Dune: Music of the Heart
I really cannot recall the last time I loved a new movie the way I love Dune: Part Two. We sometimes talk about movies that “have something for everyone”; Dune: Part Two has something for every part of me. It appeals mightily to the childlike part of me that loves grand, exciting adventures in fantastical worlds, with spaceships and sword fights and supernatural powers. It appeals with equal force to the adult part of me that loves emotionally complicated dramas, impossible moral dilemmas, and epic, doom-laden tragedies about the spiritual erosion of individuals and societies over time. And, perhaps most importantly and powerfully, it touches my wounded romantic heart, the part of me that holds a great capacity for love and the grief that necessarily accompanies it. It’s a rare thing for a moviegoing experience to give me such a complete kind of satisfaction. I’m quite grateful for it.
One of the many things I love about Dune: Part Two is Hans Zimmer’s score, which takes the harsh, mournful alien soundscape he created for Part One and develops it in a number of striking ways. I am especially intrigued by the progression of one particular musical theme from Part One into Part Two.
In one of the first film’s most unique touches, the theme for the heroic House Atreides is a bagpipe fanfare. Although Zimmer composed a lengthy version of the theme (above), which can be heard in the album “The Dune Sketchbook,” director Denis Villeneuve deploys it sparingly in the finished film. It can be heard only twice: first, when the Atreides family lands on Arrakis, and second, when Gurney Halleck leads the hopelessly outnumbered Atreides troops in a charge against the invading Harkonnens.
In both cases, the music stirs up feelings of honor, nobility, and (we might even say) chivalry. Bagpipes in space – it is a curiously old-fashioned sound, aptly reflecting the curiously old-fashioned ethos of House Atreides, as summarized by Paul’s father Leto: “We are House Atreides. There is no call we do not answer, there is no faith that we betray.”
The first time the Atreides theme plays, the bagpipes create the sense of ceremonial respect and reverence that ought to attend the presence of nobility. At my Anglican Catholic church, bagpipes are played every year on Palm Sunday as we process around the church, remembering Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Given the religious and messianic overtones of Dune, I would not be surprised if Zimmer and Villeneuve had this in mind. Leto, like Christ, is entering a city in triumph (theoretically, to expel the oppression of the Roman-like Harkonnens), but he will soon be put to death in that same city.
The second time the Atreides theme plays – when it becomes clear that the Atreides are the Emperor’s sacrificial lambs – it has a kind of funerary tone, rousing men to fight and face their impending deaths with honor. The effect is not unlike what I feel when I hear Howard Shore’s score for King Théoden’s last charge in Return of the King.
In Part Two, a certain phrase from the Atreides theme (7:02 in the video above), slowed down and played on instruments other than bagpipes (winds, synths, and strings), becomes Paul and Chani’s love theme. It plays throughout the score, but can be heard especially clearly at 2:52 in the track “A Time of Quiet Between the Storms”:
Why might this be? Perhaps Paul and Chani’s love is musically linked to the honorable faithfulness of House Atreides because both stand for “the heart” – and, as such, are both doomed to be removed from a Machiavellian power struggle. As the Emperor tells Paul: “Do you know why I killed him? He was a man who believed in the rules of the heart. But the heart is not meant to rule. In other words, your father was a weak man.”
Just as the Emperor sacrificed Leto for power – even though he “loved him like a son,” according to his daughter Princess Irulan – Paul sacrifices his love for Chani for power, betraying her faith both politically (by taking control of her people) and personally (by taking Irulan’s hand in a politically expedient marriage). In a terribly tragic irony, when Paul makes the Emperor kiss his father’s ring, the ducal seal of House Atreides, he is farther away from his father and the ethos of House Atreides than he has ever been. When Chani leaves, accompanied by a new version of the theme (below), she takes Paul’s heart with her.