"Mad Max: Fury Road"

Tom Hardy and some probably very uncomfortable stuntmen. The movie really kind of IS about his character, maybe, I think. 

Last week an online movie columnist posted an early review of Kent Jones' documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, and in the comments section there was a lot of "they-don't-make-'em'-like-that-anymore" sighing over a perceived ebbing of Hitchcock-influence on contemporary filmmakers. Now, I suppose that if we're strictly talking about a dearth of filmmakers interested in crafting movies that play and feel like Hitchcock movies, or that specifically treat what we refer to as Hitchcockian themes, then maybe, yeah, we don't get a lot of that. 

If, on the other hand, we're talking about filmmakers who combine a virtuosic grasp of technique with an avid passion for testing the elasticity of film language, we aren't doing so badly nowadays. Certainly more than a few of the directors who participate in Jones' documentary—I'm thinking of David Fincher, Wes Anderson, and, yes, Martin Scorsese among the Americans, for instance—fit into that category. (I admire the work of James Gray, yes, but I also think he's less bravura by design than the aforementioned.) Steven Soderbergh, too. Sometimes Steven Spielberg. Sometimes Francis Ford Coppola. Michael Bay even sort of fits into this category, in a "Bad Kirk" kind of way. And there are other examples, old and young, dotting the cinema landscape, all over the world. 

George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road is a really magnificent slab of cinema language at its most effectively elasticized. I've seen it twice within four days, once in 3D, and again in super-big-screen 2D (I prefer the latter, but the 3D wasn't bad), and both times I felt positively transported. The speediness and the suspense of the simultaneous car chases/firefights/hand-to-hand combats and more had, for me, the effect of being suspended; metaphorically holding my breath and waiting to get pulled out and up into a place to exhale. Every shift of cinematic gear accomplished by Miller does that job of manipulations perfectly.

I also love the movie's unapologetically bizarre and grotesque imagery, which draws a straight line all the way back to Lang's Metropolis and provides, as A.O. Scott pointed out in his New York Times review, a bracing rebuke to the bright corporate blandness of the Marvel Universe films. I love the way it lets it images do the talking: showing the lumpy, pasty, tumorous torso of Immortan Joe semi-camouflaged by a ripped and rippled and medal-covered plastic exosuit is a far more vivid way of saying "The Patriarchy is rot" than, you know, saying "The Patriarchy is rot." I love the cleanliness and, yes, the logic of its circular narrative; to anyone who finds the final quarter of the movie exhausting, I'm tempted to drag out the old classic rock bromide "if it's too loud, you're too old," or something. 

Miller and his crew and his money and his actors bring to life an unreal world that, as exhilarating as the action contained within it can be, one is glad to be watching from the remove of a movie theater. As with Alexei German's great Hard To Be A God (the only other 2015 U.S. release I'm as excited to see multiple times as this one), one admires all the performers, down the the last extra, not just for their work but for their seeming ability to withstand the depicted environment. 

As for the movie's much-vaunted feminism, it didn't really register for me as such. Which is one of the most commendable things about it, in a sense. There's never really any question in the movie as to the capabilities of Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa; there's never a moment in which she has to "prove" herself, or "earn" the respect of a male. (While Max's interaction with her is initially adversarial,  any inclination Max might have toward underestimating her is corrected very quickly.) Which isn't to say she doesn't represent an ideal; the scant information the viewer is given about her history makes that plain. Miller doesn't strut his progressive ideology in any way; he doesn't end the movie with some kind of bald statement that, for instance (implied spoiler alert) a matriarchal order is going to make The Citadel a paradise on earth for the previously downtrodden. He presents Max and Furiosa as equals, damaged warriors who manage to help each other out. To say that the movie is more Furiosa's narrative than Max's is maybe a little too easy; true, Miller purposefully sets a scene in which Max goes on his most effective rampage off-screen, but there's also the fact that Max is the only character in the film whose consciousness the viewer is made to inhabit for brief periods (not a comfy place to be, as you might have guessed).

You should see this film soon, and often. 

Comments

[Clayton Sutherland]

My local theaters are only playing this one time daily in 2D (4pm). The rest are all the excessively overpriced (and underlit) 3D showings.

Anyways, this definitely looks to be the action film of the year (if not the decade), so I'm sure I'll see it a few times. Metropolis is one of my all-time-favourite films, so the visual design will be right up my alley.

The new film also seems like more refined cheese than the earlier installments.

[george]

Pitch Perfect 2 is reportedly clobbering Mad Max at the box office.

Maybe it's time to cast Anna Kendrick in a superhero movie. Oops, I forgot -- Marvel/Disney (and the rest of the industry) doesn't think women can open a movie.

Fury Road has the year's best trailer, and the most of the reviews have been all-out raves. I plan to see it ASAP.

[Oliver_C]

After the explicit anti-fundamentalist satire of 'Happy Feet', did anybody really think Miller was going to keep his women in the kitchen?

I was initially ambivalent about going to see this, but anything that pisses off the MRAs can't be all bad. (See also: Michele Bachmann and 'The Lion King'.) The contributions of British underground comix artist Brendan McCarthy seal the deal.

My uncle had a bit part in the second 'Mad Max' too.

[Petey]

I just wish the universal accolades this film is getting would bring about a nationwide theatrical re-release of Babe: Pig in the City...

[george]

"I just wish the universal accolades this film is getting would bring about a nationwide theatrical re-release of Babe: Pig in the City..."

I'd pay to see TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE in a theater again just for Miller's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" segment.

[Jesus Lepe]

Can't wait to see this one. However, I'm concerned it won't have the charm of the original.

[Owain]

As much as I like Tom Hardy, Fury Road does sorely lack the huge star charisma and bona fide insanity of Mel Gibson at its centre.

[James Keepnews]

I was gonna see this ASAP, but now Dr. K has primed me for a double-bill of MM: FR and Hard To Be A God. Maybe round it out with, I don't know, Begotten?

[mw]

After seeing the latest Marvel piece of crap, I berated my son for not carrying out my explicit instruction to whack me upside the head the next time I even think about seeing another stupid super hero movie that I gave him the last time I took him to see a stupid Marvel piece of crap.

Before Mad Max, I told him that if it sucked as much as I feared, he was to whack me upside the head the next time I even considered seeing another stupid summer action blockbuster. It's probably unfortunate, but at least one summer action blockbuster of the future will get my hardly earned $15 bucks, or whatever. I really enjoyed Mad Max.

The chaos of the first act was best and worth the ticket, but there were many other great scenes and no less-than-great scene went on too long. From a camera work perspective, I was impressed with how Miller sometimes backed out and showed the majesty of the wasteland dwarfing the little people rushing headlong to battle down below. And the blue scene with the stilt walkers, although brief, was special.

I also gotta say that my favorite character was the war boy who changed sides. The scene where he expects his blood bag to be loyal to him was priceless.

I agree with the commenter above who misses the charisma of Mel Gibson. Although I don't like him personally, his is the definitive interpretation of Mad Max. Unlike Hardy, you believed Gibson when he yet again tried to escape the comfort of community to again roam the wasteland, a solitary figure.

But then again, these movies (starting with Road Warrior) are much less about Max than they are with how others cope with the loss of civilization and the difficulty of finding water, gasoline and ammunition.

The previous two were more about the green places, although never pictured, than they were about the wasteland. Or, in the parlance of this one, they were about hope with not much thought of redemption. This one did, nicely, complete the circle by merging the one with the other.

[paris]

Assuming you are in New York, what was the super big screen 2D theater?

[partisan]

The one Ivy League film studies professor I know has said that this was one of the most boring movies he's ever seen. And he's actually an Alexei German fan. I suppose my encounter with the original trilogy is an example of the vagaries of movie watching. I saw THE ROAD WARRIOR on VHS in the mid-nineties. I liked it, I suppose, but it didn't have that strong an effect on me. I suppose one reason was that by the time I saw it the dystopian theme had so thoroughly infused itself into popular culture the actual movie itself was redundant. (Yet that wasn't my reaction to JAWS, which I must have seen for the first time around the same time.) I certainly recall being more struck by THE QUIET EARTH, which was made a few years later, and which I saw a few years earlier. I saw the MAD MAX the next decade, and THUNDERDOME sometime this decade, and they were less intriguing.

[Oliver_C]

"The one Ivy League film studies professor I know has said that this was one of the most boring movies he's ever seen."

Like Haig Manoogian said of 'The Third Man', "It's just a thriller."

[Petey]

"I'd pay to see TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE in a theater again just for Miller's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" segment."

But now, just by typing that, you're an accomplice to murder, george. Why, oh why, would you want to be an accomplice to murder?

I'm sure you're thinking, well, I'll get a high-priced lawyer, get acquitted, and take the jury out to party. But it won't play out that way. You'll be convicted, and sent off to do hard time. Why, oh why, george?

(I won't judge, and I'll visit you and smuggle in a DVD of Breaking the Waves to help make the time pass.)

[george]

Petey, I'll be glad to get you a high-priced psychiatrist. You clearly need one.

[Petey]

"Petey, I'll be glad to get you a high-priced psychiatrist. You clearly need one."

Thanks for your generosity. I will await your cashier's check.

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