It’s so giddy, Guadagnino doesn’t bother telling us who won the game, which holds the lives and careers of all three people at stake. What matters is that two pals who were doing anything but having fun are finally reconnected. Guadagnino frames this also with the most kinetic and inventive camera placements we have ever seen on a tennis court, including a shot of Art and Pat standing atop a glassy frame as they trade racket swings above us like Greek gods passing a lightning bolt. It’s electric. – David Crow
Chani Unbowed in Dune: Part Two
To continue the year of the Zendaya dominance, she enjoyed a more active part in defining the bitter stakes of Dune: Part Two’s finale, and all because of what her character would not do. During the climax of Denis Villeneuve’s triumphant adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, the character of Chani (Zendaya) has been betrayed by the man she loved, humiliated before all of her community of Fremen, and finally asked to bend the knee and honor Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), her lover who is now taking another woman, the Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), as wife.
In the novel, Chani is an underwritten character who is asked to sit back and accept this indignity with a smile, because “history will remember you better.” That’s more or less the last line of the book; cold comfort sold as a happy ending. Yet from the beginning of Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation, the Canadian filmmaker has been interested in drawing out the tragic subtext of the material that Herbert didn’t get around to clarifying until his sequel Dune Messiah. That includes by being blunt about how Paul Atreides’ ascent as the new emperor of the Imperium is not a victory. It’s a nightmare, right down to his parting final words to his fanatical followers: “Send [my enemies] to paradise.”
Before that moment comes, however, Paul has claimed his throne by slaughtering his cousin in an epic duel. As a consequence, an old and enfeebled ruler (Christopher Walken) reluctantly bends the knee, as does every one of his courtiers, plus Paul’s Fremen disciples. The only two who do not bow are Irulan, the daughter of the now deposed older emperor, as well as Paul’s betrothed, and Chani. The three stand quietly in a state of detente and ambiguity, making eye contact in a crimson sunset and above a sea of enablers and followers sinking toward the earth. It crystalizes a triangle that will define the next movie, as well as the heavy cost of Paul’s thirst for vengeance. He gives up the life he loved with Chani for an unknown but likely dark future with a woman who surely does not love him. It gives the film’s intergalactic stakes an intimate, wordless tragedy that cuts far deeper. – DC
Defying Gravity in Wicked
Love it or hate it, Wicked is only half of the mega-musical from which it is adapted. Whereas the 21-year-old stage show ends its story after 145 minutes, Jon M. Chu’s new screen version only gets to the Act One finale inside of roughly the same amount of time. Still, if one is going to cut a Broadway musical in half, you cannot have a better climax than “Defying Gravity.” In fact, Chu and star Cynthia Erivo somehow make the iconic musical moment even better on the screen.
While “Defying Gravity” will forever be a showstopper on the stage, with outsider Elphaba finding her self-actualization as the Wicked Witch of the West by flying above the boards, the moment takes on a more dire and thereby cathartically empowering bent in the film. This is partially because of the spectacle afforded by big budget Hollywood moviemaking, with Elphie not just flying a few feet in the air but diving and rising above the highest sparkling tower in the Emerald City. Yet how the movie frames the moment has new gravitas as well.
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