Oscar Isaac is Naked on HBO Max AGAIN in Dune
Dune star Oscar Isaac has been making an awful lot of headlines lately for his decision to got full frontal briefly in HBO’s prestige limited series Scenes from a Marriage. It’s made the actor a topic of conversation on The View (even to his face!) and marked perhaps a new era in his career. One that he’s seemingly embracing again in his new film, Dune. Oscar Isaac doesn’t go full frontal but he is totally naked on HBO Max again in the new blockbuster Dune. And honestly? The Dune scene feels more gratuitous, people!
Dune Spoilers Ahead!
Dune on HBO Max is the latest attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s unwieldy sci-fi masterpiece to the screen and it’s the one that comes the closest to capturing the spirit of the novels. Timothée Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, a young nobleman gifted with prophetic dreams and an impressive bloodline. His father, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), is the popular and honorable leader of the planet Caladan. Indeed, it’s his father’s popularity that has gifted House Atreides with the dubious honor of taking control of the desert world Arrakis, the only place in the galaxy where the all-important spice is harvested.
Duke Leto knows that he is walking into a trap by taking Arrakis, but as he bellows early on in the film, there is no call House Atreides won’t answer and no faith they will break. He is forced by his own morals to play a deadly political game that could cost the lives of him, his people, and everyone he loves. In the end, Duke Leto can’t outwit the subterfuge of the Harkonnens. House Atreides is betrayed by one of the most trusted members of their inner circle and Leto is served up to Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) as a trophy.
Now everything I’ve described so far happens in both the book version of Dune and Denis Villeneuve’s new film adaptation. However the moment that an incapacitated Duke Leto finds himself in the Baron’s clutches comes with an extra bit of, uh, dramatic flair in the film. The Duke is stripped naked and bound to a chair.
Villeneuve is not a puerile director, so he shoots Isaac in an artsy way, emphasizing that the Duke’s nudity represents his vulnerability. He’s been stripped down of body shields, ceremonial garb, and even undergarments. There is nothing left to protect him from the Baron (save for a wild poison gas tooth implanted in his mouth).
What’s interesting about this is nudity is kind of employed in the exact opposite way in Dune than it is in Scenes from a Marriage. In the latter, Isaac’s character was almost fully clothed, recovering from a moment of passion with his soon-to-be ex-wife. The nudity there was natural, casual, and yet indicative of the passion suddenly found and then forever lost.
In Dune, Isaac is presented as totally nude, but his private parts are kept covered in shadow. It’s not about sex, passion, romance, or anything like that. It’s a moment of pure political failure. The Duke’s power has been stripped from him along with his clothes. He has been conquered. (Hence why Isaac’s eye and Villeneuve’s camera keep glancing at the bull’s head mounted in the room; that bull killed Duke Leto’s father in a bullfighting ring. In the book, Leto keeps it around as a warning about the price of capricious risk and the ever-encroaching nature of death.)
The weird thing is while the nudity in Scenes from a Marriage feels organic, Duke Leto’s stripped down moment isn’t in the book. It’s never been in a film adaptation yet. It’s metaphoric, sure, but also designed to get you to go, “Oh, wow, Oscar Isaac is naked.” In that way, it felt weirdly more gratuitous to this critic.
Oscar Isaac is one of the best and most interesting actors working today. So much so, he’s now got two nude scenes on HBO Max that are as wildly different as can be.
This post first appeared on Nypost.com
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