denis villeneuve builds a character that
must betray her own motherly instincts
we realize that she is in conflict she
has a dilemma
welcome back to the director's toolbox
my name is robert mcfarlane and i'm a
little blah blah
welcome back to the director's toolbox
my name is rob mcfarland and i'm a
director just like you on this channel i
take your favorite film and tv analyze
it and tell you just how those directors
have done it we're going to take a look
at the brilliant dune if you haven't
gone to see it go watch it now and we're
going to be specifically looking at the
mother's journey why that is so
incredibly important in the overall
success of the film because i believe it
is the heart and soul of the conflict of
this film oh wake up
in the scene we know something's wrong
the mother has just woken up paul in the
middle
of the night and told him to put some
clothes on when the mother approaches
paul
whilst he's asleep she takes a deep
nervous breath before waking him up and
then in the corridor just before she's
about to take her son into the room she
uses sign language instead of telling
the doctor and son
out loud so she must know that what's
about to happen must be kept secret
again alerting us that something is
wrong so we now know that this is a
dangerous situation for paul to be in
then once they're in the room we see her
almost become
small shrink in the presence of this
woman in the room paul on the other hand
doesn't seem to understand but he does
seem to understand that something is
wrong he lands just behind her shoulder
this is actually a protective instinct
if you look at the mother she is nervous
she's looking down whereas paul is
looking straight at this mysterious
figure in the middle of the room he just
doesn't know letting us know again the
mother knows exactly what is about to
happen leave us
you must do everything
paul now says you dismiss my mother in
her own house letting us know that he
still thinks his mother
is
his mother and then we start the bomb
jagar scene where paul starts to be
subjected to a form of torture and we
immediately cut to the mother outside
when this torture starts we don't hold
on paul we are invited into the mother's
journey as well we could have stayed in
there until the end of this trial and
then see the mother's relief instead we
are invited into her emotional journey
this is how i believe deniva luke kept
us empathizing with the mother's journey
that we realize that she isn't a evil
twisted being wanting to send her son to
his doom
we realize that she is in conflict she
has a dilemma
this is a really interesting shot size
normally when we go to a mid shot we go
to roughly just above the hips but
actually they kept it slightly wider
than that keeping her smaller in the
frame in fact she looks thin as a rake
they chose to shoot her almost in
profile making her even smaller in frame
this moment is so powerful denis
valeneuve has held off from doing a
match cut between the mother and son
until the moment the mother says fear is
the mind killer
they're both inhabiting the same space
in the frame still both looking frame
left to frame right but this gives us
yet an even stronger sense that they are
on the same side that we feel their
connection through the cutting fear
is the little death that brings
obliteration i believe the key to this
entire set of creative choices
is that denis villeneuve has created a
character with two incredibly powerful
desires which directly conflict with one
another they are both centered around
paul
and by staying true
to both of her desires
denivel knows created a character with a
deep internal conflict that we can all
empathize with
being both a mother and a bena jesuit
has created an incredibly watchable
character so by understanding the deep
internal conflict that the mother has
but also understanding that you don't
want the audience to hate this character
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this creates a set of rules that denis
valenos
followed to come up with the creative
choices to reveal the mother's journey
the way he's revealed it to show us the
story elements that we have seen
so we do feel that conflict within her
but also we empathize with her
all the way to the end of the film