Without question, Quebec native Denis Villeneuve has emerged as one of the most important fresh-faced filmmakers of the past decade. He has proven he can bounce between genres, play with budgets of varying sizes, and bring out some of the best performances of some of the biggest stars working in Hollywood today.
Needless to say, I think it’s worth taking a look at how Villeneuve’s work has evolved over the past (nearly) ten years as well as where it might be going in the future. And with the release of the much-anticipated sci-fi epic Dune today, what better time than now to look back at Villeneuve’s English-language filmography? So, without further ado…LET’S GET STARTED! Prisoners (2013) While it was not the first Villeneuve film that I watched, his 2013 crime drama Prisoners has stuck with me ever since I watched it. As this film seems to be lesser known by many, the story kicks off when the daughters of Keller and Grace Dover (Hugh Jackman, Maria Bello) and Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard, Viola Davis) are kidnapped in their rural Pennsylvania town. While the search for the girls is taken up by Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), Keller and Franklin are driven by their grief and heartache to resort to morally questionable measures to discover the truth about their daughters’ abduction. There is little for me to complain about Prisoners. First and foremost, Villeneuve’s direction of the screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski (The Red Road, Raised by Wolves) expertly crafts tension from start to finish that never exhausts but always captivates and invests the audience in the story. While many thrillers utilize the subplot of the victims’ loved ones seeking out retribution in their own ways, Villeneuve the visceral pain of Jackman and Howard’s characters front and center in this thriller and thus subverts expectations for what a crime movie like this can be. But this movie is not for the faint of heart. Prisoners focuses so much on the lengths at which these girls’ fathers (particularly Keller) will go to supplant their own guilt and shame. Simply put, they take out their built-up anger and frustration with the legal process on the prime suspect Alex (Paul Dano), a mentally-disturbed and sheltered young man whose self-evident regressed intelligence forces the audience to sympathize and pity him when he is being subjected to Keller’s physical and emotional abuse. Needless to say, the character work being done here is incredible. While Gyllenhaal sufficiently plays the determined and persistent detective that is ever just one step behind the perpetrator, Jackman excels in this role as a grief-stricken man whose rage breaks him to the point of losing much of his humanity (even though he is doing all of his inexcusable acts in the name of love for his child). Also, Dano shines here despite not being the protagonist and whose backstory we only get in snippets for much of the runtime (only one example of his many great performances in films like There Will Be Blood, 12 Years a Slave, and Swiss Army Man). I also appreciated the grounded emotional turmoil of Howard and Davis as they deal with Franklin’s complicity in Keller’s despicable treatment of Alex. While I will avoid spoiling the meat of the mystery central to the plot of Prisoners, I will only mention that I appreciate the symbolic and metaphorical significance of mazes in the story. Simply put, I took the imagery of the maze as representing the chaotic nature of experiencing grief and how it can put us on greatly diverging paths depending on the choices we make and who we are. All in all, this movie is a great English-language debut for Villeneuve and remains some of the best work he’s done as a director. If anyone is hesitant about taking a chance on Prisoners out of fear that it’ll be too dark or gritty for your taste, please trust me that it’ll be worth the time spent watching the mystery unravel. Enemy (2014) It seems that it was Villeneuve working with Jake Gyllenhaal on his psychological drama/character study Enemy that convinced him to include him as a main character in Prisoners. Whereas Gyllenhaal’s character is more relevant to the plot in the latter, the former puts him front and center in the dual role of a movie that attempts to examine the complexities of our subconscious to mixed results. To be clear, I was engaged with the first two acts of Enemy which focus on college professor Adam Bell discovering the existence of his doppelganger Anthony Claire, an actor, and becoming increasingly obsessed with finding him. I found Villeneuve dissecting the mind of a man’s self-ignorant narcissism in an effort to find himself in the world mildly entertaining and wanted to see where the story went. However, as soon as Adam and Anthony meet each other face to face for the first time, Enemy quickly enters a downward spiral into some of Villeneuve’s most self-indulgent directorial work that does not take long at all to turn me off to the movie entirely. Much of this has to do with the respectable subtlety that shrouded the moral compasses of Gyllenhaal’s characters evaporating by the time the third act is in full swing. Furthermore, any and all visual subtlety goes out the window in the last twenty minutes to the point where Villeneuve almost completely loses me in his effort to expose the heart of human nature and personality. Ultimately, I found Enemy to be more disappointing and anti-climactic than outright bad. Unless you’re a Villeneuve completionist, I recommend skipping this one entirely. Sicario (2015) This was the first film by Villeneuve that I saw, at which point I was unfamiliar with his work and style. In other words, I watched Sicario as a crime thriller set on the U.S.-Mexico border rather than as a Villeneuve film. For context, this is also the first in the spiritual “Frontier Trilogy” written by Sons of Anarchy alumnus Taylor Sheridan (for my thoughts on the other two films in this trilogy, Hell or High Water and Wind River, click here). While this is my least favorite of Sheridan’s first three movies, I still found this to be a pretty strong screenplay for him that would only be surpassed by his next two Hollywood ventures. This ultimately gets to the heart of my feelings about Sicario. Unlike Enemy, I found it to be a well-made movie in virtually every way. I particularly appreciated the three lead performances, such as the straight-arrow FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and her morally complex foil and CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). Despite her diminished physicality standing next to Brolin, Blunt holds her own in multiple scenes from intense action sequences to passionate and confrontational, dialogue-heavy scenes. Arguably, however, the stand-out actor in Sicario is Benicio del Toro as the vengeful Mexican assassin Alejandro Gillick whose story I found to be the most sympathy-inducing of any of the main characters. In addition to the performances, the cinematography by veteran artist and genius Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption, True Grit, Skyfall, 1917) is breathtaking from the close-ups capturing the intensity of the action scenes to the scenic, picturesque shots of Mexico’s arid deserts. The film’s gunplay and action is incredibly well done by everyone involved. With all of these elements combined, the film is a solid entry to the neo-Western genre from the last decade (but not one of my personal favorites). Unfortunately, Sicario just didn’t click for me. In this sense, it’s an example of a movie that I think is well made but just did not grab me in the way that I hoped it would. But, don’t take my word full force; check out Sicario and judge for yourself if it holds up as one of Villeneuve’s best movies. Arrival (2016) I had very little expectations going into watching the 2016 sci-fi drama Arrival except that it was a Villeneuve film (and thus I was hopeful that it would be good). What I did not expect was for it to be as good as it was. Specifically, I did not think that I’d enjoy Villeneuve’s unique first venture into the science-fiction genre as much as I did. Arrival tells the story of an alien “invasion” in which linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is tasked by U.S. Army Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to establish lines of communication with some of the extraterrestrials (referred to as “heptapods”) who have landed in Montana. With the help of physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), Louise gradually develops an intimate connection with the heptapods that is threatened and upended by the increasing impatience of the U.S. military and governments around the world who want nothing more than to treat these creatures as invaders and respond in kind. What I genuinely appreciate about Arrival is that it stands out alongside many of the best sci-fi flicks which (in my humble opinion) rely too heavily on CG-heavy action sequences (either on land or in space) and not enough on smart social and political commentary that makes the audience think. In many ways, this film harkens back to the sensibilities of sci-fi in films from the 1950s such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and Invasion of the Body Snatchers by wrestling with the question “What would happen if aliens came to Earth?” in a believable and grounded manner. To be clear, I thoroughly enjoy the less cerebral alien invasion movies (lookin’ at you, Independence Day!) for their sheer entertainment value. However, Villeneuve in Arrival pulls off a movie about the social science behind linguistics in a way that is both entertaining and intellectually engaging. If I have one major complaint about Arrival, it certainly is the lack of substantive attention paid to Louise’s backstory as a mother who has lost a child. While the storytelling is by no means abysmal, the third-act reveal involving Louise’s past simply felt undeveloped and therefore not very satisfying. But this is ultimately a minor critique in the face of what is a solid 2010s sci-fi movie that is well worth your time even if you’re not a fan of Villeneuve’s other works. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) If Arrival was an unexpected surprise from Villeneuve for me, then watching 2017’s Blade Runner 2049—his sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic—was a stunning upset for me in the best ways. As someone who was bored and underwhelmed during both of my viewings of the original Blade Runner, I expected to enjoy every little about Villeneuve’s follow-up. Fortunately, I was proven dead wrong. Yes, the style and production design of Blade Runner 2049 unquestionably pays homage to Scott’s original movie. But it does so by modernizing many of the world-building elements while retaining the best of that dystopian world for modern audiences. By doing so, Villeneuve pulls off a masterful balancing act of paying respect to the past while using his sensibilities with regards to cinematography and pacing to engage someone like myself who found few likeable elements of 1982’s Blade Runner. For me, the character journey of android and blade runner K (Ryan Gosling) is what makes Blade Runner 2049 so good. Gosling somehow pulls off another seemingly impossible balancing act which entails humanizing an android through his romantic attachments to his holographic AI Joi (Ana de Armas) while also never letting the character’s inhumanity escape from the audience’s minds. Perhaps only bested by his role in Drive, this is (in my humble opinion) Gosling’s best performance to date simply due to the well-crafted subtlety he brings to K. Which brings me to the shadow hanging over this film: Harrison Ford as elder blade runner Rick Deckard. Before going into Blade Runner 2049, I was supremely concerned that Ford would come into the plot too early and overshadow anything else happening on screen. Not only did Villeneuve hold back introducing Ford into K’s story until the tail end of the second act (approximately two hours into the runtime), but I also never felt Ford’s story during the end of the film squash my love of and investment in K. Obviously, there have been other attempts to bring Ford’s most iconic characters back to the big screen in recent decades (with mixed results). While I love how Han Solo was used in J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens, I must admit that Villeneuve probably understood how best to use Ford’s screen presence in a way that serves the story as opposed to the diehard Blade Runner fans (without ever blatantly insulting the fans’ love for Deckard and the original film). I could easily devote an entire blog to the performances in this film alone, but for the sake of being succinct I shall save that for a potential future post. Needless to say, Blade Runner 2049 is well worth your time. Not only is it my personal favorite film from Villeneuve, but it stands up as one of the best movies of this century. Prove me wrong. 😊 Dune (2021) [NOTE: This blog contains spoilers for “Dune.” You have been warned.] For full transparency, I have never read Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel “Dune” and am only vaguely familiar with the source material of Villeneuve’s latest sci-fi epic. There were only three elements of the plot that I knew beforehand: the fate of one of the characters, the importance of “spice,” and the existence of giant sandworms. That’s about as blind as you can be going into Dune, but if you’re willing to be swept away on an epic cinematic journey then I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy this film in spite of its drawbacks. Easily my favorite thing about Dune is the amount of credit that it gives to its audience for being able to follow an incredibly complex plot. Set in the far-future in an intergalactic feudal system where many of the Great Houses, led by characters such as Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), are vying for control of the priceless commodity “spice” on the desert planet of Arrakis. The film’s heart comes from the hero’s journey that follows Leto’s inquisitive but inexperienced son Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) who must overcome his father’s shadow, face the challenges posed by his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and her connections to the Bene Gesserit, and step into his own as the chosen liberator of the Arrakis natives, the Fremen. That’s about the simplest plot synopsis that I can give of this film, so you won’t be surprised that the first hour or so is laden with character-oriented exposition and extensive world-building. While this is (in my humble opinion) one of Dune’s biggest flaws, it is necessary to ensure that the audience is satisfied with the payoffs, betrayals, and emotional beats in the rest of the movie by understanding the stakes in terms of what things matter and why they matter. So, if you can sit through this slow-burn of a first act I think that the other two acts are a pretty solid payoff to this first part of an epic sci-fi story. Which gets to what will be the movie’s biggest drawback: it is the first half of a larger story. Sometimes, this can work (lookin’ at you, Infinity War!) where the beginning of an epic journey that spans multiple films can be self-contained enough that one can follow along and enjoy it while also teeing up bigger plot threads and important character moments for the next film. Unfortunately, it remains unofficial as of the writing of this blog post whether or not “Part Two” is greenlit. So, for now, we have an incomplete story in Dune. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by how much this movie holds up thematically as a self-contained “hero’s fall/hero’s rise” for Paul. While the next part will almost certainly offer up a more satisfying story, Paul confronting the political and spiritual realities of his destiny and the stakes of House Atreides’ survival on Arrakis was a thoroughly enjoyable story to tell. On a technical level, Dune is essentially flawless. It is shot beautifully (a staple of Villeneuve’s work at this point), and the costume and production design expertly establish the diverse worlds of Herbert’s universe (from the Scottish Highlands vibe of Caladan, the homework of House Atreides, to the desert landscape of Arrakis itself). Furthermore, Hans Zimmer’s score is incredibly effective at enhancing the more emotionally heightened character moments like the death of Duncan Idaho (Jason Mamoa) that could have fallen flat otherwise. Of course, many of the actors brought their skills and craft to pull off the human side of this story as well. I particularly appreciated the subtly uncertain vibe of Isaac’s Duke Leto Atreides, the grounded moral complexity of Ferguson’s Lady Jessica, and Skarsgård’s domineering, intimidating presence as Baron Harkonnen. In terms of the plot, my only real criticism is the subplot about Paul’s development of “The Voice” and his connections to his mother through the “Bene Gesserit.” While I do hope that this is fleshed out in the potential sequel, I’m also unsure if I care enough about this mystic aspect of the story to want to see more. At the end of the day, however, I liked Dune and want a sequel that gives us the conclusion to Paul’s hero’s journey that we deserve. With all that being said, here is my ranking of the films of Denis Villeneuve:
What is your favorite Denis Villeneuve film? Are you excited for where his filmmaking career goes in the future? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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