In a summer
crammed full of prequels, sequels and revisits, Mad Max was possibly one of the
oldest revists on the books. To balance this age factor (and thus to be able to
successfully compete with the raging war of the blockbusters that is the summer
cinema scene at the moment) Mad Max cranked up the visuals. I am not a person
who sets great store by what a film looks like. I mean, it is important –
cinema being a visual medium and all – but it is definitely not the end all and
be all for me. And yet, from the moment I saw the trailer I was hooked. The
story was great, what it does for feminist cinema is nothing short of amazing
(we will get to that in a second) but I just want to open this review with my
initial reaction – So shiny! So chrome! – to quote the film. The expectation
factor will have helped no doubt but the film pretty much works on your adrenal
glands from the get go, catapulting you into a glorious, meticulously
constructed universe that has you gripping the armrests from the get go and
does not let you go until the bitter end 2 hours later.
Now the
interesting – and difficult – thing about Mad Max is that yes, it basically is
a 2 hour long car chase. In a universe where all natural resources are depleted
and the water wars have all but annihilated humanity, those control the
resources left – water, gasoline, bullets – reign, and they reign supreme. It
is a harsh world where dog eats dog and
civilisation as we know it is all but a distant fairy tale from the ancients. Max
Rockatansky used to be a cop. He used to take pride in upholding the law, he is
now reduced to riding through the wastelands that are now the world, battling
his demons and trying to survive. On the road he comes across Imperator Furiosa
the once right hand woman of Warlord Immortan Joe who has gone renegade and is
trying to reach her childhood home. The trouble is, she has with her some “things”
that Immortan Joe values, and he will stop at absolutely nothing to get them
back. The chase is truly on – and Max is truly caught up in the middle of it
all…
Ok so first
and foremost the film looks glorious. It is a true blue visual extravaganza.
Even for the most cynical among you (and that would be me) the films visuals
alone more than justify seeing it on the biggest screen your budget will allow
for. The experience of being grabbed by
the gut and being dragged willy nilly into this truly insane world is a must
for any action lover. The only slight point I may make is that yes, it is
slightly too long. Around the two hour mark I did begin to fidget and check my
watch. This however, would have been balanced out by making the breaks in
between the hardcore chase sequences a little longer. I have reasonable stamina
in these matters but by the end of the second hour I was quite jittery from the
sheer excess of action. But like I said, that is a side effect. Mad Max Fury
Road is a visual spectacle well worth seeing.
Let us now
put this fact to one side. It is, so to speak, a given circumstance. Let us
move onto the other big discussion of the film – Charlize Theron and the
feminism of Mad Max. Furiosa is not your average action hero. She is strong
willed, bad-ass and willing to take on the world, but she is, you will have
noticed, a she. Not only is she a woman – and truly realistic, fully formed
female action heroes are rare enough in themselves – she is a disabled action
hero. And both facts are completely incidental. In this world the fact that
Furiosa is a woman or that she has lost one arm is neither here nor there. In
fact this world is full of strong female characters who can easily hold their
own against the men. There is, of course the matter of the wives – Furiosas
cargo. Her main aim is to escape to her childhood home – the green place – and
to take the five women Immortan Joe uses as breeders with her. When Max
questions her about her motives, she replies – redemption. Well, one does not
rise to the rank of Imperator without breaking a few eggs, so to speak. But
this also constructs her as active, an author of her own destiny who makes her
own decisions. And the wives, while typically beautiful and dressed, well,
exactly as you would imagine they would be, they are not by any stretch of the
imagination typical damsels in distress. They have their own distinct characters
and storylines and they are as fully formed as secondary characters can be.
They are beautiful women – and yet they are not defined solely by this fact.
And all this in a hard hitting action film, where historically women are either
chronically unable to cope with the action on various levels (they either need
to be rescued or, like Clare in the latest box office wonder Jurassic World run
around with perfect hair and high heels being very bad at trying to be active).If
this is not a giant leap forward, I honestly don’t know what is.
And this is
not the only deep part of the film. Yes, there is very little in the way of complex
plotlines to get our teeth into but there is a lot of emotional material in
there if you look. One theme that comes up repeatedly is disenchantment
(spoilers upcoming, look away now if you are sensitive!). One of the most
potent scenes is when Furiosa realises that the childhood home she had based
her redemption and salvation on has been completely destroyed. The last dream
she had, the last hope that nourished her has been destroyed completely. The
same goes for Nux the warboy who goes through a slow awakening, realising that
the legends of Valhalla spun by Immortan Joe are nothing more than lies meant
to keep him and all around him in total submission. In both cases, the characters reel from having
their very sense of reality, truth and sense of the world destroyed. They need
to reconstruct it from scratch and in both cases become more autonomous, more
self-confident, better able to take their own destinies in their own
hands. It is, actually, one heck of a
heavy wave as far as character development is concerned. And both Charlize
Theron and Nicholas Hault who plays Nux the warboy portrays this spectacularly.
Tom Hardy is a wonderful choice as the sullen Max. I have to agree with the common
jokes on the matter pointing out that Hardy has hardly any lines – it is true,
he barely speaks. And yet, Hardy manages to tell the story of his character
without resorting to words and really does justice to the character we all know
so well and love so much.
Mad Max
Fury Road is, in short, a two hour long extravaganza that will blow your socks
off on multiple levels. I am not a big fan of hype – well, who is – but I am
glad this one lived up to the hype. It would have been a shame if a classic
like Mad Max fell short of its fans dreams…
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