Mad Max: Fury Road

Imperator
[im-puh-rah-ter, -rah-tawr, -rey-ter]
noun
1. an absolute or supreme ruler.
2. (in Imperial Rome) emperor.
3. (in Republican Rome) a temporary title accorded a victorious general.

Furiosa (Charlize Theron), with her two thousand horsepower War Rig, carries a special payload across the Wasteland. Her title and station imply a relevant series of victories hauling important cargo—fuel, we think at first. Our titular, nonverbal antihero Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy, taking up the mantle of a role made famous by Mel Gibson in the three films prior) crosses paths with warlord Col. Joe “Immortan Joe” Moore’s (Hugh Keays-Byrne) most trusted driver just as she betrays him.

The film begins with a sort of fever dream over a small child he failed to rescue, perhaps a proxy for Max’s internalized guilt over his wife and daughter’s murder by Toecutter, played in the original MAD MAX (1979) by Mr. Keays-Byrne. Waking from this dream, Max is captured by the War Boys and branded a universal donor because of his blood type. As Nux’s (Nicholas Hoult) bloodbag, Max’s body furnishes the pale naif with a steady supply of blood while in battle on the open flats. The War Boys are raised from childhood to serve and defend one of the two most important commodities over which Joe holds sway: Water. The other, of course, is gasoline. In this post-apocalyptic dystopia I’m not quite sure who or what drills and refines what petroleum they have, but never-mind. There are so many visual details to this world of marauders, tribes, scavengers and loners that explanations become uninteresting. That’s the sort of hamfisted exposition you’d expect in perhaps another saga written haphazardly by a different George.

From here the film launches into the first third of a chase and battle sequence that plays less like a video game than a two hour mechanized, pyrotechnic buffalo stampede. The War Boys chase Furiosa and her cargo through an electrified sandstorm that makes Michael Shannon’s nightmare in Take Shelter seem like a light drizzle. The sequence ends with the flicker of an emergency flare. I haven’t even gotten to the central premise of the story and already director George Miller has taken trash, literally and figuratively, and transformed it into a kinetic art sculpture traveling through the Namib at 200 kilometers per hour, complete with its own roving orchestra—taiko-style drums atop a ’59 Cadillac dubbed “Gigahorse” and a bungee-suspended flame-throwing guitarist who perforates what could easily become a stuffy atmosphere, eliciting the occasional necessary giggle or two.

The film’s central theme is one of redemption. Max, played by Mr. Hardy as occasionally articulate but mostly weary and heat stricken (how many chases in the desert could you handle without losing your mind?), manages to pull together and hurl himself and his conscience into harm’s way. While we know little of Furiosa’s past exploits, much can be inferred from the way she guards watchfully over her cargo, the five enslaved wives of Immortan Joe–Toast the Knowing (Zoe Kravitz), The Dag (Abbey Lee), Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton), Capable (Riley Keough) and the impregnated Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley).

Toward the end of the middle act, when the five team up with the nomadic Vuvalini in search of the fabled “Green Place”, the film shatters the Bechdel test as well as every tiresome stereotype of “man-hating feminazis” intently concocted to further marginalize women in a medium in which they are already woefully under-represented. Max, Furiosa and the others form a team. There are no victims or muses, only warriors. The closest the film gets to such narrative tropes might be Capable’s empathy for Nux. However, she only points Joe’s disillusioned, former devotee in the right direction. He takes the first step and every step thereafter on his own accord.

All of this is executed gorgeously with real locations, real vehicles and mostly practical effects in-camera as opposed to computer graphics. This makes me wonder why it was ever necessary in a market growing increasingly disinterested in 3D to employ that blatant gimmickry complete with a steering wheel that “pops” out of the screen at you. But, despite being shot digitally and lacking some of the grit and grain which characterized the earlier adventures of Max, George Miller exercises adequate parts indulgence and restraint where appropriate.

Defenders of Joss Whedon (AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON) have argued that two hours isn’t enough time to flesh out characters (particularly female ones) in distinctive voices, yet Miller creates distinct identities for each of the wives and the Vuvalini (totalling at least ten unique characters–all women) without clunky dialogue. The fact that you can still tell them apart in the middle of a high speed road brawl, one in which they’re each active combatants, makes inexcusable the failures of other writer/directors to do the same.

Spielberg and his less restrained (read: spastic) disciples, Shyamalan and Abrams, may want to pay close attention to the limited and contextually-appropriate use of diffuse light and color pops. When you leave the theater, think about that eerie section of silt-covered Wasteland bathed in cobalt hues. Think about what it represents, both thematically and literally. Would you remember it if Miller had beaten you in the head with a fucking rainbow?

P.S. Give my regards to Larry and Barry…