in the scene that will feel almost like you are like having a nightmare and it's exactly what i had in mind when i read the book at 14 years old this scene happened right at the beginning of the shoot it was one of the first scene i i i shot with timothy rebecca ferguson and of course the great charlotte rampling i loved working with these actors they were absolutely amazing and frankly after that scene i started to breathe because

i knew that i did cast in the right casting leave us you must do everything she's supposed to be in control of her emotions she's almost about to argue almost about to touch him but she cannot allow herself to do that because she's in front of the mother superior her having to brought her own son into a test that could mean his death it shows the tension between the motherhood and being a benedict sister you dismissed my mother in her own house come here kneeling here several things that are hap

pening the beneath it can use something uh called as the voice in order to control the other human's will meaning that here the reverend mother using this voice can channel and go into this paul adriti's subconscious and ask him to cross the room and kneel in front of her i thought at the beginning that it could look silly if timothy had to cross the room like a zombie and it came into my mind to embrace right away from the beginning the point of view of the character and to fall into a very sho

rt period of time in some kind of micro coma like a narcolepsy that will snap and it will just awaken in front of her to create that feeling of narcolepsy we thought that what could be interesting is to make very strong powerful dollies camera movement at the same time switching off the lights of the room i brought this idea in order to create that feeling of disorientation and vertigo and as we are moving the camera we are not touching the focus so it means that the characters are diving into t

he out of focus zone of the image and also i must say it's great editing joe cut it it had to be very very fast so it's really like a blink we feel disorienting and and destabilizing for the audience like if they had been themselves victims of the voice you dismissed my mother in her own house come here the voice itself of the river and mother that what came with a lot of experiments uh i was obsessed by the idea that when you use a voice you you should you should be um channeling ancient voice

inside yourself i love the idea that you will channel the voice of very ancient powerful grandmothers and maybe it says a lot of things about my own family background but it's something that i thought was like very powerful and fresh idea i think it's pretty meaningful how dare you use the voice on me i deeply love the veil the idea was to create a feeling of a distant a religious feeling as well it's a religious congregation and i wanted to to have the feeling that there's something about like

the medieval nuns that do have a feeling of someone that is uh above reality at the end of the day it just felt deeply right charlotte trampling was not supposed to wear the veil through all the scene but quickly i realized that it created a very strong mystery and she just looked definitely more powerful and i decided to shoot the whole scene with it knowing that i had one of the best actress in the world hiding almost her face but i thought it was because i was just seeing her powerful eyes be

hind i thought it was definitely the way to do it put your right hand in the box the box one of the very iconic objects i said to my team it's not an expression of our take on the book i want frankie albert to be on the screen we basically went with the description that was in the book bringing it feeling of something ancient something dangerous something that cast uh shadows inside for me i didn't want to use any visual effects for this scene i really wanted it to be like a mental scene meaning

that it will be a scene that will uh rely into the acting of the actors and that the actors will express the inner pain without having the help of any visual effects your mother made you obey me greg and i tried to create a feeling of oppression and making sure that the room felt closing on paul that is there is no way to escape the reverend mother is designed to make sure that she will look like towering over him the box was designed so it fit exactly so we will feel that the end is kind of tr

apped inside him honestly frankly it's one of my favorite shot of the movie why because it's all there you have the power of charlotte rambling their own mother towing over paul and there will be ear a connection a mental connection where all will experience tremendous amount of pain coming from a nerve induction like hypnotism there's something kind of a sacred quality to the scene the science fiction here is more about the evolution of the human brain and i think it's like it's all about that

this is what june is about i hold at your neck the gum java poison needle instant death here in that specific moment i wanted charlotte to jump on him like a snake it needed to be surprising and and at a superior speed we had a great time designing those needles i wanted them to be ancient we rehearsed which are not trending to have to find that position that was the way i imagine charlotte holding the needle and for me just something very delicate and very powerful like a scorpion right now rea

dy to strike and it's a very feminine position but in the same time it's all beth and i thought that was there it was something saying something interesting about the benediction the feeling of it is it's a closer to a period movie more than a to a sci-fi there's something historical and we try to protect that that the quality in the custom design and and some elements of the set design and definitely in the props too it was important for me to to keep roots into our reality and still uh having

a projection on something that is a bit mad the test is simple remove your hand from the box and you die nuts in the box pain no need to call the guards your mother stands behind that door no one will get past her i love the beginning of the inner conflict going into the dji zika's mind paul's character is understanding that first he has been trapped but that more importantly it has been trapped by his own mother that will create attention that will go through the whole movie after why are you d

oing this an animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape what will you do that's a line that is taken straight from the book there's so so much great lines in in the book uh of course every time i had a question or a doubt i always went back to the book even as i was shooting even when i was editing as we were composing the music as ants as zimmer was doing the music we were always going back to the book reading the book i mean like together i mean it was like the bible it was th

e holy words i mean it was like the way to to stay in contact with with uh frank herbert i have deep deep deep respect and admiration for him he's one of my favorite author and and i wanted to make sure if he had seen this film movie he would feel that love a tiny clue that there's something happening and deep inside that box that we have no idea what what it is but the way samathi moved gently his hand here is like for me that perfect this is exactly the intention that i asked him to do in this

moment just like a tiny tiny suggestion that he's starting to feel something inside that doesn't feel right uh silence i will say uh for the the record samathi was afraid of charlotte's renting for real i must not fear probably the most famous word coming out of the book i must not fear fear is the mind killer it's like a litany the fear john spate and i had the idea that it will be said by the mother outside of of the room that we will go back and forth uh between and the mother and the son to

install this idea that this movie will be about their relationship it was one of the first scene that i did with rebecca ferguson here i asked rebecca to experience like a kind of quiet sheer panic she will slowly by slowly being able to control the emotion for me rebecca ferguson is a strategic various i mean her level of precision is absolutely insane and i got exactly what i needed in order to express what i wanted to do with this thing we hear the sound here that is coming from a combinatio

n of uh and zimmer that design that design for this this moment in the movie one of the more most arrowing and unbearable score ever written for for a scene where you have the impression to be at the dentist brings um here again what's one of my favorite sound of the movie it's actually a anzamer sound i think it's made out of a kind of crazy scream from human voices that are like compressed a billion times and it's like ants drove his team crazy with those sounds so here it's a very very very v

ery important key moment in the scene which is that paul is put under so much pain something deep inside this subconscious that was hidden there will go closer to the surface the presence of the what we call the quizadz aderac a kind of a super being i think that in this scene we have to feel that the reverend mother will love to kill paul but she will not because she will witness something here in this very specific moment we can see in charlotte rampling i hear that she has doubt that she's th

e birth of a fear that he could be maybe the one [Music] the scene becomes uh it was before like a kind of a duel we were like shifting from the river mother to paul uh having them in confrontation mode having them in a dirty double shot meaning that you have the presence of the other character in the foreground try to create a feeling of oppression paul is taking the upper side of the scene coming out from this very specific close-up where we felt that he channeled something that was he was not

expecting i decided to push the camera on ms so we will feel that he's now taking power in the scene [Music] in the book the idea of fire is important paul is supposed to feel that his end is burning i didn't want to have like cgi flames or any suggestions i i went i i went for mental suggestion we designed that burn and ear that was made out of a real hand and we applied on it in cgi like a texture of burnt wood i think it's a pretty uh powerful and striking image that was added later in the e

diting process [Music] here we are hearing the uh the voice of a singer that was a piece written by ann zimmer joe walker and i my editor we had the idea to put it put this voice on top of the scenes the idea was to enhance the feeling of pulse starting to be possessed by some kind of very strong female power and at the same time to have like to create what i will dare to see like a curve of some kind of weird painful orgasm that goes to a limit at one point where the reverend mother will feel t

hat she went too far and she has to stop because she's feeling that the more she's pushing him the more he resists and the more he resists the more something else is strangely happening inside him and that the scene uh is shifting in his in his um advantages here is one of my favorite shots of the movie too it's like this is the end of zendaya playing shani the more i was shooting was in there the more i was inspired and i started to improvise in the desert shots that i knew that i will use late

r in the dream sequences and this shot of a female hand covered with blood holding a chris knife for me was the most powerful poetic way to bring the idea of a holy war an event that paul will fear to the old story the idea that tremendous amount of violence and and and pain will come out of his journey i wanted this vision to be as close to our dream own dream experience i thought that it would be very dramatically interesting to have a character that has awakened visions but doesn't have the k

ey to understand the puzzle enough for the first time i think i did this movie for a single audience member which is me i read the book 40 years ago i deeply fall felt in love with it i was aware that there are millions of hardcore fans of the book are there but i took up on my shoulder to deal with the one that i was the most afraid of which is me i was a teenager that was a totalitarian dreamer i was arrogant i was pretentious i had big dreams it was kind of frightening for me and i would say

that the truth is as any movies these movies are made of victories and failures there's some moments in dune that i knew i was not good enough there's others that i feel that i was very close to the original dream and the gum jabar scene is definitely one that i knew that at 14 years old i would have been okay with that you